Make Jesus Christ Your Living Hope
You can lose a lot of things and still have hope. Hope is the last thing ever lost. You can lose a marriage, your health or your job and hope continues. But when hope is gone, you are in trouble.
All of us can reach a point of losing hope. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (NIV). When you defer something, you hold it off.
A hope deferred is a hope delayed.
What is hope?
Hope is the confident expectation of God to do what He promised through His strength and in His faithfulness. Hope is an actual reality in Christ. 1 Timothy 1:1 says that Jesus is our hope. And it’s vitally important for those of us who are Christians to understand that our hope comes from that deep level of our relationship with Him.
Hope is assured, but experiencing hope is optional.
Hope is not dependent on us. It’s like a giant reservoir of hope promised to us. It’s never going to go away. It was there in the past, and it will be there in the future. So, ask yourself, Am I going to partake of the hope that Christ has given me or not?
How do you experience hope?
In this blog and the next, I have a total of 10 verses to use to illustrate how we can experience hope.
- Celebrate Being Alive
For those who feel like they’re losing hope, you can encourage them to enjoy today.
Across the airwaves and in our content, we’re bringing people together. We are celebrating life. As long as we are breathing, we are to celebrate being alive.
Enjoy today!
“There is hope only for the living. As they say, ‘It’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion’” (Ecclesiastes 9:4 NLT)! In the wisdom of Scripture, Solomon is encouraging, celebrate your life.
2. Wait patiently and confidently.
Paul says we are to wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. If we already have something we do not need to hope for, but if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently (Romans 8:23-25 paraphrased).
For those who are losing hope, you can help them wait patiently and confidently.
Create a waiting room in your life.
We all need a place that gives us a sense of calmness, patience and perspective in our lives.
3. Start with the end in mind
1 Corinthians, 15:19 says, “And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (NLT). There were people in this time, as there are today, that believe when we die, the body and everything disappears.
But we know that our hope is in Christ. On that day when we leave earth, we are immediately in His presence (See 2 Corinthians 5:8).
You can experience hope when you start with the end in mind.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
It is so easy for us to focus on the feelings of loss, loneliness or whatever it is, that we lose the big perspective. Jesus says to His disciples – don’t do that! “I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3 NIV). Jesus is giving them that hope of the future.
The hope that you can have in Christ is a powerful thing.
4. Hope against hope.
That little phrase “Hope against hope” was first said back in the 1800s by a person who had been reading Romans 4:18. “Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping—believing that he would become the father of many nations” (NLT).
Look for a miracle.
Have you ever reached a place where you said, “God, if you don’t do something, there is nothing anyone else is going to do. I have done everything I can.”
We’ve got to trust God for a miracle. We believe in miracles. Perhaps you’ve even seen Him do them in your own life. God is still in the business of miracles.
