When the world is upside down due to unforeseen circumstances, we need hope, but not just any hope. Sue explains that biblical hope is something different. Something better. Because it’s about God.
When pretty much the whole world is in stay-at-home mode . . . when pretty much the whole world is impacted by sudden unemployment because the whole world is in stay-at-home mode . . . when pretty much the whole world’s economy might be affected by the crazy fall in oil prices . . .
We desperately need hope.
Hope that things will get better. Hope that we will be able to experience “normal” again. Hope that everyone’s stress level will go down, especially health care heroes and first responders.
I’ve been thinking a lot about hope lately.
Your everyday kind of hope is a wish or expectation for the future. It’s oxygen for the soul. An important part of mental health is being able to look forward to something good.
But biblical hope is something different. Something better. Because it’s about God.
Where everyday hope is about wishing, biblical hope is a confident expectation that God will be good, and He will do good, toward us. It is faith in the future tense.
Everyday hope is horizontal, looking at circumstances, the world, and other people—which are all broken by the Fall, and they are guaranteed to disappoint. But biblical hope is vertical. It looks UP instead of out. Biblical hope is focused on a perfect, loving God who is all-knowing and all-powerful. He doesn’t just know the future, He holds the future.
We can encourage one another daily, as Hebrews 3:13 urges us, by reminding ourselves and each other of what is true. Let me suggest three truths that will feed our hope.
God is good.
Probably the #1 lie of the enemy is that God ISN’T good. It’s what was behind his temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden: that God was holding out on her because He’s not good.
And when life is hard and we live in pain, it’s easy to look through the filter of “God is not good, that’s why He’s letting me hurt.”
But the truth is that our circumstances are not an accurate indicator of whether God is good or not. Our logic and thinking are not accurate judges of whether God is good or not.
Even if we don’t say it out loud, we can sit in the self-pity puddle of the belief, “If God was good, He wouldn’t let me hurt.”
But our pain is achieving something eternally significant, an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). When life is hard, God is doing something really big in us. And eventually, for those who have trusted Christ, God’s goodness will mean He carries us to the place where there is no more pain, no more tears, no more sickness or weakness or even disappointment. That is our hope, that the future will hold nothing but GOOD for us.
We’re not there yet. But it’s coming!
God is faithful.
He is faithful in His character, He is faithful to His word, He is faithful to His promises.
Faithfulness means being a promise-keeper, even when it’s hard. The Hebrew word for faithfulness means steadfastness, firmness.
On a trip to Colorado, my brother-in-law Phil learned that a cashier at Rocky Mountain National Park was also from Chicago. He said, “It must be cool to be here with these mountains all the time.”
“Let me tell you something about the mountains,” she responded. “They’re . . . always . . . THERE.” Meaning, they don’t move, they don’t change, and it takes a long time to get from A to B because those mountains are always THERE.
Like God’s faithfulness.
We can have hope that God will remain faithful to His promises, such as Jesus promising, “I will be with you always.”
Sports Illustrated covered a memorable incident at the 1992 Olympics when runner Derek Redmond tore his hamstring near the end of the race. He fell face first onto the track in agony.
As the medical attendants were approaching, Redmond fought to his feet. “It was animal instinct,” he would say later. He set out hopping, in a crazed attempt to finish the race. When he reached the stretch, a large man in a T-shirt came out of the stands, hurled aside a security guard and ran to Redmond, embracing him. It was Jim Redmond, Derek’s father. “You don’t have to do this,” he told his weeping son. “Yes, I do,” said Derek. “Well, then,” said Jim, “we’re going to finish this together.” And so they did.
Fighting off security men, the son’s head sometimes buried in his father’s shoulder, they stayed in Derek’s lane all the way to the end, as the crowd gaped, then rose and howled and wept.{1}
Most people don’t remember who won the gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, but millions will never forget the faithful love of a father who left his seat in the stands to enable his son to finish his race.
What a picture of our faithful heavenly Father who sent His Son from His seat in glory to earth to rescue and redeem us! Jesus promises that He will be with us always, to the end of the age—just as Derek Redmond’s father was with his son to the end of the race.
God is at work in my life.
Philippians 1:6 promises that He who began a good work in me will continue to complete it. Once God gets started on the process of making us like Jesus, He doesn’t quit!
One of my pastors has said that if you don’t like how things are, it means the story’s not over and God’s not finished.
How encouraging is that??!
Romans 8:28 teaches us, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.”
Since God is at work in us, then He has a plan to make us like Jesus, and He’s using every situation and every circumstance in our lives as His tools.
When we open our hearts and minds to God’s plans to make us like Jesus, and we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process, it strengthens our hope that our future will be different from the past or the present.
But to be like Jesus means we have to follow Him, which means denying ourselves, and taking up our cross. It means not fighting the tools of sanctification He is using to make us like Jesus. The best way to do that is to obey scripture, which says to give thanks IN everything, FOR everything. If God has allowed it, there must be a purpose in it. It means developing an attitude of gratitude by disciplining ourselves to say, “This stinks, Lord, but You have allowed it in my life so I will give You thanks for this crummy boss, or this difficult roommate situation, or this physical challenge, or this thorn in my flesh.”
When we realize we are not content with WHO we are or HOW we are, because we long to be better, it means God’s not finished with us. We are still a work in progress. The story’s not over.
It means there is hope. Biblical hope.
God is good, God is faithful, and God is at work in me. Those are the truths that will feed our hope and allow us to look at the future with confident expectation that it’s going to be better than OK . . . it’s going to be amazing. Either in this life, or on the other side, we can have hope.
A living hope. Hope has a name. His name is Jesus.
1. vault.si.com/vault/1992/08/17/track-and-field-ode-to-joy-carl-lewis-exulted-along-with-all-of-barcelonas-gold-medalists-many-of-whom-vanquished-giants-to-win-their-events. Accessed 4/21/2020.
This blog post originally appeared at
blogs.bible.org/3-truths-to-feed-our-hope-in-a-pandemic/ on April 21, 2020.