A Message of Hope -- I Corinthians 2.9

"When a wicked man dies, his expectation will perish, and the hope of strong men perishes." --Proverbs 11:7

It's funny sometimes to think about how God works. Funny in a good kind of way. Suffice it to say, I was struggling last week with hope. I had my good moments and my bad moments, but overall I felt like I was being tossed back and forth too much. I wondered how it was my hope was so small that it would fluctuate so quickly and so drastically. I was like a tiny ship being tossed about by the winds and surf of a storm. Little did I know that I was struggling because I was putting my hope in the wrong place. Last Sunday when I went to church, I felt like God was talking straight to me, both in the service and in Sunday school. Believe it or not, the topic for the service was about hope--specifically, putting your hope in the right place, or the right kind of hope. Then when I went to Sunday school, the lesson was about "preparing for rain"--how when you pray, you should go out and work to be ready for the blessing you are seeking. If you are a farmer and need rain, in addition to praying for rain, you also have to go out and prepare your field to receive the rain. That shows that you are truly believing God to answer your prayer. I laughed to myself both times I found out the topics, and smiled thinking how great is the God we serve.

I am learning, slowly but surely, by the grace of our Lord, what it means to have the right kind of hope. I was looking for a sure hope that God would answer my prayer; and would grow discouraged when I realized that I could find no such assurance. My hope seemed to fail me at the time when I needed it the most, because I was putting my hope in God to answer my prayer and give me this blessing. And though answered prayer is part of our hope in God, it cannot, and should not, be the totality of our hope, for that is much too small an expectation for our God. The hope we have from Him, and which is afforded to us through our Savior Jesus Christ, when spoken of in the Bible, is a hope that surpasses all other promises, and carries us through all of our trials. Hope, in the New Testament, is almost always spoken of in reference to our salvation, the riches of Heaven that Christ provides for us. It can carry us through because it is not limited to deliverance from our present trial. "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men" (Icorinthians15:19). For we all will eventually endure a trial for which no deliverance will come, and death will result. If our hope is only in God for deliverance in this life, then on that day we will believe the Lord has failed us. Really, though, we were merely believing in Him wrongly.

But since the hope we have in Christ goes beyond this life to an eternity spent in His presence, we have hope through all our trials, no matter if deliverance comes or not. Thus, as long as I set my hope on the righteousness God has promised me through Christ, then I will always have joy, and always have strength to endure. I have enough joy to live out Philippians 1:27: "Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ."

"Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off." --Proverbs 23:18