The Promise of Hope

The Bible is filled with glorious promises.  The more time we spend in the living and active pages of God’s Word, the more we discover the assurance that His purposes will unfold just as He said. That’s real comfort when life hurts and great encouragement in a world filled with chaos and confusion. But to receive such blessings, we have to be still and alone with the Author.

I remember the first time I came upon a promise that seemed to counter everything life was throwing at me.  It was comprised of five words, “…hope does not disappoint us”. I closed my Bible and sat quietly with that thought. For some time disappointment had attended my way and I had to make a choice. Would I trust what my eyes saw or what my God said.  In the stillness, I realized that I had equated hope with expectation.  My prayers didn’t focus on God’s will in my circumstances, they centered on deliverance from the trials that seemed overwhelming.  But what I felt and what I saw did not diminish God’s promise in the least.  That is truth I needed to come to terms with.  Maybe its a struggle for you, too.

Hope seems to be in short supply these days. There are mounting pressures and with them often come anxiety and fear; the twins of uncertainty. They are menacing thoughts and no one is immune from their influence, if we allow them to appear larger than God’s promises ~ which they are not.

You may be in pretty tough circumstances right now and you’re beginning to wonder exactly what it means to hope when things feel hopeless. This is the moment to trust God. He is holy and cannot lie. He is loving and will faithfully keep His promises to His people. But His timetable is His own and when hope seems delayed, it is not because God is indifferent to our cries. No, the power of Christ is yet working all things together for the ultimate good we cannot see.

The enemy of our soul is not blind to this truth and his great desire is to cause mankind to doubt God’s goodness. Jesus described Satan as the father of lies and so he is for his desire is to kill truth, steal faith and destroy life and he is fierce in this pursuit.  Having already been defeated at the Cross of Calvary, every hour brings him closer to the reality that his time and influence is rapidly coming to a close. Evil’s hatred despises hope’s assurance … and how the message of hope resonates in God’s Word!

Hope calls to us in our pain, our loss, our sorrows and uncertainties with the assurance that through faith in Jesus Christ, we will not be disappointed. The fullness of that promise is found in Romans Chapter 5. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.  And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit; whom He has given us.”

Hope doesn’t mean that battles won’t face us again tomorrow, or even an hour from now. But hope does assure us that God will sustain us by His grace and fulfill His promises at the appointed time. We are not home yet, but neither are we alone now. Even in our most desperate hours, the presence of the Holy Spirit abides with us, giving strength to press on and character to trust the unseen Hand of God. We need that reminder and the Bible is where we find it.

There’s hope. It is found in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, and He will not disappoint us.