In Christ

What is hope? Hope is much more than just wishing something will happen. Wishing never gets us very far in life. No, hope is to believe, desire, or trust. It is actually an intense, earnest and confident expectation something will happen. This may sound the same as "faith” to you. Well, hope is very close to faith. In fact, hope must come first, and then, our faith is built on hope.

Hebrews 11:1 states: "Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Proverbs 13:12 puts it like this: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.” (New Living Translation)

When I was young, every year there was a community picnic my family loved to attend. My hope was that we could go and take part in the fun and games! I was confident that, if nothing major happened to interfere with our plans, we would definitely pack up, the morning of the picnic and take off in our car. I had an "earnest, confident expectation” it would happen. I hoped we could go. This produced faith we would go to the picnic. How simple is that? Why? Because my dad said we could go!

Isn't this the same way we should be with our Heavenly Father? If He says something to us it should produce hope in our hearts. As we keep thinking about it and meditating on what He said, then faith comes. Faith pleases our Heavenly Father!

I like to think of it this way. Hope is the spark that ignites the flames of our faith.

So why is this so important? Because there are so many people living without hope. In the gospel of Mark, chapter 5, there was a woman without hope. She had suffered for "twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse.” This woman was without hope! If the doctors were able to help her they would have.!

But... "She had heard about Jesus”. This is where hope came into her heart! She heard about the miracles that were happening in His ministry. All of a sudden she had hope again! This woman dared to go out in public in her condition, which was against the Jewish law, and pressed in close enough to touch His garment. We know that faith was produced, because Jesus told her that because of her faith, she was made well. All of her years of suffering were over! That is so awesome!

What I want to encourage you with today is... dare to hope! Just put your hope on the right person or thing. To me and many, many others, that Person is our Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus. The right thing is the Word of God.

Submitted by Pastor Rena Mae