What Is Hope

| Hope series |

• What Is Hope
• Why Did Paul Say YOLO?
• Hope in Heaven

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What is hope? How is hope different from faith? What are the benefits hope has to offer? Did you know that hope leads to joy and enables patience? I wouldn’t mind a little more joy and I know I could use a little more patience. As we kick off this new series on hope, let’s start with a solid foundation about hope.

Hope Is About the Future

Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:24-25

Let me start with a simple story. During advent this past Christmas, I sat my toddlers down to explain the concept of hope. I wanted them to really understand it, not just memorize a definition but be able to recognize it. I wanted them to experience hope and remember that experience. So, I started by telling them, “I’m going to give you ice cream”. I’m sure you can imagine the way a smile grew on each of their faces as they realized what I said. That is hope. Quite simply, hope is being excited about something that’s coming.

Don’t worry, I gave them the ice cream I promised; after all, I want them to know they can trust me when I say something. But let’s imagine for a minute that they didn’t trust me, that they didn’t believe me about the ice cream. Imagine if the first thought that crossed their mind after I promised ice cream was, “Suuuuuure, we’ve heard that before…”. Do you think their faces would have lit up in the same way? They wouldn’t have gotten excited because they didn’t believe it.

Hope Depends on Faith

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

(Romans 15:13, emphasis added)

Hope is built on the foundation of faith. In a chapter on the faith of Abraham, Paul explained this about Abraham’s hope:

In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

Romans 4:18-20

This is the passage where we get the phrase “hope against hope”. What does that mean? It explains that Abraham had no earthly reason to believe that he would have children; he was too old, and Sarah was baren. Nevertheless, he knew that God was not limited by these things, but he was “fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised.” So, he had hope even when there was no hope; he had hope because he believed God; he had hope because he had faith.

Just like my kids hope depended on them believing me, Abraham’s hope depended on him believing God. In the same way, for us to experience hope, we must believe that what we are hoping for will come to pass. To have hope in the promises of God, we must first believe they are true. If we don’t believe them then we’ll be too afraid to put our hope in them, because hope that’s disappointed is too painful to risk: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12). If we do not believe it’s going to happen, we will not be willing to get excited about it. If we do not have faith, we cannot have hope.

Hope Causes Joy

Like we said, hope is simply being excited about something that’s coming. My kids couldn’t taste the ice cream at the moment that I promised it to them, but that didn’t stop them from being happy about that ice cream. In other words, hope enabled them to enjoy something presently even though that thing was in the future. This demonstrates one of my favorite definitions for hope: Hope is the present enjoyment of future blessing.

Hope is the present enjoyment of future blessing.

Quite simply, hope causes joy. So, when God tells us to have hope in His promises, He is encouraging us to experience the joy of those promises here and now. Is it any wonder that the Fruit of Spirit includes joy? And, in second position no less. God wants us to experience joy, even joy in this life. However, He knows life is not always easy and enjoyable, but often unpleasant. So, He gave us the gift of hope and taught us how to use it so that we might have joy even when it seems impossible to have joy.

Joy is often explained as a happiness that is consistent, not being contingent on our circumstances. But how is that even possible? It is possible through this virtue of hope that enables us to enjoy the good that God has for us even while we are surrounded by the bad that sin has caused.

Joyful Hope Enables Patience

While my kids were enjoying the first example of hope, I gave them another example. Because they only had to wait minutes for the ice cream, it was easy to get excited about, to have hope. The next example was something they still had to wait a few weeks for: Christmas morning! As we talked about Christmas morning, we talked about all the things they were looking forward to: spending time together, drinking hot chocolate, and (of course) opening presents. As they thought about what we were going to do, they got excited, they felt joy! They felt hope and that hope made them happy, happy even about something that was a long way away (for a toddler that is).

This simple example demonstrates the power of hope. When we are waiting on something, hope allows the waiting to add to our joy rather than detract from it. If Christmas were simply here and then gone without any anticipation, we would enjoy it for such a short time. However, whenever we anticipate it and have hope about it, we get to experience the joy of it for so much longer. This type of hopeful expectation transforms tedious waiting into joyful excitement. While we don’t have the fulfillment of all God’s promises now, hope gives us the enjoyment of them now while we wait. This enjoyment makes the waiting pleasant, and when waiting is pleasant, patience is easy.

if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:25

So: Faith leads to hope, hope causes joy, and joy enables patience.

Having Hope

We’ve seen now the benefits of hope, but there’s more than this. The reality explained in the Bible is not just about the benefits of hope, but the necessity of hope. The Bible tells us quite plainly that hope isn’t just a nice thing to have but is absolutely essential to Christianity. There simply is no option for living a real Christian life without hope. Next time we’ll explore why hope is not optional. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out.