“And now abides faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1Corinthans 13:13). The reason love is the greatest: We will not need faith and hope in eternity, but we will always need love. Right now, “We walk by faith and not by sight” (2Cor.5:7).
Our present condition is: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man sees, why does he yet hope for it? But if we hope for that we see not, then we do with patience, wait for it” (Romans 8:24-25).
The New Testament concept of hope is trifold: It is the expectation of future good that results in the confidence that it shall come. Therefore, it waits for it, and it waits patiently. Because we have been saved in hope, we have expectation of future good, and in this verse, Paul was speaking of the redemption of our bodies. We do not see any evidence of it now. In fact, as we age, our bodies grow feebler. I have looked into the caskets of many precious saints, whose bodies were shriveled with age or attacked by disease, and there was nothing to indicate that those bodies will be redeemed and restored to perfection. But I don’t have to see it to hope for it for them, and eventually for myself! Rather, if we hope for that we see not, then we do with patience wait for it.
Job said it best: “If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait until my change comes” (Job 14:14). This was spoken by a man whose body was covered with festering boils that he picked with broken pottery shards; whose teeth had become gray; his face wrinkled and skinny; his eyes with dark circles, and his breath stinking. But he said: “I will wait, because I have hope that I will see my body change, even if it’s not until after I die and am resurrected!
“For I know my Redeemer lives, and though my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh, I shall see God” (Job 20:25-27). According to Jesus, the resurrected, glorified body will be flesh and bones (Luke 24:39) as Job anticipated. I have had four dreams of people who are now with the Lord, who had died in old age, some with cancer. In my dreams, they were all young-looking, like in their 30s, and they were beautiful, healthy, with glowing countenances and joy-filled eyes.
As long as we have hope, we can wait with expectation, confidence, and patience. The Wiseman said, “A threefold cord is not easily broken” (Ecc.4:12).
Waiting On Hope
But what if you don’t have hope? What if you feel hopeless? Then you must wait for hope to come. We don’t even like to wait when we have hope, but there will be times in our lives when we even have to wait on hope. It’s one thing to wait in hope—it’s another to wait on hope.
Abraham was in this place, according to Romans 4:18-21: “Who against hope believed in hope that he might become the father of many nations.” Allow me to put it this way: “Who believed in spite of hopelessness…” When he had seen 25 childless years go by, and he and Sarah were experiencing the deterioration of old age, their situation had become hopeless. He had waited and waited, and nothing happened to give him evidence that things were working out. Instead, he now had dead loins, and Sarah had a dead womb. If he had just seen some changes that would have given him hope—if he could see and feel his body becoming younger—even slightly—if he could see Sarah turning back the clock and becoming younger. But there were no changes to give him hope. Now he not only had to wait in hope—he had to wait on hope itself!
How did Abraham do this? “He staggered not at the promises of God in unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.” The very act of glorifying God creates hope. Abraham said:
“I am fully persuaded that what God has promised He is able also to perform.”
Defocus & Refocus
Abraham had to defocus and refocus. He had to get his mind, eyes, ears, off of himself and Sarah’s impossible condition of infertility and old age, and focus on who God is and what He has promised. We too have to focus on God and not the problem.
David wrote in Psalm 34:3: “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.” When we magnify something, we make it bigger: Make God big because of who He is and what He can do. And when we magnify God, we minimize the problem.
Remembering God’s Word creates hope: David also wrote that it was God’s Word that caused him to hope, and when his soul fainted, he hoped in God’s Word (Psalms 119:49, 81).
Remembering God’s goodness creates hope: David revealed in Psalm 27:13: “I would have fainted [lost hope and given up], but I believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” He was on the brink of hopelessness, but he remembered God’s goodness in the past, and it caused him to believe he would see it again.
Jeremiah wrote: “This I recall to mind, therefore, I have hope. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul; therefore, will I hope in him. The Lord is good to them that wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord” (Lam.3:20-26).
In spite of his dire circumstances, Jeremiah had renewed hope every day, because he remembered that God is merciful, compassionate, faithful, and good to them that wait for Him to rescue them from trouble. Hope in God is to quietly wait—without murmuring and complaining.
Christians Are Never Hopeless!
To be hopeless means to give into despair, to be like a ship sinking in the sea, going down without help. But the Christian is never hopeless, even when we feel helpless.
Paul said it best in 2Corinthians 4:7-9: “We are troubled on every side, yet not in distress. We are perplexed, yet not in despair. We are persecuted, yet not forsaken. We are cast down, yet not destroyed.”
We are not in distress, because our ship is not going down! We have Jesus on board our ship, and all He has to say is, “Peace be still,” and the storms that threaten us will cease. We are often perplexed—baffled, at a loss to understand what we are facing and why God has allowed it. Satan is swift to whisper: “If God loved you, why did He let this happen?” This can lead to despondency, but not to despair, because we don’t give up! We are not hopeless! We may not know how we’re going to come out, but we know we’re coming out, and we maintain our expectation of good because God is good.
“Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2Tim.3:12). In the Greek text, this means to be hunted down like an animal. David comes to mind. A jealous King Saul and his army hunted David down like an animal, attempting to kill him 21 times. Our persecution is more on a spiritual, cultural level, and it is fierce at times. But we know we are not forsaken by God. If we feel abandoned by Him, it is the lies of the devil taking advantage of our circumstances to accuse Him falsely. This is when you must recall His goodness and faithfulness in the past.
Sometimes we are even cast down. This is a wrestling term, meaning to strike down with force. There are times when we may experience this, and it is hard to accept when you are in the throes of it. But as we have seen in wrestling matches, the referee is counting down to 10, when the pinned wrestler gets his second wind and pushes off his opponent, leaping up and landing back on his feet. In the same way, we are not destroyed, which means to ruin, to cause to perish, to put to death. In ourselves we feel helpless, and we are in ourselves. But we are not hopeless, because “our help comes from the Lord” (Psalm 121:2). “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves…. But our sufficiency is of God” (2Cor.3:6).
These experiences of the Christian prove that although we are often put in positions where we feel helpless, we are never hopeless. We are never distressed—sinking without help. We are never despairing—giving into hopelessness. We are never deserted—because God is with us. We are never destroyed—because He lifts us up like a shepherd puts a cast sheep back on its feet.
What is your expectation of good? How confident are you in God’s promises to deliver you? How patient are you to wait on the Lord? “Let us hold fast to the profession of our hope without wavering; for he is faithful that promised” (Hebrews 10:23). What are you saying? What words are coming out of your mouth—what circumstances are projecting onto your mind or what God says in His Word? These are the elements of our Christian hope that keep us afloat on life’s stormy seas.
Paul exhorted us to “Lay hold upon the hope set before us. Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast…” (Hebrews 6:18-19). These verses inspired me to pen this poem:
Hope Eternal
There is an anchor for the soul
That steadies me on storm-tossed seas
Evading rocks and hidden shoals
Til winds abate and tempests cease
When troubles rage and dark clouds loom,
I firmly grasp its steadfast rope
Til sunlit skies chase the gloom,
I’m buoyed by a thing called Hope
For should I cast away my faith
And in despair release the rope,
Shipwreck would surely be the fate
Of all who sail without hope
Broken timbers wash ashore
Abandoned remnants of despair
Their somber sailors are no more
Sunken by unoffered prayer
If I don’t quit—I cannot fail!
With hope on board, I shall prevail
With hope on board, I set my sails
Sharon Hardy Knotts
January 22, 2003
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