S50P8 – Our spiritual fuel: hope
Rom. 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
They did not have much as children. When you are young enough, however, you may not even realize this. To them, living with lack was normal. They did not know what it meant to have what they needed. They thought everyone lived like that. As they grew and became more knowledgeable, and they were exposed to other people and how they lived, their poverty became real to them. It then became an issue. It was a struggle that no one could deny, but that did not mean that the struggle had to remain. There was the hope that they would be able to do something about their own poverty in time. This hope, that they one day they could rise above that circumstance and raise families who would never know want, was what kept them going.
We hope for many things in life. Those who grow up living in contentious households hope for peace. Those who feel they receive no attention from the world hope for love and acceptance from others. Hope is rampant simply because this life can be rather incomplete. Nothing is perfect, and everything could use some improvement. If we were simply to except unfavorable circumstances and let them keep us from progressing, that would be the end of hope. That would be the moment when we say that there is no point in looking forward to something better or something more. It is the opposite of what God instructs us to do in his word. Whether we are speaking of the hope of the new world or the hope of provision or the hope of peace, we are to look forward to all better things with expectation.
Hope and faith are intertwined. When we are told that faith is the assurance of things hoped for [Heb. 11:1], this is a statement about commitment. Hope is the moment of wonderment when we decide to entertain the dream. That is when we have a vision of what could be, and it drives us beyond what actually is in that moment. Faith becomes the assurance of that hope when we commit to believing that these things will come to pass. It starts with dreaming and leads to believing. God wants us to look beyond what lies before us now. He wants us to dream of how things could be then commit to believing that they actually will be so. Father, thank You for giving us hope for those things which are greater and fueling us to the belief that they will come to pass.