Your Living Hope

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

—Hebrews 11:1

Faith gives substance. It brings to life what we hope for. Hope is a strong anticipation of something good. Without hope, we can’t have faith. Hope is visibly seeing what can’t be seen. It is seeing things in your heart that can’t be seen. Imagination is the ability to see things in your heart that you can’t see with your eyes. So hope needs a positive imagination to thrive. A position imagination that gives hope comes when we dwell on the truth of God’s Word in the spiritual realm instead of dwelling on the negative we can see in the natural realm.

 

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

 

God is the God of hope. He is the God who gives vision. He is the God who gave us the ability to imagine. We want our imaginations to envision what God promises. God wants to fill us with joy, peace, and faith to produce nothing but His positive vision in our lives. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish this. We allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us what He wishes. We can’t do this on our own strength. Where we are weak, God is the one who is the strong one. When we visualize the vision that the Holy Spirit instills in us, we have a strong expectation of hope. We have Him, the strong one, empowering us.

 

Faith is a noun. Believe is a verb. For faith to be put into practice, joy and peace need to be true in our lives. A person without joy and peace can have faith, but they have trouble believing.

 

Romans 15:13 also says that we are to abound in hope. This is a distinguishing quality of those who really believe in God’s promises. For instance, if we really believe God wants us to prosper in health—that God desires us to have good health—our souls prosper (3 John 2). We will have joy, peace, and hope concerning the future. This is true for every facet of our lives. A lack of joy, peace, and hope are signs that we don’t believe. A person who doubts really doesn’t know what He believes. It is hard for him to receive what Jesus has died to give him (James 1:6-7).

 

 

Each one of us has to make the choice to believe or not believe. I can’t do it for you, and you can’t do it for me. Believing God for what we can’t see is our faith in action. And faith that believes God’s truth is alive.  

 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).

 

Jesus Christ is your living hope.

 

“For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance” (Romans 8:24-25).

 

A person who believes perseveres. He sees into the spiritual truth of living hope Christ has purchased for him and continually makes it his own. 

 

“Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5).

Jesus is your living hope who does not disappoint. 

 

© 2023 Lynn Lacher

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