Where Is Hope?

There are times in our lives when hope seems impossible to find. Maybe someone we know has cancer and the doctors say there IS no hope. Where do we find hope then? Hope can be hard to come by sometimes. Unless . . .

I attended a worship service at Lifest last past weekend. Wes Stafford (president of Compassion International) and Bob Lenz (president of Life Promotions) - delivered messages on hope.

During Bob's message I heard something I had never heard before. I mean, I'd heard it before but I'd never really thought about it in the way he offered it. He asked the following question. See if you can figure out the answer?

"Where do we find hope?" Where can we find hope in a world that is slowly killing itself? The answer is in the picture above.

Go get your bibles out and open them to 1 Corinthians 13 - the love chapter. Skip past the "love is patient, love is kind" part and go down to verse 13. Let's read it together.

^"13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:13

Look at those three words - faith, hope and love. Where is hope? Well, it's right in the middle, right between "faith" and "love."

Think about that for a moment.

Do you have faith in God? Do you love God? If you answered yes to those two questions you HAVE hope. Hope is right there between those two things - not only in the Bible but in our lives as well.

Faith is defined as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something."

Love is defined as "an intense feeling of strong affection."

If we place our faith in God,  and God . . . is love (1 John 4:8) does it make sense then to say, "When we place our faith in God and we love God, our hope can also be found in God? I think it does. And so does God's Word.

⁷ “But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you." - Psalm 39:7

We humans tend to place our hope in the most unusual places. We place hope in doctors and nurses when we are sick. But when THEY tell us there is no hope, what then?

Hope is defined as "a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen."

Do you have a "certain thing" you hope will happen? I do. We might want a certain person to change their ways. Have a change of heart. We may desire it but where is our hope that it will actually happen? Who can change people's hearts?

Only God can do that. Is our hope then in God? That He can change someone's heart? It should be. God IS our hope. God is where our help comes from.

"I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." - Psalm 121:1-2

If we love God and if we have faith in Him . . . we already HAVE hope!

Hope Is A Good Thing - Shawshank Redemption
My Life Is In You Lord