ENCOURAGED BY HOPE God through His Word and Spirit are the source of all hope (Rm. 15:4, 13) but there are three general areas where the spiritual force of hope must be learned and applied. We can describe these areas of hope as the: 1. BLESSED HOPE Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 3:3. This is the hope of the Rapture or Resurrection where Jesus comes for us as the His Church and Body. Those who have this hope in them are self motivated to purify themselves and live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. 2. BECOMING HOPE Colossians 1:27; Romans 8:29. This is the hope that encourages and assures us that we can change outwardly into Christ-like behavior and attitudes because the hope of that change and potential for that change is already in us. It is Christ in us the hope of glory or the hope of becoming manifested outwardly all that God says we already are inwardly in Christ. When we become frustrated with ourselves not changing in our conduct, our attitudes, and our words we have to be able to hope that we can change. When we keep failing, struggling, and feel like giving up or giving in to despair we need to have a hope that we can change. We don’t have to get into self hatred or diminish ourselves. The hope and potential for change is already in us (Christ in us the hope of glory) and God is committed to our becoming Christ-like. God won’t give up on us and neither should we give up on ourselves. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).” 3. BIBLE HOPE Romans 4:18; 15:4; Ephesians 2:12. This area of hope is from God’s promises (Eph. 2:12), the Scriptures (Rm. 15:4), what God says to us by His Word or Spirit (Rm. 4:18), and the Gospel ((Col. 1:23). It is Bible hope as opposed to natural hope. There is a difference between natural hope and Bible hope. Rms. 4:18 says of Abraham, “Who against hope (natural hope) believed in hope (spiritual hope or hope from what God said).” The difference is natural hope is based on natural knowledge and information. Someone could say “A new company is in town and they are hiring workers at $50 an hour. That information could cause you to get your hopes up but then if they said days later all the positions have been filled your hopes would go down. Your hope was built totally on the natural knowledge and information. When natural hope is gone, its natural to say there is no hope. Bible hope has nothing to do with natural knowledge. In Abraham’s case all natural hope was gone (Rm. 4:13-23). The natural information said your body Abraham is now dead and Sarah’s womb is also dead you cannot have a child. The promise of God came and said he would be the father of many nations. He could have hope based on spiritual information that he decided to believe against the natural information. Bible hope works when all natural hope is gone.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 11:58:49 +0000
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