Hope

The God-kind of hope or elpis (G1680) as it is known in the Greek, also has a role to play in maintaining constancy. Hope is an expectation of good.

The Lord Jesus spoke about bringing a peace to the world, not as the world gives. (See John 14:27). This is a supernatural peace that enables a person to rise above the circumstances and maintain a sense of tranquility. Hope also operates according to John 14:27 in that it gives us an expectation of good, when it seems there is no logical reason to support it. Perhaps then, peace is related to, contains or actually is, hope?

We become more aware of this hope of God operating in our lives, when our physical senses and mental reasoning give us no plausible reason for us continuing in an endeavour.

Wordly Hope

If we try to attain hope by means other than God’s love, we can end-up being
disappointed. A lack of God’s hope can lead to a state of dread and despair. Even when our senses tell us that we should be in good spirits because the outlook is good – a lack of God’s hope in our soul can result in us feeling depressed and anxious over the most trifling circumstances.

We often use terms such as, "Don't build-up your hopes" and "don't put all your hopes on that happening" and "I hope such-and-such happens" and "I hope things will go well on Saturday". Basically, we often tend to associate hope with specific expectations.

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary describes "hope" as follows:
 noun
1 a feeling of expectation and desire. a cause or source of hope. grounds for hoping.
2 archaic a feeling of trust.
 verb
1 expect and desire: he's hoping for an offer of compensation.
2 intend if possible to do something.

The English word "hope" used to mean something different to what it means now. It used to mean a feeling of trust. Nowadays, the word "hope" means a feeling of expectation and desire. In the Bible, "hope" is an expectation of good.

The Greek word translated "to believe" in the Bible, actually means to trust, and is used in the Bible in relation to our trust in God and Jesus Christ and His Word. The Greek noun translated "faith" means, to be persuaded. We often struggle in our relationship with God because we do not trust in Him. We do not trust in Him because we are not convinced of the truth of His Word. When we lack faith we fail to trust in God and we experience no hope (dread and despair). When we are in a state of dread and despair, we derive our hope from our own specific expectations of what we believe we need to happen and what should happen. Our expectations are not always in-line with Go's plan for our lives. This kind of "hope" will only lead to disapointment.

In order to be effectively led by the Holy Spirit, we need hope in case things don’t turn out quite as we expected them to. An anxious mind simply gets in the way of God, because He wants to lead us in ways that may contradict traditional thinking and human reasoning. We need hope, God’s hope, in order for the law of serendipity to operate.

Hope enables us to do the things we do, often without truly knowing the ultimate reason for doing so. Hope does this by maintaining an expectation of good, even though we might not have evidence to support our hope other than what the Word tells us about hope.

Without hope, it becomes difficult to carry on doing what you are doing; and it becomes difficult to know if what you are doing is truly the will of God.

Pep-Talks

Preaching is often used to instill a sense of hope in people; I can this type of preaching, “Pep-Talks”. Pep-Talks are the kind of message that encourage beleivers to, “Just keep going” and “Don’t give up”. But surely, this is the kind of peace that the world gives, which Jesus spoke about in John 14:27. I am convinced that it does not matter how many pep-talks a believer hears – if he does not have hope – the positive feelings and sense of encouragement – will not last long. Pep-talks are a poor substitute to God's hope!

See my previous post: http://thedivinenature.blogspot.com/2009/05/pep-talks.html