Episode 137 - What Is Hope

We've explored what hope is in several of our episodes.  In fact, I always like to ask my guest how they understand hope.  They've always given me wonderful insights.  

In this episode I want to share further some of my thoughts about what hope is and especially, what is the source of true and lasting hope.  It is something that is real, necessary for life, and achievable for all of us.

I invite you to join me.  

Transcript

Hello Friends, I’m your host Dr. Dave Laton and thank you for joining me in Our Journey to Hope.

 It is my desire through this podcast to bring you information about how to discover, sustain, or perhaps regain hope.  

 We’ve covered in several previous episodes what hope is.  I’d like to revisit it again in this episode.  Hope is such an incredibly important element of our life that we can never have enough.  The impact of hope greatly enhances our quality of life.

 If you look up the word hope you will find definitions that refer to it as a mental and emotional state of mind.  It is characterized by a desire and expectation that something we want, or need will come about.  It is a future looking perspective.  The lower our hope, the lower our expectation of a future.  The more hope we have, the more future we see.  Hope keeps us motivated to move into the future, even during difficult circumstances.  It preserves resilience, even in the deepest and darkest of times.  And it helps us celebrate as we realize what we had hoped for.

 To some hope is a form of wishful thinking.  This is common to all of us.  For example, we hope something will happen or not happen.  But hope is so much more.  It moves forward with bold steps along a pathway to achieving what we want.

 Here are some elements of hope.

 It is a belief that there is a better future. This is at the core of hope.  It looks to a better future and the possibility of achieving it.  This is what keeps us going in those challenging times we all face.  It helps us overcome the challenges as we continue to move forward.   

 Hope gives us motivation for action.  When we see a future, we take actions to move into it.  The actions might be small and faltering, but we continue to take actions to achieve what we see as a future.

 Hope forms a foundation.  This foundation offers stability and an anchor in turbulent and troubling times of life.  It is what we can stand on and build on when the storms of life rage against us.

 Hope is a way of thinking.  We adopt a mindset that we can move on.  It future might not be in the form that we anticipated or even hoped for.  But it is a future.  Circumstances in life often cause us to change direction.  We do so knowing we can achieve the future.

 And because of all the above, and even more, hope is a source of strength.  That strength gives us the resilience to overcome obstacles and keep moving forward, especially in times of setbacks.  

 Hope never promises a life without stress and strife, but it does offer a view into continued life.

I want to shift now and talk about true and lasting hope.  True and lasting hope comes through our relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ.  

 All through scripture, even in the darkest moments of humanity, God holds out the promise of something for those that are believers in Him so great that words cannot describe it and our minds cannot comprehend it.  And we also see that God is always faithful to His promises.  

 The stronger our relationship with God, through Jesus, the more we realize this hope.  

Where some in the world understand hope simply as I would like so, or maybe so.  To a faithful child of God, we say, I know.

 I spoke of hope as acting as a foundation in our life.  That is what we have as a child of God.  This foundation anchors us to our relationship with God.  It helps us persevere in the most devastating times in our life because we know the temporary nature of this life, and the wonderful eternity of a life to come.

 True and lasting hope is a confident assurance.  Through it we are grounded in God’s promises, motivated to serve faithfully, trusting in His power, and enduring through troubled times.

 This is not a superficial feeling, but a confident assurance based on the life and promise lived and offered by Jesus Himself.  He, as the Son of God came to live among us to teach us and offer hope, that confident assurance of life eternal with God, to those who believe in him and follow him.

 Nothing in the world or devastation in life can remove us from God’s love unless we give up hope and turn away from Him.  But even in that, God offers us His love if we will but turn again to Him.

 Most of us are familiar with the parable of the Prodigal Son.  It’s found in the gospel of Luke, chapter 15.  Let me paraphrase this great parable.  In this teaching, Jesus describes a young man who demanded his inheritance from his father.  Upon receiving it, he left his father and went on to waste his fortune.  Not long afterwards he had no resources or friends and had to take the lowest of jobs.  He got a job tending pigs.  He was not even able to even feed himself and became so hungry he would even have eaten the pig’s food.  In the deepest of night in his condition he remembered the love and comfort in his father’s home.  He turned away from his wasted life and began to make the journey home.  He resolved to ask his father to allow him back, if only as a servant.  When he neared his home, his father saw him, ran to him, embraced him lovingly in his arms, called for full restoration and a celebration of a life returned.  

 Such is the love of our heavenly father.  When we return home, there is a celebration in heaven among the angels before God.  Each individual soul, mine, yours, everyone’s, is precious in the sight of God.  It is so precious, that Jesus died in our place to make a way back to God.  

 But we must make the effort to turn away from a wasted life and turn to God.  We do so by believing Jesus is the Son of God and the way to God.  We turn from focusing on ourselves and turn to focusing on doing God’s will.  We are baptized by immersion in water as a symbolic dying to self and raising as a new creation.  Then we strive to live the life we committed to as a faithful child of God.

The great thing about this is that each of us can do what God asks of us.  The moment we are reborn as a child of God following that baptism, we are now in the family of God and have the eternal, confident assurance of hope that He offers.

 Also, there are some very much like the prodigal son that Jesus described.  These were in a relationship with God but turned to the world, against the Father’s wishes.  They too can return and find God’s welcome home. 

 One of my favorite passages in scripture, and what I see as perhaps the most hope filled passage for those wanting to come home is found in 1 John 1:5-7.  I won’t read all of it but I do want to read verse 9.  It is at the heart of restoring hope.  John says,

 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

 When that prodigal son returned home, he didn’t stop to clean himself off.  He still had the stink of the pig pen and the filth of the road on him.  But that didn’t keep the father from lovingly embracing him.  When we turn back to God, he cleanses the filth from our life and makes us pure again as he welcomes us home.

 We serve a God who offers true and lasting hope.  It is there for all who would reach out for it.

 Friends, thank you for joining me as together we journey to hope.  I trust in some small way we have encouraged you to discover, sustain, or regain hope through this effort.   

I invite you to contact me if you have questions or comments, or if you wish to share with me something you’ve experienced in your journey to hope.  My email is info@ourjourneytohope.com.   

And please, share this podcast with someone whose hope is being challenged.

 I look forward to sharing more with you soon.  Again, I'm Dr. Dave Laton, and thank you for listening.  And until our next episode, remember, we give all glory to God our Father.