Christian Living
I’ve been really looking forward to this part of this study series- Victory Through Hope! In previous parts we have seen how we can have and enjoy victory through faith and love. Well, the 3rd thing in our 3 Essential Elements of victorious Christian living is Hope.
This is part 21 of this study series and today I start looking at Hope by sharing a story from many years back. Stay with me…
The Hope That Does Not Disappoint (I)
For a short period in my teenage years I had the privilege of spending quite a bit of time in a Christian home with 2 spinsters who were in their late thirties. Friday nights were for night vigils and ‘serious’ prayer sessions. Whether you were bright-eyed, half-awake or in dreamland, there was no escaping participating in these ‘serious’ prayers. One of such prayers obviously was for the spinsters to get married without further delays. Did I enjoy these sessions? Not quite sure. What I do know though is that I learnt to pray that my own husband would show up at the right time.
As a very young believer, I knew almost nothing about the mechanics of faith; of believing, confessing and acting on the Word of God. Infact, we seldom prayed Word-based prayers those days. It seemed like dedicating an entire night to prayers was good enough to catch God’s attention. Now that I think about it, indeed God meets us at the different levels of our belief, more importantly, His love and mercy transcends the foolishness of man’s heart and still reaches out to do him good. Because many years after engaging in those ‘powerful’ prayer sessions, all I did was simply to remind God concerning my request, believing and hoping that He’ll grant my heart desire.
Hope is one concept that can be vaguely understood by Christians. We commonly define hope as meaning an aspiration, an expectation or desire for something to happen. And really the Bible definition of hope is somewhat closely related to this; where hope means a joyful and confident expectation of good, an assured look into the future or the anticipation of good (1 Corinthians 13:13. AMP, Titus 1:2). So unlike Faith which is NOW, hope is unseen and in the future (Romans 8:24-25). Meaning that if you needed something to happen Now, you should be engaging Faith instead of Hope because Hope always looks into the future.
Biblical hope waits with confidence and joy. Indeed, Hope waits and waits and waits patiently. And really when you think about it, this seeming ‘indefiniteness’ of Hope is not so hard to grasp when you understand its anchor or foundation- which is Christ. Yes, the confidence and assurance that the object of Hope will manifest is Christ (1 Peter 1:21, Colossians 1:27). That is some great news, isn’t it?…. To know that as long as there is Christ, this Hope will not fail, it will not disappoint. Halleluyah!
Now did I mention that a whole decade passed by before the answer to my powerful night vigil prayers manifested- 10-plus solid years and AMEN (It was so)!! My ‘hope’ didn’t disappoint.
I know that 10 years is probably nothing compared to how long you have waited for the manifestation of that expectation. Yet, I encourage you to still Hope, friend hope with joy, confidence and patience because this Hope (that is built on Christ) does not disappoint. And better still, you can begin to give tangibility to the object of your Hope when you let Faith kick-in……that’s absolutely correct! Faith is the Substance of things we hope for, the Evidence of the things which are unseen physically (Hebrews 11:1).
So now you realize that one of the implications of Hebrews 11:1 is that when the Expected Time for the manifestation of the object of Hope comes, Faith should be engaged in order to bring these things to fruition. Yes, NOW is the time to get relevant scriptures on those things you believed God for in the years gone by and start speaking and acting as though they really are. Because faith calls those things that be not as though they really are. Halleluyah! Praise The Name of Jesus!!
Why don’t you join me in the next part as we continue to explore the relationship between Faith and Hope, as well as see more ways to get our Hope manifesting.
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Remember that you can access previous parts of this study as follows; Part 1: Study Background. Part 2: The Scope of the Christian Victory. Part 3: How Christians Gained Victory. Part 4: How Faith, Love and Hope Mix Together for Victorious Christian Living. Part 5: The Nature of God’s Love. Part 6: Characteristics of God Kind of Love. Parts 7 and 8: Winning Through Love. Part 9: How to develop our love nature. Part 10: Giving Is Not (always) Love. Part 11:Victory Through Faith: Understanding Faith. Part 12: Victory Through Faith: The Righteousness of God. Part 13: The Stimulus for Faith. Part 14: The Faith of Abraham (A). Part 15: The Faith of Abraham (B). Part 16: The Blessing of Abraham. Part 17: Activate The Blessing. Part 18: Abraham’s Righteousness. Part 19: You Can Grow Your Faith (A). Part 20: You Can Grow Your Faith (B).
