Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for” For the follower of Jesus the thing we hope for is salvation and eternal life with him. There are lots of things we can be hopeful for, a good car, a better job, more money, happiness in this life, etc. But those things are not the kind of hope we are talking about. Hope is a word that points to the future, it is to know that there is a future and that future is going to be OK. It’s having hope in eternity, because in having eternal life we have the best hope we could ever hope for. Our eternal hope is that we will have life everlasting. That means no matter what happens in this world, no matter what we might be going through at the moment, there are is always something better to come in eternity.
Our hope does not come from our selves or our own abilities it comes from Jesus and we are carried on in that hope through his Spirit and his Word. But there are times when hopelessness happens. Of course we are gong to have times when situations in our life seem hopeless, but it’s only that particular situation that seems hopeless. In your life, in your eternal future, in your relationship with God there is always hope.
Persistent hopelessness is the result of a lack of faith (assurance of things hoped for). Persistent hopelessness is different from depression or anxiety, instead it is living with the thinking that nothing will ever work and that there is nothing beyond the past or present. In fact, a hopeless person can be a happy person, they can be quite happy to live in the past or to take every moment as it comes. It often leads to contestant negativity and a focus on the past and the present. Hopelessness leads people to want to recreate the past and to focus on making the present more comfortable and more like what has already been done. Persistent hopelessness makes us critical of things around us when those things challenge our grip on the past and force us to move into the future. It causes us to speak negatively about and towards others especially when those people have new ideas. Persistent hopelessness makes us unwilling to take risks and causes us to put up our defences against anything that might make us look towards the future.
New tasks and ideas become difficult because without hope in Christ we can only hope in ourselves and those around us. We are fallen, it’s true, and by ourselves we will probably fail at the monumental tasks that face believers. So when someone comes up with an idea or feels moved by God to try something different, the hopeless person will often put down those ideas believing that the task and it’s fruit are up to fallen people. But the reality is that Jesus promises that his Spirit will be our helper, he gives us Spiritual gifts so that we can accomplish the things he has called us to do, and if we hope in Jesus we will achieve those things he has called us to do. If we have no hope the tasks will seem strange and impossible.
The task we are assigned by Christ, to make disciples of all nations, is a forward thinking task. It is all about the future and it’s all about eternity. Because of the diversity and the differences in individuals and nations it means that God moves us in different directions to complete these tasks. But without hope, this task will be impossible, because without hope there is no future so sharing the truth of an eternal future is difficult. So when we are without hope we focus on the things that are here and now, our own comfort in this moment, we may try to restore the past, or we may focus on things that are not eternal.
So what does this look like in practice terms. Say someone comes to you and says “God has called me start a new mission in our community.” Without hope the only response is a negative response; “It’s never work”, “No one will be interested in helping with that”, or “Oh it’s been tried before”. The person with faith in Jesus Christ and the hope that comes from it will response: “Lets pray about this”, “How can we make this work”, “How can I help”, or “Let’s search the Scriptures”. It’s not dismissive of the practical but it is a reflection of the hope that we have in Jesus that he is, as he says, with us always and the hope that God does in fact call and equip us to do more.
So what do we do if we find ourselves caught in the cycle of hopelessness? We do as Colossians 3 says and we fix our minds on the things above where Christ is seated. If we fix our minds on Jesus our mind will be focused ahead, always looking into eternity. We will not be beholden to the past, and our current comfort or discomfort will pale in comparison to the hope we have for tomorrow (Romans 8:18). If we believe in eternity through Jesus Christ that is our goal. It is not maintaining the past, it is not about believing “live is short so live it up now”. The past and the present will always come to an end. We cannot hope in the past and the present. Instead, it is about looking towards eternity and seeing hope and helping others to see that same hope through Jesus Christ.