Building Our Hope In Christ

  

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Romans 12:12 (NIV)

By Alexandra Copeland 

An older friend of mine that is dealing with severe health challenges told me that she believes life gets worse as you get older. I was so sad to hear those words from her lips, because I do not believe this is a truthful statement. I contrasted her sentiment with that of another dear friend of mine that is almost 85 years old. She’s extremely active and vital, and she doesn’t allow anything or any person to dictate her mood. She is a strong believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and she believes that you get out of life what you put into it. 

When you contrast the two very different attitudes and conditions of these two women, you begin to see the difference that hope in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, will make in your life. A simple definition of hope is to have a mental attitude of optimism. It is an expectation of a positive outcome. A person is hopeful when they desire something positive to happen, and then they follow it up by actually thinking that it will happen. This is the mindset that delights our Heavenly Father. 

All of us are familiar with the verse in Proverbs 23:7(NKJV) that tells us, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” God also tells us through the Apostle Paul in Romans 12:2(NLT), “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Heavenly Father is giving us a healthy dose of good medicine. In no uncertain terms, He is letting us know that a person can be transformed into a Godly person by thinking Godly thoughts; and a person can be transformed into a worldly person by following the behaviors and culture of this world. The culture of this world is self-serving, brutal, and prone to idols. This is not what God created us to be.

Before Jesus Christ came into our lives, we all had our feet in the territory of worldly thinking and behaving, but once we accepted our precious and powerful Lord as the head of our lives, things changed. They changed infinitely for the better, and sometimes we forget this. The world can be a very unfriendly place, and it can bombard our senses to the degree that we are not hopeful about the future, but instead we are incredibly pessimistic. 

As Christians, we walk by faith and not by sight. In other words, Jesus Christ is telling us that we cannot allow the limitations of our physical eyesight to skew our spiritual vision. Our hope is in Christ Jesus. He is a perfect Savior, and he cannot fail. 1Peter 1:3 (NIV) tells us, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Because of Christ, our hope is alive and thriving. This means that our expectations are never too grand for him. He is willing to aid us beyond anything that we can imagine. 

We read in the scriptures of our Heavenly Father’s loving kindness, but then we look on the television or internet, and we see destruction, mayhem, perversion, and profanity. God knows this, and it is one of the major reasons why He has instructed us to renew our minds. In order to recharge our hope, sometimes it will be necessary for us to disconnect from the world as much as possible. We need to refrain from social media, maybe go on a media fast for a period. This will allow us to focus on the Holy Spirit that indwells us.

God is the Word, and He is always speaking. Therefore, we need to hear what the Spirit is saying to us. This requires monitoring with extreme scrutiny the things that we allow into the gates of our physical hearing and sight. Hope will come alive in us when we nurture our souls in this way. Without taking such measures—without feeding our souls the time and attention they need—the world will become our treasure; and this is a recipe for disaster. 

God tells us in Romans 12:12 (NIV), “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” When God tells us to “be” something, it is not a suggestion. It is a directive of which we can be assured is for our absolute best. Heavenly Father has equipped us with the wonderful ability to mentally and emotionally put off the thoughts and emotions that hinder our forward progression. He tells us to be joyful in hope—to have a happy expectation in Him through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As we get older, we are met with challenges that we perhaps didn’t have in our younger years, but God never changes. His love for us is the same, and His grace is sufficient no matter our age.

The world does not continually think thoughts of light, it runs off of darkness. We need a renewed mind so that we will not believe the lies of the world. God directs us to renew our minds so that we will not only recognize the truth, but we will actually live the truth. Putting on His Word keeps our batteries continually charged with hope. It keeps us prepared and poised for all the good things He has planned for us, but if we allow ourselves to be conformed to the negatives of this world, we’ll lose stamina and momentum very quickly.

When we bury our hope in negativity, we also stifle our capacity to see in the spirit. We release our hold on dreams, aspirations, and goals; and leave them to the ‘maybes’ of chance. Not a smart thing to do. God has given us the gift of hope to forge a prosperous, healthy, and meaningful future through Jesus Christ. It is in him that our hopes are fulfilled! So we must keep our minds and hearts anchored in the hope of Christ, knowing that the more we walk in his light, the better our lives will be.

Hope is the spiritual communication that keeps our channel open to what God wants to do in us and for us. Losing hope means that we have decided that it is okay to go backwards. This is a decision that is beneath our privilege as God’s sons and daughters. We don’t have to settle for an existence where hope in Christ is not our delight. There is so much more the Father wants to share with us, so much more that is available to receive from Him. If we will bring our vessels before the Father with the joyful expectation of hope, we can have every confidence that He will fill them every time. ■

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

New International Version (NIV), Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.