Feeling hopeless?

I’m increasingly aware of the pull this world has on God’s people who are already citizens of the next world. Maybe it is the aging process, but it seems to me that Christians, who should be excited to go to our heavenly home are more apt to be the opposite. I’d say more than 90% of prayer requests are about healing and health issues. I rarely hear someone say they are looking forward to seeing Jesus.

If I put myself under a spiritual microscope, I can see why I sometimes line up with the 90%. It is because I am more filled with myself than I am filled with the Holy Spirit. I base this on the Bible:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Romans 15:13)

According to this verse, it is the power of the Holy Spirit that produces abounding hope. Most of the time, New Testament hope refers to the fulfilment of God’s promise for the future, namely that I will spend eternity with Him. That hope sustains me in hard times and is a big part of my ‘joy and peace’ in believing. God wants me to abound in it, a word that is hard to translate from Greek to English. It is about abundance, more than enough, an overflow that cannot be contained much less described.

Obviously, my faith requires outside help to live with that exuberant expectation. As the verse says, I need the “God of hope” to fill me so the power of the Holy Spirit can make it happen. He is the giver of hope.

Tozer says this is the dividing line that separates Christianity from all forms of cults that advice such as: “Get in tune with the infinite,” or “Wake the giant within you,” or “Tune in to your hidden potential” or “Learn to think creatively.” This sort of thinking might give us a psychological shot in the arm, but the results build hope on our fallen nature and are not a result of an invasion from God.

All of this affirms that human desire includes eternal peace and joy yet some of us easily forget that believing in Jesus Christ secures that. He promises it and we believe it. It is our future hope. Our biggest problem is wanting it right now, by-passing death and any suffering and sorrow that might go with it. Do we really think we can step into that blissful state by simply asking our Great Physician to fix all our bodily problems?

My experience with the Holy Spirit makes it plain. When I am most trusting Him, I am most excited to see Jesus, most eager to walk into eternity and leave this place of sorrow and pain. Could it be then that the problem with this focus on health and a long, joyful life here on earth is that my faith has lapsed, that I’m not filled with the Spirit as I should be?

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Lord Jesus, this seems an obvious connection. If Your Spirit gives me greater hope, then when hope lags, I need more of Your Spirit and that lagging hope will also increase. I love it that You are the bottom line for all issues and problems, the root of my tree, the foundation for all goodness. More of You means more of all else that is right and good. Keep my eyes on You today and my heart filled with hope!

A secured future changes things right now!

God continually tells His people to be holy. I understand that in the sense of moral holiness, that to be holy I must live according to the ways described in the Bible. However, when I think of the holiness of God, which is above and beyond anything I am or any of His people can be, then I wonder if this is even possible.

God is awesome, mysterious, beyond my ability to describe. I know His holiness in my mind and just a little, but enough to fill me with awe. Is that the kind of holiness He wants for His people? And if it is, when He says ‘be holy’ what am I supposed to do? Tozer points to this passage and it reveals two important truths:

“May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” (1 Thessalonians 3:12–13)

First, for God to establish (strengthen, confirm, make more firm) holiness in me, I need to increase and abound in love for others. The love He wants is not emotional attachment. Rather, it is a decision, a choice to bless and care for others the way He does. This choice puts eternal well-being over temporary comfort without neglecting temporary comfort. That alone is a challenge! Because only God knows how that works in the life of each person, I need to be totally connected to Him, listening to and obeying His guidance. It means aligning myself to the Word of God in humble and sacrificial obedience.

This kind of love is not about winning God’s approval or gaining salvation. That is already mine in Christ Jesus. That is, by grace through faith I am saved. However, just as a newly enlisted soldier must learn how to perform like a soldier, I also must learn how to live in the holiness and righteousness into which God has enlisted me. I am declared perfect in Christ, but He must establish me according to what He has declared to be true of me.

The second thing from these verses is when it will be complete — at the coming of the Lord Jesus. When Jesus returns, I will see Him as He is — and be like Him, holy and complete.

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” (1 John 3:2–3)

How would I behave for a summer if my father promised me a pony at the end of August? How would I live if promised a full reward at the end of my life? Some might squander the time, maybe because they did not believe the promise. Some might work hard as if they thought they must earn the reward. God’s promise is not like that. He wants me to purify myself, to love others, to strive for holiness, but in the end, these things will be true of me because of what He has done!

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Jesus, as I think about these things, the awareness of Your great ‘otherness’ — and the beauty of Your holiness draws me closer to You, desiring to be like You, longing to see Your face. This is Your doing, and these are Your promises (not the pony part 😊) and I am in awe of You once again!

Hope looks forward, not over its shoulder

And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:75)

And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, (Judas) departed, and he went and hanged himself. (Matthew 27:5).

Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison…. still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, (Saul) went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. (Acts 8:3; Acts 9:1–2)

The two great preachers of the Gospel were destined to be Peter the denier of Christ and Paul the persecutor of Christ. Why didn’t Judas the betrayer of Christ make up a third?

All three of them had strong I-wants, which is a sinful focus that excludes faith. Everyone has been there, myself included, yet the faith of Jesus is greater than all our sin. Judas never took his sin to Jesus. He dealt with it himself in the only way he thought would work.

Yet the biggest difference between Judas and the other two is more about his inability to face the future. All three failed. All three had to look God in the eye and move on, but Judas could not. His failure consumed him because hope had eluded him.

Hope knows something is real even though you cannot see it. I wrote a class paper about hope using the smell of cinnamon buns as a descriptor. Every day I parked my car in the lot far from the college kitchen, yet as soon as I opened the door, I could smell them. Each breath brought greater anticipation. My mouth still waters at the memory. Hope is a delicious smell!

Even without experiencing the things hoped for, hope keeps the heart from total despair. Hope reflects God’s mercy, echoes His love. Hope gives me energy, strength to go on. Without it, sorrow for sin would cripple me. The hours move relentlessly and my energy is not what it used to be. Brooding over my past errors is a waste of time and effort, doing nothing for me or for the kingdom of God.

I have been tempted, have yielded and sinned. It is right to do what Peter did, weeping tears of repentance before God, but even more right to return to Christ and be sent to strengthen His lambs. Hope moves me to active love and devoted service. Hope safeguards me against remorse and its suicidal nudges.

Hope produces zeal. It puts the past beyond recall, behind me. Hope sees magnificent opportunities, makes me energetic, even courageous. Jesus’ voice whispers things like, “Let the dead bury their own dead”—dead opportunities, dead regrets, dead failures, yes, even dead sins—and “follow me” (see Matthew 8:22).

Judas had no hope. He looked at himself and what he had done instead of at Jesus, instead of waiting to see what Jesus would do. This sinful and hopeless man took matters into his own hands and never saw the astonishing good that God brought out of the evil that he had done. He forgot (if he ever knew) the grand redemptive program of God that began before the foundation of the world. Instead, Judas zeroed in on “poor me” and put himself outside of God’s plan and into the hands of Satan. Without faith and hope, he never knew what God could do or what he could have been.