What is Hope?

What is hope? It’s been defined as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. The key is that it is something that hasn’t happened yet. Hebrews 11:1 describes faith in a similar way, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

Faith, like hope, is something that may require a lot of patience before its fully realized. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:18 concerning the importance of faith through trials, “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

But what if you had no promises of a better tomorrow? No relief from suffering, no peace! As Proverbs 13:12 says, “hope deferred (delayed—indefinitely) makes the heart sick…” In other words, we need hope to get through the day-to-day grind that drives us into depression or to help us persevere.

In essence, that’s the story of God’s promise to a people (now all people) who follow and trust Him. Jesus came to become the hope of salvation, the avenue of peace, the way to heaven! But prior to His arrival, the Israelites didn’t have a lot of hope. They’d lost their kingdom and their prosperity, and they even lived in captivity for several generations. Once “free,” they only had a broken-down dream of peace and prosperity. They were hopeless, but they made efforts to rekindle that hope.

One thing they did was rebuild Jerusalem in an attempt to restore the worship that was done there (in part—read Malachi for a picture of how it wasn’t up to God’s standard). It was during this time that many historians believe that the Psalms of Ascent were written and sung. They were a series of 15 Psalms from 120-134 that reflected the trials of life while going to Jerusalem, the place of their hope. These Psalms still carry a lot of hope for us, regardless if it isn’t about Jerusalem. Their “Jerusalem” was where God’s promises had been visually recognized in earlier times. The hope was that it would one day be restored to its former glory. Thankfully, we’re not waiting on a town to be rebuilt in order to have hope; we know that hope comes through Christ!

Romans 5:1-5, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”