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Hope
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For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,
that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Rom.
15:4
Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our
Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation
and good hope through grace, 2 Thess. 2:16
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen. Heb. 11:1
The devil is a liar. Jesus referred to him as one that steals, kills,
and destroys. Sometimes we blame the devil for the bad things that
happen to us, or for the loss of some material possession. That can
certainly be true sometimes, but the devil’s main efforts are geared
toward this – to simply take away our hope. If he can convince us that
there is no hope he has defeated us. He is good at what he does and we
allow ourselves to listen to him too much and too easily.
We have hope because we have faith. The devil comes through the back
door to attack our faith by attacking our hope.
This is a truth that is visible in most of the characters of the Bible
that God used for some great purpose. We see Joseph who endured repeated
hardship, defeat, and rejection, but never lost hope in God and his
Word. He believed God and he had hope. We see Moses, who had everything
the world could offer because he was called the son of Pharaoh’s
daughter, but ended up on the backside of the desert for 40 years with
nothing of his own and working for his father-in-law. What do you think
the devil said to Moses when he was 50 years old? When he was 60 years
old, or 70 years old? You can be assured that whatever he said, it was
designed to take away his hope. It is hard to hope when all the
circumstances say there is no hope. But Moses endured “as seeing him who
is invisible.” He never failed of hope – because his faith was in God.
We could go on and on with similar examples of Bible characters.
What is our hope? Very simply, our hope is in God, and not in ourselves.
A hope that endures the circumstances of life and the assaults of the
devil is one that is founded in God and not in ourselves, or in other
people or things. It seems to take a lifetime to burn that truth into
most people. For Moses it took 80 years! But when God had finished
preparing Moses he was the “meekest man in all the earth.” He had
absolutely no confidence or hope in himself or his ability to do the
job. Samuel told Saul, “When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast
thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed
thee king over Israel?” (1 Sam 15:17) High self-esteem is the song of
the world, but it isn’t God’s way for us. We must get to the place where
we have no hope in ourselves, but plenty of hope in God. Jesus
reinforced this when He said, “Without me you can do NOTHING.” (John
15:5) Jesus even said of himself that He could do nothing without the
Father. (John 5:30) How amazing it is that so many of us never get to
the place where we give up on ourselves and simply cast ourselves upon
God! We think we CAN do it, and we CAN make it on our own strength, and
wisdom, and abilities.
We must come to the end of ourselves before we can expect God to step
into our lives in a real and powerful way. Necessarily, it takes time to
come to the end of ourselves. The fact is, we put our hope in everything
BUT God. If we get sick we look for help with doctors and medicine. I
don’t believe that is wrong, but all those things must fail us
completely before we really and truly cast ourselves upon God as our
only hope. If we fail at some endeavor for God we keep going back and
trying again and again with another plan of our own. It is only when we
find ourselves shut up in the dungeon with absolutely no way to keep
going that we come to the place where our only hope is God. We must
DECREASE and He must INCREASE in our lives – that is the way it works
with God.
So, you see how treacherous the way is in this matter! We must LOSE hope
in order to HAVE hope. We must lose all hope in our own self and our
abilities, our plans, and our means, if we are to have real hope in God.
God’s ways are not our ways. Before anyone is exalted they must be
humbled – the way up is down, according to the Word of God.
This is the trial of our faith. Those who have true faith in God will
endure, because when all hope in this life is lost, there is still that
hope that God knows, and God cares. There is the hope that God has
prepared a place for us, that where He is, we might be also. So our hope
is not based in this life, but in eternity, and that makes us able to do
as all those in Hebrews 11 did. They didn’t receive the promises, but
they believed them, they embraced them, and they confessed that they
were strangers and pilgirms here. They looked for a better country. They
had hope!
In this world of sin it is impossible to hold onto hope – in this life.
The devil takes advantage of this and tells us poor creatures that there
is no hope. His trick is to blind us and cut off our vision past this
present world. Faith allows us to see beyond this life and that is our
hope.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen. Heb. 11:1
Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both
sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; Heb.
6:19
Mike Miller
10/16/2005
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