The God of Hope

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Romans 15:13 NIV

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

God calls Himself a God of hope

Hope’s not just a byproduct of God’s power. It’s a part of his identity. He is the SOURCE of hope.

I can do things that give hope. But I am not hope personified. God IS hope.

Here’s a scarier part of this though:

If what you’re looking at or towards doesn’t fill you with hope - is it God you’re looking at?

This is what it means to check ourselves against the bible. When something happens, and we see it differently, we tell ourselves - yknow, i’m the one who must be in the wrong here

And something I’ve learned - the best way to look at God is to look directly at Him. This sounds obvious. But it takes practice to look past the natural, look past the culture, and try and emphasize more than anything a direct, personal relationship with God.

The reason this is so important - we are really good at trading the giver for the gift. We have an amazing experience in a service, and so we push hard to always have that kind of service, or that particular song, or this particular action, again, because that thing really released the Spirit. No it didn’t - God did. And us earnestly seeking Him made us willing.

If you feel a lack of hope, spend even more time in personal, private connection with God. Not that the services, and the worship times are bad - they’re amazing. But because that personal connection is where the bread and butter really is.

The God of Hope starts by filling you with joy and peace

Now, I want to show you what this DOESN’T say. What do we normally consider to be something that creates hope?

More of something we rely on - finances, time, recognition

Answers to questions we have - the future, answers to medical questions

Basically, whenever we say ‘I need THIS’, and we get that.

God starts with joy and peace. And notice how both are internal, and have absolutely nothing to do with your outside circumstances.

Joy is, ‘I’ll feel great, no matter what’ and peace is, ‘I’ll feel secure, no matter what’. The outside can’t take these things away from you.

How do we embrace joy and peace? By trusting God at all times

This one qualifies it. ‘As you trust him’.

Now, here’s a hard truth. If we’re struggling with trusting God - God’s not the source of that. It’s us individually. And if God isn’t pouring joy and peace into our hearts - that’s also on us individually.

And I know we believe that. But here’s where the rubber hits the road. If we aren’t feeling joy, if we aren’t feeling peace, that means, the FIRST question we need to ask is this - what is going on inside my heart that’s blocking that process? Because remember - the outside shouldn’t be able to touch that.

These ideas of joy and peace, throughout the new testament, they’re most commonly associated with two things - the first is, what’s going on INSIDE us, interally. The second is, the power and presence of the Holy Spirit

Romans 8:28

Romans 8:28 NIV

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Here’s a great sentence we can say together.

I trust that God is working for my good, and He has a purpose.

And as we embrace this trust, Joy and peace come from it. And they are the foundational parts of hope

When you believe that God is working for your good. When you TRUST that idea. It builds in you joy and peace.

And the more you live in joy and peace, the more hope will build in your life.

We will not just HAVE hope, we will OVERFLOW with hope

God is a generous God. If we trust him, if we believe that he IS the God of hope, and that he CAN give us peace and joy, we won’t just receive a cup of hope. He’ll dump it on us. We’ll be overflowing with it.Doesn’t that sound amazing?

Somebody asked me how I’d summarize my experience through the pandemic. And i said this - that I have come to appreciate just how much bigger God is than anything else we could face. That we try and content ourselves with just getting by day to day - but God’s designs for us in this moment are that we should be OVERFLOWING in hope. Rooted in joy and peace. He doesn’t want us to survive, He wants us to thrive.

But again, the foundational piece of that is trust. It’s placing our lives, our hopes, our fears in God, and saying, ‘I trust that you can do more than anything I see around me.’

That’s what God calls us to today.

And I want us to spend some time in prayer just seeking that.

Let’s Pray