What if I asked you what are you hoping for, and why are you hoping for it?  We might answer, that we desire for people we love and know to be healed from a sickness, our relationships to be loving and unified, children to be obedient, etc.  All things of course are good to hope for, but “the why” is what God desires for us to focus on…

But we don’t have to be a Christian to hope for those things, generally everyone hopes for such things.  Yet as a Christian, the hope we are called to participate in, goes beyond what we think is ideal.  Because “ideals” generally don’t account for ways that appear hopeless, yet be ordered from God!  That our hope is not rooted in an “ideal utopia” of life, given the reality of this broken world.(Psalm 37:23-24)

So our hope must be grounded in something we can count on, leading us to our Lord Who has overcome the world!  Yet we are to participate in what Jesus has done by having faith in His Word.  Without the Word really being a part of our daily life and hope, our hope is baseless, or at most selfish for our own ideals, not God’s glory. (1 John 4:4)

The apostle Peter tells us, that what is more sure than what they heard from heaven, was the prophetic Word!  He tells us this for the sake of hope, and the direction of it being in God who is faithful to His purpose.  But without the Word, our hope is in what?  We end up hoping in ideals and desires that naturally seek comfort.  So when God orders steps that aren’t ideal, what is “sure” that we can hope in? (2 Peter 1:16-17)

Without the Word leading us to Jesus as our “anchor of hope”, we lean on people, money, image, and an ideal utopia to instill “hope”.  But as Christians, a life of faith is the opposite of “ideal”, and in order to strive to live by faith, something must be “sure” or else why live by it?  Which is my point.  If the Word is not a priority in our life, there will be no desire to live by faith, because there is no substance to have confidence in.  There is no intimacy with Christ to enjoy, and no understanding of the “ideals” He scatters, in favor of what honors His life and death…(Hebrews 11:1)

In His Love, Ld