I'm actually not a big fan of the word hope. I think it's a depressing word. I don't want to hope - I want to know. Like I don't hope there's a God, I know there's a God.
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, I hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.
If your hope disappoints you, it is the wrong kind of hope. You see, hope in God never disappoints, precisely because it is hope *in God.* This means that hope placed in any other thing will always end up disappointing.
Doctors may have told you there is no hope for you medically, but you can always find supernatural HOPE from God's Word.
Hope is not an idle term. Hope is the reality that can and does reveal itself to us at God's choice hour. To hope is to know the secret of achievement.
"The word which God has written on the brow of every person," wrote Victor Hugo, "is Hope." As long as we have hope no situation is hopeless.
Very honest, I hope. God, I don't know. I hope I'm fun, I hope I am a good time. Spontaneous, surprising, affectionate? I hope, kind. Dancing a lot of dancing. I insist upon dancing. Anywhere. Anytime. The more dancing, the better
And I really suspect that of all the things we think we want to know, the only thing we really want to know is that we are loved. And if Jesus means anything, he means that you are loved. I hope you know that. And I hope you stop worrying about all the stuff you don't know, because I don't think it amounts to a hill of beans.
If a man has no worries about himself at all for the sake of love toward God and the working of good deeds, knowing that God is taking care of him, this is a true and wise hope. But if a man takes care of his own business and turns to God in prayer only when misfortunes come upon him which are beyond his power, and then he begins to hope in God, such a hope is vain and false. A true hope seeks only the Kingdom of God... the heart can have no peace until it obtains such a hope. This hope pacifies the heart and produces joy within it.
We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along? Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.'
If we want to know the Glory of God, if we want to experience the beauty of God, and if we want to be used by the hand of God, then we must LIVE in the WORD of God.
Daniel's message of hope and help is still the good news of God's grace. We call it the gospel today. It still has the power to impact lives and transform cultures. Paul referred to the gospel as the "power of God" [Romans 1:16] and chose a word from which we derive our word "dynamite" to describe it. It's this power - not pickets, petitions, protests or politics - that's our only hope today.
You get faith by studying the Word. Study that Word until something in you "knows that you know" and that you do not just hope that you know.
The beauty of having nothing to lose, is you learn the beauty of having everything to gain.
This is where hope lives.
Hope can’t be taken.
Hope can’t be lost.
Hope can’t be broken.
When we are boiled down to what we are as people. We are not love, because we hope to love, we are not money or who we hold, because we hope to have and to hold. We are not religion or God, because we enter into belief in the hope we get something back for ourselves. We are not a soul.
We are hope.
Research actually indicates that if you write down what you're grateful for, it increases your happiness by 25 percent. And who doesn't want that? And God's word says (1 Thessalonians 5), "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Who doesn't want to know exactly what God's will is for them?
Hope. People want hope. We crave hope. We long for hope. Hope has been present since the very beginning. And almost in the worst situations of human history, you often find the greatest amount of hope. The very nature of the situation, the way stepped-on people created within them even more hope than when things were going fine. Hope has always been around.
God of hope, I look to you with an open heart and yearning spirit. During this Advent season, I will keep alert and awake, listening for your word and keeping to your precepts. My hope is in you.