Welcome to God Today. This is KC Craichy, founder and CEO of Living Fuel. Today we are going to talk about hope and what hope really is. We have a society of hopelessness, but we have to know what hope is before we can use it as the Lord intends us to use it. So, when we talk about hope, let’s go into the Bible where it says, “Now comes faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.”
This is a beautiful passage. And if you really don’t understand love, most of us have examples of love in our lives, but if you really don’t understand love you can read the rest of that very chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. It says, “Love is patient, love is kind…” and it goes on in a rich, beautiful description of what the love of God is. But that’s not the point at the moment.
Then we talk about faith. How many times do you hear about faith? Everyone is about faith. You have to have faith, you have to increase your faith. And that is a powerful tool, but how do we use this tool, and how does it connect? Now comes faith, hope, and love. Well, Psalms says, “Faith is undergirded by love.” So, now we understand that these things are connected. But, we don’t hear a lot about that word in the middle. We use terms like, “hope so, maybe so”, “well, I hope so”. It is not the way the word is intended or even what it means. When you look at the word hope in the middle, you actually have to look at the root word which is “positive vision of the future”. It is a positive imagination. Now, we know when we read the Bible, imagination is normally, there are maybe a couple of times where it is not negative. It is very negative. But the word hope is the opposite word to that, the positive side, where it says that “You actually have a positive vision of the future.”
How does that work? How do you use hope in that way? If we take hope and look at another scripture, and replace it with the word that we are talking about, it would say “without a vision, my people perish.” So, without hope, my people perish. With hopelessness, my people perish. We have a time now where people are taking their lives at the most incredible pace. And people are doing things that are destructive, and self-destructive, drugs, illicit affairs, and the list goes on, and on, and on. Because people are operating in hopelessness. Even in the Church. We have to have hope, and when you talk about hope, you say, “Well, how do I get this hope? How do I have a positive vision in the future?” Even if you are at your lowest place, the Word still has an answer for you. The Word says, in Jeremiah, “Call upon me, and I will answer. And show you great and mighty things you do not know.”
In other words, if you call upon the Lord, and you ask and He will give you a picture of what the future looks like, the positive future that He intends for you, for His own glory. So, if we don’t have hope, we ask the one who is hope, who gives hope, so that you can operate in hope. So now, when you have this vision of your future or this knowing of your future, this positive insight about your future, now you can operate faith. Because of faith you actually grab onto the hope with faith, the currency of faith. And you step into that reality. That is how hope works.
I am believing, in the name of Jesus, that your hope will rise. You will have insight into the positive future the Lord has for you, for His glory. In the name of Jesus, receive that. Amen.