Hope is not wishful thinking. Yet we hear ourselves say: “I hope that taxes don’t increase this year.” Or “I hope that we get rain soon.”
Nor is it a feeling: “I feel good about how my company is doing.” Or “I feel sure that my friend is going to stay sober.”
If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, then your future is full of true hope.
In Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians, he said this:
Since then it is by faith that we are justified, let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace, and here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys—we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles. Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance; this in turn will develop a mature character, and a character of this sort produces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us.”
*Romans 5:1-5 (J.B. Philips)
Hope does not stand alone. It is interwoven in our peace with God, which gives us joyful grace now in our sufferings. These present realities give us a “happy certainty” (hope) for the future.
