DAILY READING
REFLECTION
Reason for Hope
by Mary Alice McGinnis
If you had a “hope” thermometer, what would it reveal about the measure of hope you have right now?
Let’s level set first. The word hope in the original language of the Bible is different than our modern-day version of hope. We think of hope as wishful thinking. Such as, “I sure hope it rains tomorrow”, or “I hope I get that new job.” The definition of hope from the Bible is different. It means “confident expectation.”
Ask yourself, “How confident are my expectations?”
As humans, we tend to only be confident in the things we can see. “Seeing is believing,” right? But Abraham hoped against hope. He saw the hopelessness of his body being able to conceive a child. He looked it square in the face and acknowledged it was impossible.
Yet, he confidently expected God’s promise of being the father of many nations to be fulfilled.
Why?
He did not depend upon circumstances for such confidence. He grounded his confidence in God. The God who has the power over life and death, and “calls into being things that were not." Abraham was “fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.”
We can have this same grounded confidence. We can be confident in our expectations that God will deliver on every single thing He has promised.
Ephesians 2:1, 4-5 says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
The God of Abraham and Sarah, who was able to bring LIFE through the dead womb of Sarah, is also able to keep His promise to make us ALIVE in Jesus Christ. If God can do that, we can have confidence in His All Loving, All Powerful ability to do what is best for us.
Where are you looking for hope? What circumstances are you tempted to rely upon to feel confident about the future? Where is God challenging you to ground your confident expectations on Him and to simply BELIEVE.
What better HOPE can there be than one grounded on the sure and certain hope of the Almighty God who loves us!
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank You for our father Abraham who confidently expected you to keep Your promises to him. He was not perfect, yet he did ground his confidence in YOU and not in the shaky things of this world. You are the ONLY One who has ALL power to do everything You have promised. Thank You for bringing us back from death to life through Jesus. Fill us to overflowing with boundless HOPE - confidently grounded in Your endless grace and mercy.
Thank you for today's blog, Mary Alice. One of the men in our prison ministry who is incarcerated in Marion Correctional defined hope as " a joyful expectation of things yet to come". He is a strong believer and has brought numerous men to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Your explanation of how hope works in our minds and hearts is right on point and I can tell you many, many men and women who are in prison cling to this understanding of what hope means. God bless you and those who write these wonderful, insightful blogs.
Robin Lorms