Lies We are Told About God — Pt 15

Hope and God

God is Love, and Love always Hopes, thus God always Hopes.  How then what does God need to Hope for if He knows the begin­ning from the end?   We must be mis­sing something here.

In this series of posts, we have dis­cus­sed how human com­prehen­sion redu­ces God’s cha­rac­ter down to nothing­ness; and based on our human expe­rience and teaching, we asc­ribe to the Father something that is not remo­tely indi­ca­tive of His heart.  So it is with HOPE.

Let’s start with a sim­ple dic­tio­nary defi­ni­tion says Hope is:

• To che­rish a desire of good, or of something wel­come, with expec­ta­tion of obtai­ning it or belief that it is obtai­na­ble; to expect for.
• To place con­fi­dence in; to trust in with con­fi­dent expec­ta­tion of good.

The Mes­sage paraph­rase says Love “always looks for the best”.

Could it be that God hopes over us with an expec­ta­tion of obtai­ning good or something welcome?

Could it be true that God has a “con­fi­dent expec­ta­tion of good” for our lives?

Hope and Me

We have redu­ced Hope down to wishing or wish­ful thin­king in our per­so­nal exis­tence. Yet it is so much more.  Hope is pre­cious and our very exis­tence depends on hope…God made it that way.    The key is that Hope depends on Truth. It must be groun­ded onto and into Truth.    But our cul­ture rou­ti­nely attaches their hope to false ideas, decep­tions, and even outright lies.

If we choose to tie our hopes to anything other than Truth it will kill us even­tually.  So many peo­ple have gone here and have lost any sense of true hope.  As a result, hope merely beco­mes a nice-to-have in a life mired in a sense of futi­lity.  Hope is a necessity!

Some times we in the church attach Hope to false ideas that are pre­sen­ted, in good faith, from the lec­tern each Sun­day.  We tend to label these as “acts of faith”.    Belie­ving that we are follo­wing God’s wishes we make des­pe­rate deci­sions, only later to dis­co­ver that we pla­ced our Hope in fal­sehoods.   Many time hap­pens all the while igno­ring Truth surroun­ding them.

A per­so­nal exam­ples from a church I par­ti­ci­pa­ted in some time ago.  The place was gro­wing and space was get­ting tight. So the lea­ders began dis­cus­sing expan­sion which leads to debt, which leads to fund-raising.  This was taking place as the U.S. eco­nomy was hea­ding south.  The posi­tion of the lea­ders was “God is big­ger than the economy…let’s build a buil­ding!”  Admit­tedly a loose paraph­rase but the intent was clear that God would bail us out if we eep the faith.

Yes, God is big­ger than the eco­nomy but wis­dom dic­ta­tes that when more and more of your con­gre­gants are losing their jobs, now would not be the best time to take such as big bite.  In short, they launched the effort to only receive less than 1/3 the anti­ci­pa­ted finan­cial com­mit­ment and remain in their current faci­li­ties.  I won­der how many peo­ple are scratching their heads, pos­sibly even disi­llu­sio­ned, that God did not appa­rently come through for the church.

Another gro­wing church, nearly debt fee, felt the need to sell and buy big.  They had a com­mit­ted buyer within the first week the pro­perty was on the mar­ket.  This became a “sign” that God was on their side.  So they sold out and took on a huge mort­gage.  Now, seve­ral years later, staff are being cut to part-time, with some lea­ving ministry alto­gether.  Sadly, the mort­gage must be met with a toll exac­ted at the expense of the staff com­mit­ted to the cause.  Yes, they could not pre­dict the eco­no­mic down­turn so I offer some grace, but why debt?  Why is the Ame­ri­can church so full of impa­tience when it comes to growth?  Why must they be com­pe­lled to ride a wave when we all know that waves do recede in time?  Why the unwi­lling­ness to expand current faci­li­ties before taking on debt?  More staff could have been hired, nearby pro­per­ties could have been bought out, more ser­vice times offe­red, for a lot less finan­cial invest­ment.  The growth could have been main­tai­ned without taking on the risk.  No, you don’t unders­tand, we had that buyer in the first week.  It’s God..

When we place our Hope in moun­tains of bad doc­trine and theo­logy we end up going in a thou­sand direc­tions only to end up with nothing.  This leads to a Hope-Less-Ness and, for many peo­ple, a cri­sis of faith that ser­ves to drive them away from the Father.  Some of us know this firsthand.   Hope should drive us TOWARDS the Father. Never away from it.  The flip side is that when we don’t place our Hope in God it gets repla­ce­ment by Fear and Pain.

Hope and Jesus

The Apostle Paul repea­tedly refers to Christ as our hope in the New Tes­ta­ment.  Life without Hope is futile.  We must have Hope and we must have something (someone, actually) to place our hope in.

Ephe­sians 2:12 says “…at that time you were sepa­rate from Christ, …without hope and without God in the world.”

1 Thess 4:13 says “Brothers, we do not want you to be igno­rant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope”

1 Cor 13:13 says “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the grea­test of these is love.”

Why is Love the grea­test of the three?  Because, in Love, everything else will natu­rally flow out of it.