The Plea To Hope

If you check the dates on the blog posts you should notice that it has almost been three months since the last time I wrote a blog post. Since then, many things have changed: jobs, family, relationship status, facial hair (attempting to get my James Harden on), and so much more. Change is difficult. Change is rough. Change is necessary.

Change forces us to examine many things. It can also expose our nature along with the idols we cling onto most. Think about this, when a house burns down what will you risk your life to rescue out of the fire? When life crashes, what will you hang onto?

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Outside of the word love, hope may be the most underestimated four letter word. It is also one of the most powerful things that a human can possess that transforms internal desires into external exertion. Hope can make a man do crazy things, things that he may be unable to do without the driving force of the end goal. This is hope, best defined by dictionaries as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Without hope, glorious moments in world history would have never occurred. If Martin Luther King, Jr. had never hoped of peace in a diverse world, even beyond his day, I may not have had the opportunity to write this. If Michael Jordan had never hoped of being the greatest athlete of all time, who would we compare LeBron James to? What about Jim on the television show, The Office? If he had never hoped of marrying Pam, the woman of his dreams, he would have never escaped the dreadful friendzone. Hope awakens in us a work ethic to see something to completion, because of the joy that comes in the end result.

I understand that everyone's not MLK, MJ, or Jim Halpert. But like them, we are human. And we do aspire to obtain something bigger than ourselves such as peace, satisfaction, and joy. I remember when I was a little kid playing with my friends in downtown New Orleans, we all aspired to become policemen, firemen, doctors, and presidents. We all knew and agreed on one thing, that we would leave the inner-city and not return. So what happens when hope meets difficult change? What happens when you hope in something that is temporary? Most importantly, how can a man or woman function when hope is not present in their lives?

Everyone is currently seeking hope-opportunities: places, things, and people that we can put our hope in. The most tragic emotional trial one can encounter is when their hope-opportunity disappears. This can leave us even more broken and hurt in a world already stained with brokenness and the stench of death. We have all experienced our hope being crushed by idols, the temporary things that we put our hope in. We can experience hurt and abandonment from our hopes being crushed to such a high degree that we may never want to experience what it feels like to hope in anything ever again. To hope, is to invest, and as C.S. Lewis says in his book, The Four Loves, "There is NO safe investment."

We can hope in so many things that can leave us ruined. Whether it be relationships, titles, money, or anything in between, these things will leave us hanging dry. Am I ranting about how hope is false advertisement? Yes, in a way. Hope is false advertisement if the object that we put our hope in is human, or human made. According to National Geographic, women live an average of 81 years, 76 for men. Eventually, we will disappear. That's the circle of life. We can hope for our parents to come through and provide for us but when they are gone who will provide? We can hope for our peers to accept us but when they reject us, who will? When we fail to find our identity in this world, what can we hope in?

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19 that "If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." Here he explains that if Jesus is only temporary, our hope is faulty. This means that if anything is temporary, it is a horrible God and a faulty idol. We can concur that everything in this world is not worth our hope, because it will only bring us to the day of our death (at most) and nothing beyond it.

Hope has a name, and it is Jesus. Paul, who once wanted nothing but blood from the followers of Christ, says in Romans 8:24-25, that "For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." Think about the fact that much of what we hope in are things and people that we can see. This is not hope. At least the kind of hope that our souls are longing for.

God made Himself man and entered into our sinful world in order to abolish sin, death, and Satan. He died along with the sins of those who put their hope in Him so that we may be clean and seen as blameless. He rose on the third day proving that He is in fact God, and also defeated death. We too can live new lives just as Jesus lives today. Jesus, the God-man is now in the heavens preparing an eternal home for us.

The reason we can put our hope in Jesus is simply because He Lives. God's wrath was upon sinful men and women like you and I but Jesus intercepted the hit on the Cross. Like normal people, Jesus died. Unlike normal people, Jesus rose. Like a God, Jesus lives -- forever.

Everyone is currently seeking hope-opportunities: places, things, and people that we can put our hope in. The most tragic emotional trial one can encounter is when their hope-opportunity disappears. This can leave us even more broken and hurt in a world already stained with brokenness and the stench of death. The good news is that Jesus came for us because of this. We need something better to hope in. We need someone that will never fail us, leave us or forsake us.

We can experience hurt and abandonment from our hopes being crushed to such a high degree that we may never want to experience what it feels like to hope in anything ever again. I have felt how dissatisfied life is from this type of pain. However, I want to plead with you to hope again. I want you to hope in Jesus. He will and always has provided. He will and always will accept you. He will never leave you. Whatever damage sin has done to you, He has come to reverse it.

Do you know what it truly means to put your hope and trust in Jesus? Martin Luther King, Jr says that "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." Jesus is the infinite answer to a broken world. So the question is, when your world comes crashing down, what will you cling on to? Something temporary, or eternal?

Romans 15:13  

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.