“We hope you feel better soon.” “I hope I get this job.” “I hope for big money playing the lottery.” Things people hope for. For circumstances to improve. For career changes. For health.
As a Christian, our hope comes from God. Our hope is in His word, in His promises. Our hope is a person: Jesus Christ. When our health is flakey, when our career dreams are dashed, when we don’t win the big money, we still have hope. Because our hope is not temporary or fleeting. Our hope is eternal. Our hope is secure. So even though we will suffer in this lifetime and we will go through trials, we can rest in the promises of God. The following verses are but a few from scripture that encourage me as I study “hope.” I pray you, too, will find hope in the scriptures and not in circumstances.
Psalm 43:5 “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
2 Thessalonians 2:16 “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope,”
Romans 15:4 “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.”
1 Peter 3:15 “…Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. …”
John 11:25-26 “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
1 Thessalonians 5:8 “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. “
Romans 5:3-4 “ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Psalm 146:5 “Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.”
Titus 2:13 “while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,”
*scriptures from John MacArthur study bible on “A living hope” (1 Peter 1:3).