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“Thus says the Lord: “Refrain your voice from weeping, And your eyes from tears; For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, And they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope in your future, says the Lord, hat your children shall come back to their own border” Jeremiah 31:16-17 (NKJV).
Faith is a complete trust or confidence in something. Faith involves intellectual assent to a set of facts and trust in those facts. For example, we have faith in Jesus Christ. This means we completely trust Jesus for our eternal destiny. We give intellectual assent to the facts of His substitutionary death and bodily resurrection, and we then trust in His death and resurrection for our salvation. Hope is a peaceful assurance that something that hasn’t happened yet will indeed happen. Hope must involve something that is as yet unseen: “Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?” Jesus’ return is our “blessed hope”, we can’t see Him yet, but we know He’s coming, and we anticipate that event with joy. Jesus said He is coming again. By faith, we trust Jesus’ words, and that leads to hope that we will one day be with Him forever. Jesus was resurrected from the dead, “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep”. That is the basis for our faith. Then we have Jesus’ promise: “Because I live, you also will live”. That is the basis of our hope. The relationship between faith and hope can be illustrated in the joy a child feels when his father tells him they are going to an amusement park tomorrow. Faith is grounded in the reality of the past; hope is looking to the reality of the future. Without faith, there is no hope, and without hope there is no true faith. Christians are people of faith and hope. We have the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time. “Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began” Titus 1:1-2 (NKJV).
Hope is a word not often used in conversation and people find it hard to describe, but at its simplest hope is the belief that positive things can happen in your life despite what has occurred in the past. How, then, do you hope when life gets tough? There are eight key elements that make establishing and holding onto hope easier. Biblical hope is built on faith. Hope is the earnest anticipation that comes with believing something good. Hope is a confident expectation that naturally stems from faith. We all exist somewhere on the spectrum of pessimist to optimist, and very few of us are full-on, forever, only glass-half-full people. It’s completely normal to have trouble being optimistic, even in the best of circumstances. There are Eight Key Elements of Hope: the following elements of hope can help you to cope when life is challenging, and you are feeling at your most defenseless or vulnerable.
1. The Mindset you Choose in Response to a Situation.
2. Demonstrate Hope in the Midst of Adversities and Struggles
3. Find a Sense of Purpose in your Life.
4. Accept the Changes that have Materialized during Trying Times.
5. Value the Things You have Been Blessed With.
6. Set New Goals for the Future and Sustain Enthusiasm.
7. Learn How to Cope when Life is Challenging.
8. Stay Connected to the Holy Spirit.
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength” Isaiah 40:28-29 (NKJV).
How you react to your life is a choice; the beginning of hope or despair begins the instant you choose what you tell yourself about your situation, the perspective you take. Developing goals is fundamental to the development and maintenance of hope because it keeps you moving, and it keeps you actively engaged in your life and with others. At the same time, that belief within the child kindles an irrepressible joy: that is hope. The child’s natural trust in his father’s promise is the faith; the child’s squeals of delight and jumping in place are the expressions of the hope. Faith and hope are complementary. Hope is a balancing act. It is incredibly dangerous to look back to the past too much and get stuck on what was. It is also detrimental to look too far into the future and place all your hopes and happiness on a future time. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NKJV).
Being hopeful makes you an optimist, which anticipates positive outcomes, whether serendipitously or through perseverance and effort, and who is confident of attaining desired goals. Hope helps build resilience, which “is the ability to either recover quickly from events that are challenging or traumatic or a crisis or to be relatively unaffected. How you respond to what happens in your life determines your experience of life, your outlook and ultimately your happiness and health. Hope has the power to keep you afloat when life is at its hardest and to move your life in a positive direction. Having hope is about believing that where there is a will there is a way. There are 10 tips for Remain Hopeful:
1. Be Grateful for Little Things in Life.
2. Challenge Negative Thoughts with Balanced Thoughts and Positive Confidence.
3. Develop an action plan to Live on Purpose.
4. Live Each Day with Purpose.
5. Spend Daily in the Word of God.
6. Maintain Perseverance.
7. Mediate to keep your body, mind and soul anchored in Christ.
8. Spend Time with People who Inspire and Support you.
9. Be Grateful for the Little Things in Life.
10. Set some Short-term and Long-term Goals.
Hope is about choosing to never give up looking for new opportunities and, above all else, it is about investing in the belief that your future will be bright and positive. Hope is a way of coping with adversity and being able to get some knowledge from that adversity, which might help you improve your coping mechanisms for the future. “We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NKJV).
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