Hope is a confident expectation of good happening. But in order to have hope you must first have a vision. You must be able to see something different than where you are or what you are facing.
Proverbs 29:18 tells us that “Where there is no vision the people perish.” The reason being is that without vision you have no hope, without hope you have no joy, without joy you have no strength and how can you live without strength, without strength you have no life.
David said in Psalms 42:5 “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.” David asked himself the question “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” And he answers himself by telling himself to hope in God for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. Right here there was a shift in David’s vision. He began to see something different than where he was. He began to envision the favor of God and that vision of favor caused him to hope. It caused him to have a confident expectation of good happening.
The Amplified version of Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision [no redemptive revelation of God], the people perish.” In other words, where there is no revelation or vision of what Jesus did for us at Calvary we perish because without the cross we have no life.
Paul prayed for the church in Ephesians 1:15-18, “Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” We cannot know the hope or the confident expectation of good to which He has called us without us first seeing Him in all His beauty, loveliness, majesty and power.
The enemy doesn’t want you to have hope. He wants you to give up having a confident expectation of good happening in your life. So he comes to distract you by causing you to look at the things happening in your surroundings and take our eyes off of Jesus the hope of glory. He knows that the moment you take your eyes off of Jesus you will lose hope and throw in the towel. You will deem your situation as hopeless. And there is no place to go but down when you give up. And by down I mean physically, mentally and emotionally. You will have no joy and you need joy to have strength and you need strength to have life. Nehemiah 8: 10 says, “…for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” If the joy of the Lord is our strength we need to know what the joy of the Lord is. The scripture doesn’t say our joy in the Lord (while that may be true) it says “the joy of the Lord.” His joy is our strength. So what is His joy? Christ’s joy was in fulfilling the will of the Father and the Father’s will is that we have life. So the joy of the Lord is providing for us, protecting us, keeping us, healing us and giving us everything we need to live and enjoy this life. Now as we mediate upon this that it’s His joy to give to us, regardless of how dark or hopeless our situation or circumstance may be we will have hope. And if we have hope, even in the midst of all the stuff that may be going on around us we will have joy and if we have joy we have strength to continue living and enjoying life.
Look at Abraham. Scripture says he hoped against hope. Rom. 4:18, “Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be.” Abraham hoped when there was no natural or human means for him to hope. His situation was completely hopeless as it related to him having an heir. He was old and his wife Sarah was old and barren. So how could he have hope? Abraham had to move his eyes off of the things he saw in the natural and he had to get a new vision. Remember, without vision you can have no hope and without seeing Jesus you will have no vision. Psalms 119:130 says “The entrance of Thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” The word of God causes us to see. Jesus is the Word our living hope. Abraham was able to have a confident expectation of good happening to him because he had a word from God and that word gave him a vision. He was able to see in his mind what God was telling him. As Abraham mediated on the words of God it gave him hope and that hope became an anchor for his soul or for his mind and emotions.
Where are you today? Are you feeling hopeless, down and depressed? You don’t have to stay there you can have a change of mind and heart if you take a hold of the word of God. Simply ask the Holy Spirit to give you a revelation of Jesus and it will give you hope. It will take you from being hopeless to being full of hope.
“Now we have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul it cannot slip and it cannot break down under whoever steps out upon it, a hope) that reaches farther and enters into the very certainty of the Presence) within the veil. Where Jesus has entered in for us in advance a forerunner having become a High Priest forever after the order with the rank of Melchizedek.” Hebrews 6:19-20
