[Editor's Note: This is the first in a five-part series on being a man of hope.]
“If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Cor 15:9).
“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Heb 6:19).
For many people in the world, hope is just another word for desire: I sure hope I win the lottery. I hope my kid wins that award or gets into that school. However, as Catholic Christian men, our hope is more closely related to an unshakeable confidence based on the sure promises of God. Although Christian hope and faith are closely related, Christian hope has more to do with a “confident longing,” usually for a future event (for example, heaven, eternal life, being with/seeing Jesus), whereas faith is a “confident trust” in God for Who He is, and a trust that He will fulfill all His promises.
Christian hope enables us to persevere as men in trust and obedience, even when the odds seem weighted heavily against us. Have you ever been in a situation where you hoped for something but lacked the faith to be sure that God would accomplish what He promised? Weren't you utterly surprised when God came through? Or, if your prayer wasn't answered as you hoped it would, weren't you equally surprised to find yourself still peaceful, knowing that somehow God would work a good from a difficult situation, and you could trust in God’s plan for your life?
What do we place our hope in? Ultimately, our hope is in the Lord. And the Lord, Whose promises never fail, will surely give us all we can hope for in Him. The Greek word for hope, elpizo, means to anticipate, to expect, to place confidence in. These are not words of mere possibility. These are words of certainty. When we place our hope in the Lord, we can be certain that He will not fail us. God is trustworthy and faithful; He will bring about His promises. For our part, He asks that we believe and trust in Him.
Let us take a deeper look at the basis of our hope:
• Our hope is in the transforming power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, the Holy Spirit has been poured out. By this Spirit — alive and active in the Church — Jesus wants to minister to each of us as intimately as He did to His first followers. He wants to heal us physically and emotionally and mend broken relationships. God wants to make us all heirs of His kingdom. We can expect to see Him work in us and our families today. We need to allow Jesus to lift us out of our limited view of life and produce a hunger in us to experience even more of the kingdom of heaven right now.
• Our hope is in the Second Coming of Christ. God’s kingdom has been advancing from the very beginning of time. It will continue to advance until it is perfectly fulfilled at Jesus’s glorious return. We can receive a foretaste of this kingdom now, even as we wait for it to be fully established at the Second Coming. Jesus is among us now, and by the power of the Spirit we can know His presence and His touch.
• Our hope is in the eternal life that we have through faith in Jesus Christ. Our hope is that one day, we will be so filled with the life and love of our God, that we will actually become like Jesus (cf. 1 Jn 3:2). On that day, we will be presented to the Father holy, free of reproach and blame (cf. Col 1:22). Then our loving Father will welcome us into our heavenly home, and we will experience eternal joy in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. The attitude of our hearts, while we eagerly await the fulfillment of this promise, is to treasure it and obey God’s word.
Our Father has fulfilled His perfect plan through Jesus, our Savior and Lord. His promises are true and will be fulfilled. As we believe in these promises, we can be men of hope even when our sin or difficult situations discourage us. It is possible that we may not see immediate results. We will still see sin, and we will always want to see more change. No one among us is perfect. Still, we can place our hope in God, who is true to His word. By the power of His Spirit, Jesus has enabled us to become perfect, as He and the Father are perfect.
When we take God’s promises as the basis of our hope, we will receive the faith we need to carry us through any trial or difficulty. We will experience His peace and love, even if the “vision” seems slow in coming (cf. Hb 2:3). We will be confident and secure in our God. He will never disappoint us, never let us down. Instead, He will enable us to face our sins and weaknesses with hope, knowing that Jesus has won our full redemption. Otherwise, we will fall short of the fullness of life that God wants to give us.
God wants to give us hope and confidence; He wants to be close to us. As we learn to rely on Him and His great promises, our lives will change. And, through His unending grace, our hope is that we will become deeper lovers of God and one another, just as Jesus commanded. So let us place our hope in Jesus. He will never leave us or forsake us.
Holy Spirit, awaken my hope in Jesus, my cornerstone. I believe that He has won a place for me with the Father and is ever at work in me even today. Holy Spirit, build my hope in the power of Jesus’s promises. Help me to believe in the promises of God, and to proclaim them to others.
Questions for Reflection/Discussion on Page 2
(This article is part of NFCM's sponsorship of the Catholic Man channel and originally appeared as part of the Catholic Men’s E-zine, Being a Man of Hope, (March-April 2003 issue) which is available on the NFCM website.. You may e-mail them at info@nrccm.org. Many thanks to The Word Among Us for allowing us to include some material from various daily meditations.)
Questions for Reflection/Discussion by Catholic Men
1. Share some times in your life when you were “utterly surprised when God came through.” How did it impact your life?
2. What is the basis of your hope? Is it based on God’s promises or your current circumstances? If you are like most men, it is probably a mixture of both. What steps can you take to strengthen your hope so it impacts how you live?
3. What are some of the scriptural promises of God that form the basis for your hope? How often do you reflect on them? What steps can you take to make these scripture promises a greater reality in your life?
4. Do you sometimes get discouraged when you find yourself committing the same sins over and over again? If so, what is the root of your discouragement? How can accountability, support, and prayers from other men cause the influence of these sin areas to be lessened in your life? Experiment with this in some tangible ways and, if you are in a men’s group, share the results at your next meeting and future ones.
