Hope & Love

How receiving love is necessary for hope.

Hope is something I’ve always believed I had in abundance. It is not hard for me to hope for things, be excited about possibilities, and generally look forward to good things. But in the past couple years, I seem to have a hope deficit. At least, that’s what it feels like. I began to see patterns of false hope in my life. Hoping in the fulfillment of work. Hoping in people I meet. Hoping in my own dreams, goals, and desires. Hope became a fantasy, and a very hollow one at that. When the thing or person or situation I’d put all my hope in failed me, naturally, I’d feel let down and deflated and angry. So, I began to have less and less hope. Less hope for a bright future, for fulfilling work, for a purpose, for relationships in my life. Less hope in God. And that becomes a very scary place to be. 

Why do I have less hope in God? Intellectually, I know God works out all things for our good. Intellectually, I know God wants us to have hope in him. Intellectually, I know that while I can’t put all my hope in others, I still ought to hope in my relationships. It’s really easy to know things intellectually; likewise, it’s really hard to know things deep down in your soul. I guess that’s the difference between knowledge and faith. The Bible talks about knowledge in two ways: it can be a worldly idol, but also a spiritual gift. The Bible also talks about faith, and its importance in our salvation, relationship with God, and purpose. The Bible says, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” So, faith is a big part of hope. But, I think I'm learning, not the whole part. 

What am I missing? I have the knowledge part, I work on the faith part, so where is my hope? What “things” must my faith assure me is coming? What do I ought to hope for? 

Love. It came to me in a prayer, what I’ve struggled with alongside this hope dilemma. Look, I love my family, my friends, and God. I’m not sure if my problem is an exportation issue; but I’m realizing it’s the importation part. And, I suppose, it’s hard to give away what I fail to receive myself. Paul writes in 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.” I really want to abound in hope (and joy and peace). What does that look like to you? To be filled with joy, peace, and hope. To me, it looks a lot like love. When you’re loved and you love others well, it makes you joyful, it means you have peace in your life, and I suppose it means you get to abound in hope. 

When we hope in God, but struggle to actually trust him with our lives, we end up putting our hope in the wrong places, usually things that look and sound like God. We put our hope in our family, our church, our wisdom, our morality. All good things, but disordered without God being in the number one slot. So, why do we struggle to trust God? I suppose there may be a lot of reasons, but I think the main one is whether or not we believe God loves us. I don’t mean to downplay the importance of loving others, but I think our acceptance of God’s love (however cheesy that sounds) is lost in that conversation in Christian circles. Someone said something recently about “loving resilience” being the key to strength and courage. And I thought, “so I must love others and be resilient.” And it sounded kind of exhausting in the place I’m in. But I began to think that, perhaps, it’s more like this: we can’t be resilient without God’s love for us. And without God's love, we can’t do a lot of other things, like trust and hope. 

We know, intellectually, that God loves us. I mean, that’s Christianity 101. That’s the basics of Sunday School. “For God so loved the world, he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” John 3:16. Even the atheists know that one. But, again, do we really believe it deep in our bones, written on the hem of our souls? This year has taught me that I haven’t really grasped it the way I thought I did. 

As I put all my hopes in outside things, they all crumbled around me: my pride, my confidence, my work, my intellectual faith, my relationships, my dreams, my expectations. When all of those things fail around you, it makes you think one big, glaring thought: am I worth loving when everything seems to fail in and around me? We begin to question unconditional love. How could we love ourselves, or expect others to, when we’re big, fat failures? Maybe not everyone feels that way, but I sure do. It made me think I had a hope problem. It made me start to believe anything I ever put my hope in would fail me, and in a way, I was half right, but still very wrong. 

Of course anything less than God will fail me. But that doesn’t mean I should give up on hope completely. So, how do I hope well? How do I risk another disappointment? How do we hope and have faith, when we don’t have all the answers? Again, this is where love comes in. 

Why should we hope in God? Because he loves us. It’s simple. Why should we believe God will move when all our other expectations fail us? Because he loves us. Why should we also hope in others? Because he loves us the way others never will, and offers us comfort when we’re hurt and let down. Why should we hope in our futures? Because God loves us and promised us abundant life. Why should we get hopeful about the small pleasures in life? Because God created us to find joy and peace in this earth, and that the Kingdom of Heaven is already at hand in even the most mundane corners of our lives. 

My problem isn’t a hope problem, it’s a love problem. The hope will come. But “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things … So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:7, 13). If I can just learn to accept God’s unconditional love, which I already have, I can again put my hope in where he wants me to. Not because I’ll know what’s going to happen, and not because I’ll avoid all hurt and disappointments. But because God’s love will guide, strengthen, and comfort me.