Advent Week 1 - HOPE

This week we focus on HOPE. Our hope is in Christ and our future is secured in Him. But the word of God tells us that hope deferred makes the heart sick. (Proverbs 13:12)  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick and languishing, fretful and peevish; but hope quite dashed kills the heart, and the more high the expectation was raised the more cutting is the frustration of it. It is therefore our wisdom not to promise ourselves any great matters from the creature, not to feed ourselves with any vain hopes from this world, lest we lay up matter for our own vexation…” (Matthew Henry)  In Christ we have the security and hope of future eternal life but we also can have hope within our “today circumstances”. As Henry points out, our hope should not be in any of our actions or abilities (or those of others), lest the delay in realization makes our hearts sick, or in denial, crushed.  

I would like to go a step further and make a distinction between hoping in the actions (doing) of Christ versus hoping in the person (being) of Christ. As Christians, we read the Word with zeal regarding the promises of God – He will supply…He has great plans…He will deliver…and so on. God’s word is true so we can expect that He will be faithful to His word. And we should speak the word to ourselves and to others. However, we cannot make assumptions upon God regarding how and when He will do all that He promises. As He has said, neither His thoughts nor actions are the same as ours; they are beyond our understanding. Because of this, our hope is secure when it is in the person of Christ not in our presumed timing for the actions that we want Him to perform.

God is love and all that He allows…regardless of what it looks like in the natural… is for our good. We can enjoy a secure hope in Him and that hope brings life!

“the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love”  Psalm 147:11