Don’t Give Me Hope
Movement Live Notes
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy (God’s unmerited favor toward sinners in their hopeless condition) has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
I Peter 1:3
“Don't give me hope” literally reflects the reaction to false promises. Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.
Charles Spurgeon says,
“Hope itself is like a star- not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity. ” Hope is an optimistic attitude based on expectation or desire. The Biblical definition of "hope" is "confident expectation." Hope is a firm assurance regarding things that are unclear and unknown. Hope is a fundamental component of the life of the righteous. Without hope, life loses its meaning.
By definition, Faith is confidence or trust in something or someone not based on proof (believing in things unseen).
Biblically speaking, Faith says whatever you are hoping for is here now. Hope says there is a chance of it happening sometime in the future.
The Word tells us to Hope in the Lord, the Word tells us God has plans to give us Hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). But nowhere in the Bible does it say that Hope brought on a miracle from the Lord. It wasn’t by Hope that Jesus raised Lazarus from the death. It wasn’t with Hope that Jesus fed the multitude. All those acts were done in Faith.
Don’t get me wrong, Hope is not weak or useless. God wouldn’t tell us to have hope if it were so weak.
But we must take notice when we are using Hope in place of Faith.
There are thousands of Believers walking around with their hopes up but ultimately pouring in zero faith.
You have to make sure you aren’t just hopeful. HOPE IN THE LORD! Don’t stop having hope, don’t stop having an optimistic attitude. But don’t stop checking yourself. Make sure what you have is hope and faith combined.
The question is, how do I know if I don’t have faith?
Stop and ask yourself, do you truly believe? No matter the circumstances? Or are you just burning gas right now, living on a dream you hope will work out someday, but you don’t really think will happen?
If you can’t honestly see yourself accomplishing your dream, then you won’t accomplish that dream. You must have faith because God doesn’t work with faithless Christians.
