Hope

By Phil Pringle

The power of hope cannot be underestimated. Hope provides light in the darkness as well as maximizing the potential in every one if us. Like air, the positive expectation of good things is essential to the human race.

Pick up your copy today of this powerful new book!

• Language: English
• Publisher: PaX Ministries Pty Ltd
• Release date: Apr 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9789814645959

Book preview

A merciless sun hangs lazily in mid-sky. Its heat burns all the way to her bones. Even deeper, shame burns, then anger, pursued hotly by bitterness. A fire tears through her memory. Parched lips, swollen tongue, panting, she lays her young, delirious son Ishmael in the shade of a small bush. Her own harsh childhood surfaces from long forgotten memories: left for dead on the streets of Ramses, rescued by a profiteer, then sold like meat at the markets into slavery...

Chosen by Sarah, purchased by Abraham, Hagar’s latent beauty rose and shone. Such happy days those were in that wilderness caravan, safe in those luxurious tents of Abraham, the fabulously wealthy desert Chieftain. The piercing ache of Sarah to bear a son, joined with her longing to satisfy her husband Abraham’s own deep yearning for a child, had spawned an idea that seemed so right at the time. Could it even have been orchestrated by Yaweh Himself? That she, Hagar, a slave handmaiden could be chosen to become the surrogate mother to bear the aging couple their promised child. And so it happened. Sarah suggested the plan, Abraham agreed, and Hagar conceived.

How the heart changes, though. As soon as it became obvious she was successful in conceiving a child, Hagar the slave grew haughty, and Sarah her mistress, jealous. Sarah beat the woman and threw her out. However, the gracious chieftain prevailed and recovered the pregnant Hagar back to his tents. After difficult days of pregnancy, eventually a son, Ishmael, breathed his first and peace returned to the tents of the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah.

Time passed and Ishmael grew. But then, of all the most amazing things that could happen, the 90 year old Sarah herself conceived! High jubilation broke out all through the household. Abraham’s long-held ache for a son with Sarah was finally answered.

Sarah now felt no obligation for normal courtesies to her Egyptian maid. Hagar’s dream world turned nightmarish. Every day she faced the harshest of treatments from her avenging mistress. The conflict climaxed, triggered by young Isaac’s initiation rites. Hagar and her offspring mocked Isaac and his Hebrew ritual, incensing Sarah. She had them hurled from the tent and drove the bondwoman and her son from their wilderness home, rejecting them forever, refusing to share any inheritance with the foreigners.

Abraham withdrew, offering no intercession. He concurred with his wife and, supplying Hagar and Ishmael with meager provisions, banished the two to the harsh desert. All too soon the food and water ran out, along with her hope of any kind of future.

But Yaweh, the God of hope, saw Hagar’s despair and was moved with pity for the single mother so alone and overcome with emotions, dreading the death that awaited her.

When this God, our God, the God of Hope, becomes involved with us, what appears to be the end of the road can in fact become the sunrise of an entirely new day. He spoke to Hagar, asking why she was so distressed, then showed her a well of water directly in front of her. It had been there all the time. Despair had blinded Hagar to her salvation, which was within her very reach.

God doesn’t play with us, teasing us with false hopes and futile dreams. Divine destiny has been planted in the heart of every soul. We uncover this destiny when we connect with God, our destiny giver, who raised His son Jesus from the dead so we would have the hope to achieve our destiny. If ever we can draw hope from anyone, it is Christ Himself, who lived through the most impossibly hopeless situation ever: death—for three days. ...But God.

Thousands of years later, this same blindness, the blindness of despair, darkened the world of two disciples as they made their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus after the death of Jesus...

But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him.

Luke 24:16

Even these two followers of Christ failed to believe their Messiah had died and risen again as He had told them, in spite of all they had personally witnessed. They saw Him tried and condemned. They saw His twelve disciples forsake Him. They saw Him scourged, mocked and crucified, and then die a cruel death on a cross at Golgotha. It was all final. What could change what they had seen firsthand? Their confusion deepened when they heard from some women who had searched the tomb that His body couldn’t be found...

The two frowning men walk haplessly toward Emmaus, the town of hot baths. A stranger draws alongside and starts walking with them. Even though it is Jesus Himself who has drew near, they still cannot recognize Him. As they walk, He takes them on another journey, through the Old Testament, explaining everything about Himself from the prophecies of the ancients. Still they can’t see Him.

Arriving home, they invite their puzzling guest to supper. He breaks bread—and it abruptly dawns on them that this is in fact Jesus Himself! Their eyes were opened, and in that same second, He disappears. Though invisible now, they see Him clearer than ever. See Luke 24:13-34

When our heart believes, our eyes will open. To paraphrase Romans 1:20, we see Him who is invisible. It is doubt that clouds our mind so that even if He is visible, we cannot see Him. Faith is what opens our eyes. This in turn injects hope—the power of vision—deep into our soul.

God is known as many things. He is known as the God of Love, the God of miracles, the God of the Church, the God of Abraham, the God of Heaven and Earth. But in Romans 15:13, Paul reveals Him as the God of Hope. Sensational for a despairing generation! This means if God is with us, hope is with us. No matter what the situation is, if He is involved, we have hope! All of it will work together for good. Hope is a person and His name is Jesus. If we are filled with God, we will be filled with hope, because He is Hope itself. With God there is always hope. There is always a way through with God.

John says, This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).

Light gives life. No light, no life.

Light gives color. Light brightens people’s days.

Light is warm.

God is all these: life, light, color, brightness, warmth.

In the deepest pit of his darkest days, David understood God as hope, when he wrote:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

Whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life;

Of whom shall I be afraid?

Psalm 27:1

Light shows us where we are going. It shows the path ahead. God shows you a positive future. God has planned great things for everyone on Earth. When we decide to walk with Him, we discover those plans.

I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

Jeremiah 29:11

When we’re in the middle of trouble, we know that the God of Hope is with us to bring us through. He is not the God of despair, nor the God of discouragement. He is the God of Hope. He is good. His intentions for us are good. This fact, that God is good is the surest foundation for all our hope.

How good is God? Two immense realities reveal how good God is. First, Jesus Himself is the exact expression of God to the world:

...who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person…

Hebrews 1:3

All that God is was revealed in Jesus, His son. He was a friend to twelve very different men, teaching them how to enter their destiny. He was a friend to anyone who came to Him, whether rich, poor, young, old, man or woman. He healed ALL who were sick, who came to Him for healing. He set people free from demon bondage. He multiplied food for the hungry and brought an oversupply of wine miraculously to a wedding to save the host from embarrassment. He chided self righteous religionists and people who refused to believe. But for the most part, His entire life was lived in compassion for others, even raising people’s dead back to life. He taught people how to live. Most of all, He made Himself a sacrifice so others could live. This is what God is like. The Bible is saying that if you want to see God, look at Jesus. I suspect this is one main reason why God ensured that, by the four gospels, there would be four different accounts of His life, so that we would view Him from the East, North, South and West.

Second, creation reveals the nature of God:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead...

Romans 1:20

We are surrounded at every level and in every way by colors, sounds, shapes and movements that all impact upon a collection of our senses, giving us a life ranging from adrenaline pumping excitement to peaceful and joyful pleasure. The fuel for our body—food—could have simply been one tasteless substance that we take every day to keep our bodies working. But God created a million different kinds of food, including fruits, nuts, meats, vegetables, herbs, leaves, grains and seasonings, providing an endless variety of taste sensations—and a tongue that can experience all of those tastes. The refueling of our bodies becomes a festive, social moment around which people gather every day to eat and experience the spiritual and connecting power of eating together.

The same applies to all of our other senses. We hear a thousand sounds each day, from wind rushing and oceans roaring, to birds singing, people talking, music playing and storms thundering. We feel the heat of the sun, instantly relaxing our bodies, the cool of the night, the cold of snow, the brush of a