And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out
into our hearts through the Holy Spirit~ Romans 5:5
My husband and I are horrible dog
trainers. Our kids have turned out pretty well, but our dog is a total mess.
Bruno has more personality than any dog I’ve ever encountered, but he is quite
possibly the worst behaved dog in the history of dogs. He flat refuses do
tricks (unless you count begging from the table as a trick) he barks at
everything that moves, believes that we all belong at home all the time and literally
throws a tantrum (complete with crying and stomping his paws) when anyone in
the family leaves the house for any reason.
He is naturally distrustful and convinced that
folks who ring the doorbell are dangerous invaders. When someone enters our
home he morphs into a little troll that demands payment in the form of dog
treats before they are allowed to cross our threshold. But once someone is here
he becomes strangely attached to them and frantic when they leave. He has been
known to cry and nip at people’s shoes as they make an exit. To be honest, he’s
the kind of dog I used to judge people for keeping.
It should come as no surprise that our
attempts at house-training Bruno were less than effective. After about six
months of frustration and failure I called my brother Stephen whose dog Truman
was a poster child for exceptional doggie behavior and pleaded for his help. He listened to our issues and asked if we had
tried rewarding Bruno for completion of “the deed.”
I admitted that it had never occurred to
me to do so and Stephen responded with, “You have to give the guy some hope
that there’s something in this for him.” Stephen’s suggestion worked like a
charm and I am pleased to report that hope of reward was indeed a game-changer
for Bruno; he achieved house-trained status in no time. As a side note, I will
confess to you what I have never shared with my dog-whisperer brother: ten
years later we still give Bruno a treat every time he does “the deed” because
we can’t figure out how to stop rewarding him.
Hope is a game-changer—and not just for terrible
little dogs. Hope has fueled reform and revolution for millennia on individual,
community and global levels. There is a reason that repressive leaders do
everything they can to squash hope in their people. They know that hope fuels
courage and is a powerful motivator.
Christian hope is a little different from the
hope that Bruno had. We are not solely motivated by the hope of reward,
although there is promise of reward for those who follow Christ (Matthew 24:46,
Mark 9:41, Luke 6:35, Revelation 22:12. For the believer hope should be an incentive; the hope we have
that Christ is real, and this world is not all there is should motivate us
towards change that pleases God: i.e. better conduct and greater personal and
societal transformation. I believe that it is fair to say that if you are a
Christian and you are not motivated towards better conduct there is something
vitally and profoundly wrong with your faith and you should spend some time
evaluating it (2nd Corinthians 13:15).
The hope that we have in Christ should be
causing us to evolve as people in at least five powerful ways…
Hope should give us a greater sense of
purpose in this world~
Christians believe that if you are drawing
breath then your life has meaning, value, and purpose. Knowing Christ makes everything more
meaningful: parenting becomes about more than having nice, socially skilled
children who can support themselves. It becomes about raising human beings who
bring glory to God on an intellectual, societal, and behavioral level.
Christian hope makes even mundane work significant because it becomes about much
more than just getting a paycheck. Hope transforms work into a mission of
making the message of Christ attractive to our co-workers and supervisors. I
believe the prayers of those who have been unable to do anything but pray have
saved souls and altered destinies.
Christian hope helps us to see and
understand that God has a purpose for all life. We have friends who have a child
with severe Downs’ Syndrome. Some would say that this child’s life is not worth
living but I have observed that when our families are together we are all
better people, especially the kids. Because of this child’s disabilities we are
all forced to think and act outside of our own self-interests and that has a
transforming and redemptive impact on all of us.
Hope should motivate us to make the world
a better place~
For two millennia believers have done more
than just sit around and contemplate heaven; they have labored to make this
world a better place. Hospitals, orphanages, food banks, leper colonies, the
education of girls, the liberation of slaves and even social work were
originally Christian concepts. Prior to the first coming of Christ the less
fortunate were considered cursed by their gods and left to die. It is essential
that Christians continue the tradition of healthy social transformation without
losing sight of the Christian message that heaven on earth is pointless if
people die and go to a Christ-less eternity.
Hope should give us a greater desire for
insight into the human condition~
It is natural to dislike people who scorn
our message and hate us for what we believe. Sadly, lots of natural things are
neither good nor right. The Bible reminds us that we too once lived in darkness
and that it is only by the grace of God, not our own goodness, that we have a
different life now. With the assistance of the Holy Spirit Christians have the
capacity to understand why people do the stuff they do and the empathy to love
them where they are. It is vital that we never stop seeking to understand and
love those who oppose our message (Romans 12:20-21) as we lead them with our
words and actions towards the redemption found in Christ.
Hope should make us open to accepting
correction~
The Bible teaches that when we are born
again, we begin a process of shedding old sinful behaviors such as conceit,
hatred, dishonesty, combative behavior, and sexual transgressions. We then embrace new ones like purity,
graciousness, generosity, self-control, and good deeds. The fancy theological
term for this process is sanctification. Sanctification is a continual process
for the believer. This makes all of us works-in-progress; understanding that
God is not finished with us should make us open to evaluating our words,
actions, and judgments. One of the greatest blessings that we have in Christ is
the hope that God will not leave us alone in our depravity; but in order for
God to work on us we have to be open to His correction.
Hope should enable us to endure hardship~
Jesus’ stand on hardship in this world was
pretty clear when he promised His followers in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble”. The greatest hope that we have in Christ
is the hope that this evil, unjust, sin-saturated world is not all there is
(Isaiah 65:17-25). Holding on to this hope in times of trouble gives us the
strength to go on and the empowerment we need to hold our hope out to a lost
and dying world.
I pray that the eyes of your
heart may be enlightened in
order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power
for us who believe. ~ Ephesians 1:18-19
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