The Power of Confident Hope

Scripture — Ephesians 1:27-20 (NRSV)

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

Devotion

The Bible has a lot to say about hope. Yet, when we read what the Bible says, it’s quite possible that we’ll misunderstand what we read.

Why? Because our use of the word “hope” differs from the biblical usage. For us, hope is wishing for something we want whether it is likely or not. For example, when the weather report predicts a 100% chance of rain for tomorrow, that means it’s likely I will not be able to take the hike I had planned. But I can still hope for dry weather even if it’s not reasonable to expect it. Hope as we understand it is easily separate from reality.

Biblical hope is different. It’s not simply a matter of emotion. Nor is it wishful thinking or a positive attitude. Biblical hope is absolutely not believing in something that we know—deep down in our hearts—will never happen. On the contrary, biblical hope includes deep conviction. It is confident expectation. It is an attitude toward the future that is based solidly on what we can know with confidence today.

What is the basis of Christian hope? First of all, the basis of hope is the very character of God, revealed to us in manifold ways, most of all in Jesus Christ. Thus, in Ephesians 1 Paul prays that we might know God better so that we might know hope better. In particular, the more we grasp the wonder of God’s calling, the more we will be people of confident hope.

Furthermore, our hope is rooted in the fact of the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we know that God has won the battle. Sin and death have been defeated. Our future is assured. Thus, as it says in 1 Peter 1:3, God “has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Our hope is alive because Jesus is alive.

This does not mean, of course, that everything we hope for in this life will happen. We can hope for healing that doesn’t come as we had wished. We can hope for a world in which God’s justice prevails over evil, even if injustice continues to thrive. The resurrection does not guarantee that everything we desire will be given to us. Yet it does guarantee the ultimate victory of God, the restoring of all things in Christ, the reality of a new heaven and a new earth. Even when life is hard, even when we wrestle with disappointment, our confident hope for the future sustains us and fills our hearts with “indescribable and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8).

This kind of hope enables us to persevere when life is hard. Hope based on God’s faithfulness and power forges resilience with us. Confident hope in God’s ultimate victory over evil, sin, and death enables us to seek God’s kingdom and justice even when it’s hard to see how our actions matter.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: All My Hope Is Firmly Grounded .