God's Formula for Hope

Hope can be very fragile and many are desperate to cling to it. If I were to tell you God had a time and tested formula for hope you would want to know it. What you may like is the process to get to that hope. God's formula for hope is not the path we would choose. There is a time tested path to hope and many have walked it before us. Are you willing to take this same journey?

Read it for yourself. "And not only that, we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character and proven character produces hope." [Rom 5:3-4]

Right off the bat we have difficulty with the phrase "we also rejoice in our afflictions." Who does that? How many people do you know going through adversity and afflictions who really rejoice in them? Don't we normally whine and complain because of the discomfort. Don't we normally seek to avoid affliction at all cost. You could substitute the words tribulation and pressure for the word affliction. It all means the same thing. Do we really rejoice when the pressure is on?

Most of my Christian life I have been trying to get out afflictions rather than to rejoice in them or be glad in them. I don't like the pain and the hardship. I don't like the pressure. When I look back objectively over the past twenty-nine years of my life I can see how God has used the pressure of affliction in my life. I have learned more about God during these experiences that all my triumphs. The afflictions produced endurance.

What is endurance? Endurance is patience, steadfastness and constancy all mixed together. Are we patient when the afflictions come. Do we remain steadfast in our love and devotion for God and our resolve to serve Him constantly when life gets hard? These are legitimate questions. It is easier to quit. The path of least resistance means throwing in the towel but this is not what God wants. Whether we finish the race of our lives in a full sprint or limping battered and bruised across the finish line; God wills us to finish! Quitting is a habit and so is finishing. We must endure through our afflictions. We must wait on God patiently. I know this is easier said than done.

Patience does not come easy for me. It never has and yet this seems to be the one lesson God has been teaching me most of my journey with Him. Some afflictions come and go quickly like a twenty-four hour virus. Others linger longer like cancer, financial trials, sorrows and grief. Like the marathon runner training for the race, the affliction or pressure of the work outs actually produce stamina and endurance.

Wise are the ones who come to realize that affliction is actually a useful tool in the hands of God for His followers. Through adverse circumstances God has strengthened us and built a steadfast resolve to not buckle under the pressure. Our progress may seem slow. Like C.H. Spurgeon once said, "By perseverance even the snail entered the ark." Day in and day out we keep running or walking. We have learned from past afflictions with God's help we can endure. Day after day and year after year we endure. We make slow progress but at least we are progressing. We remain steadfast and we patiently wait on God. In these times God is at work. It may not seem like it. From our vantage point it may seem like God is absent. He is working endurance in us.

All this endurance is not wasted for it produces proven character. This means God produces experience in us. When I look back at all God has taught me and produced in me through affliction and endurance, I have come to know Him better through these first hand experiences with Him. I saw how God worked in my life when my mother suffered a massive heart attack resulting in severe brain damage back in 1998. For the last three months of her life she lived in and out of hospitals and rehab centers. I actually had to spoon feed her. Most of the time she was incoherent. God gave me the endurance to preach her funeral when she died.

I also saw the power of God through my wife when she stood up and spoke at her father's funeral in 2011. She testified of Jesus Christ and His power to save. She talked about a man most in attendance at that funeral had never known. Her dad had strayed from the Lord in the last years of his life. Brenda's step sister talked about dad sneaking her alcohol and others shared stories of partying with him. Brenda talked about her dad singing "Jesus Loves Me" and driving a church bus each Sunday to pick children up for church. She talked about going out with her dad on Saturdays house to house to invite children to come to church. She talked about a man who prayed and loved to serve God. Few in attendance would have recognized that man. God strengthened my wife to testify for Him that day because she is a shy behind the scenes kind of person. Getting up to speak publicly is definitely out of her comfort zone. I have seen God strengthen my wife in the days since.

In those two experiences with God Brenda and I better know how to minister to those grieving the death of a loved one. We know how God comforts, strengthens and produces hope as well as joy even against the back drop of death and grief.

Over and over again God allows us to experience Him trying and giving our character worth as we press on through the tough times. It is in these moments God reveals Himself. We come to really know Him in these experiences.

Through all of this the end result is hope. It is the confident expectation that God will come through. It is the joyful expectation that better days are coming. It is the joyful and confident expectation that no matter how tough it gets in this life, for the follower of Jesus it will be better in eternity. With God there is always hope. This hope is forged on the anvil of affliction and endurance. Our worth is being forged with blow after blow from the hammer of affliction. Our character is tried when we keep trusting God and we pressing on when we feel like giving up.

God's formula for hope is proven. He used it in the lives of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Elijah and Paul. Others have learned hope this way as well such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow. Missionaries such as William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor and John Paton learned this same lesson while walking down this same path. God's formula for hope will lead all of us through the classrooms of afflictions and endurance. When we take this into consideration we can learn hope. Not easy lessons to learn but the end result is well worth it.