Hope is such an essential spiritual quality that must be established in our hearts and minds for us to be mature saints of God. Hope is not wishful thinking or a sporadic response like “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow”, but rather a confident expectation that the Lord is true to His word. Hope has to do with a future expectation.
Romans 8:24 “For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?”
The natural man has a certain kind of hope, like he hopes for a better job or that everything will go as planned, but it is only residing in this life. The hope of the spiritual man transcends this present world is looking to the heavenly country. This is the type of hope the Holy Spirit wants to establish in our hearts. This hope requires us to forsake this present world through making ourselves pilgrims and strangers in the world. That is a hard pill to swallow for many believers. It is going to require a daily fight against the flesh, the world, and the devil to keep our minds from focusing on the futile things of the world. Over time a clear and established vision will be built in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that yearns for the coming of the Lord and the heavenly city, New Jerusalem, to manifest itself.
Hebrews 11:13 – 16 “These all died in faith not having received the promises but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have opportunity to return. But now they desire a better that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
We see that hope and faith are connected together. We must first have faith before we can have hope.
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.”
Faith is the foundation for our hope, the word “substance” in the Greek means firm foundation, confidence, and assurance. It is the same word used in Hebrews 1:3 that speaks of the nature of the Son. I highlighted a few important points from verse 13 that I want to discuss. Firstly, the promises of God have to do with something in the distant future, it is not something we can see with the natural man. Check out this verse.
2 Corinthians 4:16 – 18 “Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
The man of the flesh is focused on the temporal and sensual things of the world, but the man of the Spirit is set on the eternal and spiritual things of God. It takes true perseverance and diligence to get our eyes off of the things of the world. Secondly, we must be assured of the promises of God, which is where faith begins at, which lead us to embracing them through obedience. Truth needs to be personalized for it to really be truth to us. You could also say that the truth needs to become spirit for it really to have an impact in our lives. We must fully with a whole-heart embrace the word of God. True faith can’t afford to have a divided heart. Thirdly, we must confess that we are strangers and pilgrims on earth.