What Hope Really Is

Today’s message was written by Guest Pastor, Rev. Andy Odom. 

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43:19)

Today I want to talk to you about what hope means. This ministry is called Dial Hope, but what does hope mean really? To be honest, I think we often think of hoping for something in the same way that we think about wishing for something. After all, we wish for things all the time. “I sure wish people would stop being so petty,” we say. “I sure wish drivers would stop cutting me off.” Many of us have a long list of things we wish the world would be or how other people would treat one another. And it is all right to have those wishes, but that is not the same thing as hope. Hope has more to do with what God wants rather than what we want.

Eugene Peterson writes about that, saying, “wishing grows out of our egos; hope grows out of our faith. Hope is oriented toward what God is doing to me; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing. Wishing has to do with what I want in things or people or God; hope has to do with what God wants in me and the world and people beyond me.

If you’re going to incorporate more hope in your life, then you need to practice wishing less. If you want to live in anticipation of what God is doing in the world and to be surprised by what God is doing in the world, then you have to actively suppress the things you are wishing for all the time. The more you focus on your own wishes, the less open you will be to what God might be actually doing. It is fun to fantasize about what we want, but if that is all we do, it leaves little room in us for being open to what God wants.

Prayer: Dear God, help us to wish a little less so that we might hope a little more. Give us eyes and ears to see and hear what you are doing in the world and what you want from us. Help us to do more than just dial hope. Help us to live it, in Christ we pray. Amen.