Here's Hope! Are the desires of your heart anchored in the One who can make them a reality? By Randy Baltzell

Have you ever felt your wardrobe was in need of a little improvement? Maybe you thought even a few new items would make a great deal of difference. Then your big break came. A postcard arrived in the mail announcing that the local department store would be having a 2-for-1 sale the next weekend! Your wardrobe outlook was suddenly getting better. Every day that week as you dressed for school or work, you considered how much better it was going to be after that shopping trip. Saturday finally came and you hit the store, only to find that the Friday crowd had cleaned out nearly everything in your size! You managed to find one shirt, but so much for the 2-for-1 price break. So much for the facelift to your wardrobe. So much for your hopes.

Hope is important. The hope of a better day, or the hope of good things in the future pushes us along and keeps our spirits high. In every area of our lives, hope is necessary.

Danger comes, though, when we put too much hope in something that cannot meet our expectations. We anticipate it will do for us what it cannot do, that it will satisfy in a way that it cannot possibly satisfy. In these situations, hope can lead to great discouragement.

The Lord is interested in us having hope, and He went to great lengths to make sure that the hope we have is going to amount to something. The hope of the Gospel is based on things that will not pass away. In Hebrews 6:18, we read of “the hope set before us.” God established forever the promises of the Word of God in Heaven. He did that for those of us who have “fled for refuge” from the things of the world to God and had our sins forgiven, becoming the heirs of promise. Why? So that we can have a strong consolation—a secure hope. Verse 19 says that the hope God established for us is, “an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast.”

The power of hope is in Jesus Christ. When Jesus walked this earth, He met a man whose hopes had been dashed many times. This man, who was lame, sat at the Pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years (see John 5:2-15). Imagine knowing if you could just be first into the pool you would be healed, and then having somebody always getting there faster. What an emotional wreck you would be after all that time! But one day Jesus came by and asked, “Will you be made whole?” What a question! The lame man replied that he had tried many times but he could not do it. The Lord's response was, “Rise up and walk.” The man was healed! All that time sitting there, all of those dashed hopes, and then, suddenly, his hopes were realized. Why?

For thirty-eight years, his hope of healing had been based on getting into the water. That hope was only as good as what he could do or the chance that somebody nearby might help him. When Jesus came, his hope changed. It became what the Lord was going to do for him, and that hope became a reality. What he had desired for all those long years was his at last!

You have hopes too. Maybe you are looking forward to finding Mr. or Mrs. Right, that wonderful job, or an incredible car. While those are legitimate desires, God wants us to realize that hopes which bring lasting fulfillment are the ones that are anchored in Him. He has promised to provide all of our needs, and we can have confidence in Him and in His promises. We find that once we let go of everything, make our consecrations, and determine in our hearts to serve God, the hope of the Gospel is an anchor that holds us steady.

What is your hope in? It should not rest upon what you can do or what you can obtain, but on what God can and will do for you and through you. He can and will make those hopes reality as you trust in Him!

Randy Baltzell is pastor of the Apostolic Faith Church in Roseburg, Oregon.