By Marc Wagner

Hope fuels endurance and helps us to keep going. Without hope, people give up trying and abandon what they have started. Being a follower of Jesus is participating in God’s life right now, with a hope that one day this new life will be brought to its fullness in a renewed creation, the heavens and the earth…all of it! Let’s remember that any hope at all is grounded in the character of the God we acknowledge. Because he is true, the words he speaks can be trusted and depended on and can fill us with hope, for the day right now and for the days coming.

Consider the very calling of Paul. In the opening of his letter to Titus, Paul says that he was called “to further the faith of God’s chosen ones…in hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before time began.” So we have the hope (confident expectation) of eternal life based on the very character of God; that he speaks truthfully about these things. In Romans 5, it says that “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Continuing in Romans 5 and verse 3, Paul says that “we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

So, we should begin to practise rejoicing when we suffer. Why? Because as it says in the verse, suffering produces something. God uses suffering to make beautiful people. People that endure. People that have the character of Jesus. People who hope in the midst of all the trouble and suffering. Just looking at these verses, we can see that God wants us to hope in him, and to hope in his glory that he promised he would make us a part of, finally and completely. We need to allow these things to inform our discouragement throughout the day and keep trusting the truthful character of God, letting hope arise, as we wrestle through our difficulties. Let what was said through God’s chosen apostle encourage you and increase your hope today: “We do not despair, but even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary, light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison because we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”