The season of Advent includes the prayerful observance of the some of the spiritual principles that God wants His people to experience. For thousands of years, the Church has spent time in self-examination and prayerful mediation about joy, peace, love, and hope. As you prepare your heart to truly embrace the power of the Advent season, allow yourself to focus on these principles. What is hope? More importantly, what kind of power could be released in your own life if you allowed hope to reign supreme?
Hope is arguably one of hte most powerful factors in the history of the world. When a man or woman has hope, they have something to hold onto in the face of adversity. However, it’s easy to get so caught up in all the negativity that fills our newsfeeds, social media outlets, and other platforms, that we lose sight of the hope that we have access to through our relationship with Christ. Because of the faith that we have in Christ, we understand that no situation is hopeless.
For thousands of years, Christians have used Advent as a time of preparation for Christmas and as a means to draw closer to God. It’s also customary to spend a few days of the Advent season focusing on different spiritual principles. According to Advent tradition, hope is one of the ideas that people should focus on during the Advent season.
What is hope? More importantly, how can having God’s version of hope dwelling inside you change you and the world around you? Since we understand that the first Christmas was the realization of thousands of years of hope, let’s take a better look at what the power of hope can mean for you.
Have You Ever Been Hopeless?
Romans 15:13 (TPT)
Now may God, the inspiration and fountain of hope, fill you to overflowing with containable joy and perfect peace as you trust in him. And may the power of the holy Spirit continually surround your life with his super-abundance until you radiate with hope.
Have you ever reached a point of hopelessness? Perhaps your hopelessness came from a setback that you weren’t expecting or a roadblock that it seems like you simply can’t get past. Maybe you’ve held onto the same hurt for so long, that you don’t believe that you’ll ever be whole again, and you’ve become hopeless.
Tragically, many of us default to hopelessness when we’re calibrating our emotions. Afterall, if you’ve been hurt, let down, and betrayed several times, being hopeless helps you protect yourself from the pain of it happening again. However, being hopeless, which is often a means of self-protection leaves us in a position to live our lives solely to avoid disappointment. That’s not God’s plan for His people.
The first Christmas came at a perfect time. God’s people had become hopeless. History teaches us that between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament, God had not spoken to His people for 400 years. They had been carried away into captivity due to their own disobedience, and hopelessness had become the default emotion. Was the Messiah going to come this year? Probably not. Afterall, He hadn’t come in any of the previous 400 years.
However, something happened on the night that Mary and Joseph made their way into a makeshift barn hewn into the side of a mountain. Hope was born. The God who had been silent for the last four centuries was suddenly not only speaking, He was present. The God who had withdrawn Himself and His presence didn’t make His return through a word given to a prophet. Instead, He made His return through Emmanuel, God with us.
If you feel like you have been living in hopelessness and that God is distant, allow this Advent season to serve as the reminder that hope has come. Christ’s arrival on the first Christmas night ensured that we would never have to face the hopelessness of being forever separated from God. Today, let the God who is the inspiration of hope fill you.
The Greatest Power of Hope
Galatians 4:4-7 (TPT)
But when that era came to an end and the time of fulfillment had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the written law. Yet all of this was so that he would redeem and set free all those held hostage to the written law so that we would receive our freedom and a full legal adoption as his children. And so that we would know for sure that we are his true children, God released the Spirit of Sonship into our hearts-moving us to cry out intimately, “My Father! You’re our true Father” Now we’re no longer living like slaves under the law, but we enjoy being God’s very own sons and daughters! And because we’re his, we can access everything our Father has-for we are heirs of God through Jesus, the Messiah.
It’s important to understand that hoping and wishing are not the same thing, even though we have started to use the terms interchangeably. Instead of allowing ourselves to truly hope for something, we wish for something and then become disappointed when our wish doesn’t come to fruition. Tragically, when we lose sight of what hope really means, we also lose the ability to truly hope. Hope without meaning is hope without power.
Hope isn’t simply something that you want to see happen. Instead, hope is a belief that things are going to get better. Wishing is a form of wanting. Hoping is a form of believing. We believe that the Word of God is true, that His promises are for us, and that He has our best interests at heart. Because of that, we have a true hope that things are going to get better. Don’t we all need to see some things get better in our lives?
If you spend any amount of time watching the news, you understand the need for hope. Sickness, war, natural disasters, and all sort of other negativity leave us needing hope. Since our hope is rooted in what we believe, not what we wish for, we know that we have been called the children of God, and that we are his heirs. If we belong to Him, we know that we have something to believe in, and that gives us something to be hopeful about in the face of everything going wrong in the world around us.
The True Source of Hope
Colossians 1:26-27 (TPT)
There is a divine mystery-a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now it’s being revealed, unfolded, and manifested for every holy believer to experience. Living within you is the Christ who floods you with every expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it!
The presence of hope in our lives works in direct contradiction to the things going on around us. If you could take a step back and see yourself from the outside, you would see a person who is a resident of a world in chaos. However, on the inside, there is a living Christ within you who floods you with every expectation (hope) of glory.
The things that are going on around you want to kill your hope. Since we know that hope is based on what we believe, we understand that the things that are trying to kill our hope truly want to alter what we believe. At its very core, the things that are going on around us are really trying to cause us to doubt.
Thankfully, we know that we have the Savior of the world living inside of us. In the same way that hopelessness was overcome on the first Christmas night when Christ came into the world, we know that the source of our hope is not found in anything going on around us, but rather, it’s in His presence living inside of us. 400 years of hopelessness was erased on the night that Christ was born because He was there, and His presence produces hope. In the same vein, His presence in our lives produces hope.
A Closing Prayer:
Heavenly Father, I understand that this time of year is a time of hope. Most of all, it is a time of hope that has been fully realized. Help me to find hope in the middle of everything going on around me that would seek to diminish my hope. I know that I belong to You, and that You have made Your presence known in my life. In Christ’s name, Amen.