TEEN TREE OF LIFE
THE DOCTRINE OF HOPE
Part 2
June 25, 2017
BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God the Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of The Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JO 1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God the Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31).
It is the nature of man to have both positive and negative expectations of the future. And as a rule, most people would rather believe bad news than good and after that, cling to the tendency to exaggerate bad news. God is the source of all expectation (hope) of the future and without His Word saturating our souls, we will fall prey to negative expectations or loss of hope. Though we may have problems today, we should be able to detach ourselves from them and focus on the future. By doing this, we should be able to bring the comfort of a bright future back to the present to give ourselves confident expectation (hope). What makes this possible is spiritual growth. If you don’t have positive expectation (hope) for the future, you need to study more doctrine!
There are three doors of hope. The first one is found in HEB 6:18: …so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This is the hope found in Salvation for eternal life as the Word of God promises. The second door of hope is found in God’s Plan for the Church-Age and our entrance into His Plan and our Personal Sense of Destiny. The third door is eschatological hope. Eschatological is defined as the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind – hope for the future state of eternity. All believers should have an eschatology that looks forward to dying and death since we know that God has provided something better to come than what we have on this earth! Our objective is to glorify God and that Glory peaks in the eternal state.
So, if you’re going to live in the Hope that God has for you, you need to look forward to a better time than now, you need to focus on eternity. The key is in loving and glorifying God and sticking to His Plan no matter what pressures arise. If you have God’s hope in your soul, you will be able to handle any type of problems life presents. To compromise your morals and values for the fun of today is not living in God’s absolute confidence. Your estimation of the future is what gives you a fantastic edge on problem-solving in time.
The problems we go through are designed by Satan to lure us away from God’s Plan, but as GEN 50:20 shows us, God can take such pressure and turn the situation into a blessing for those with hope: As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. The sufferings we go through today afford us the opportunity to strengthen our hope and glorify God. Greatness in the eternal state takes a lot of training and suffering in this life. As heirs of Christ we are not only called to His Glory but we are also called to share in His Sufferings for the sake of spiritual strength: …and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. (ROM 8:17) Hope and suffering are intimately related. Success based on God’s Standards equals endurance in His plan with absolute hope toward the future!!
If you are having trouble and are unhappy, don’t look around at your circumstances for the solution! Look to the future and make the proper decisions and adjustments. If God has not removed you from what you are presently going through, He means for you to bear it, adapt to it, and look to the future utilizing His Hope for your strength. The solution to any problem never lies in the circumstance itself but in the God’s Hope. If you have knowledge of the future, you will be able to deal with the present. And the knowledge of the future can only be found in the Bible!
You should never look at the situation you find yourself in, as the result of what someone is trying to do to you, but what God is Working in you. Rewards are not handed out by God for doing great things but by enduring pressures and sufferings and not quitting His Plan. That is where greatness awaits us. So, why complain or wallow in the weight of your sufferings today when in reality they are the basis for your rewards in the future? It is your hope in the future that insulates you against your present problems!
A person’s hope is based on what he/she truly believes. It isn’t based on what a person claims to believe, but what he/she truly believes deep in his/her soul. Once you know how great eternity is, no problem should stop you. When you are certain you have a future, you will know that you have a purpose, too! It’s up to you to train (study Bible doctrine) and dedicate yourself in order to reach the objective of glorifying God.
There is only one way to deal with life and that is God’s Way! Living one day at a time is living for God today in the light of eternity. JOH 17:16 tells us that we are not of this world just as our Lord was not of this world. Our true citizenship is heaven. That is our hope; that is our confidence!
We all need some form of anticipation in our lives. What could be better than to anticipate eternity and the execution of God’s Will, Plan, and Purpose for our lives! God promises that if we honor His Word, through any bad situation we go through, it will work out to our benefit and His Glory. And that is the reason we are on earth! Suffering always has an end result. Suffering, whether it is self-induced or undeserved, can work out to our benefit if we stick with the Plan and Purpose of God and not seek our own solutions. We should all have an absolute hope that our circumstances in this life are going to change. We should not be wishing for this but be convinced of it! So, rather than complain about what you are going through why not view suffering as it is meant to be: an opportunity to bring glory to God and blessings to yourself. God will test your emotions and this may often appear as suffering. The issue thereafter is whether you apply God’s Word and execute His Plan. The hope of better things is a fact of reality when you remain in God’s Plan for your life.
God’s viewpoint gives us happiness and a source of power with which to find pleasure in all things, even in suffering. Undeserved suffering is a source of tremendous blessing BUT ONLY if you do not enter arrogance or self-deception. When you are disillusioned, you will make negative decisions against the Plan of God. Most believers do not have God’s Hope. They prefer to wallow in their emotions and in doing so, remain under the influence of the Old Sin Nature. Weak believers live by sight, strong believers live by faith. And how is faith developed? By hope and hope has one source: positive volition toward Bible doctrine. Hope indicates that you have maximum knowledge of the Word of God and complete trust in His Character and Integrity. It is the Word of God which stands in between the potential and the reality of having something.
{to be continued}