PROVERBS 13: THE MEANING OF REAL HOPE

Hope is much more than most people think. It isn’t a wish that things would get better, but a belief and an expectation that they will get better. Hope deferred makes the heart sick (v. 12), which means that hopelessness makes you discouraged and depressed. But hope empowers you to press on joyfully, knowing that your circumstance will eventually give way to the power of faith and trust in God. Hope is an aggressive expectation that something good is going to happen to you at any minute. A hopeful person wakes up each day and says, “Something good is going to happen to me today.”

The Old Testament prophet Zechariah writes about “prisoners of hope” (Zechariah 9:12). This term refers to people who are so hopeful that nothing can take their hope away from them. God promises that He will restore “twice as much” to them. Anyone can have a negative, sour attitude and assume things will go from bad to worse, but those filled with the Spirit of God can, by faith, believe in God’s promises and be hopeful that the future looks good.

Hope is the anchor of our souls (Hebrews 6:19). When our thoughts and emotions could be tossed up and down with our changing circumstances, hope anchors us to the promises of God. It keeps us stable and steady until our breakthroughs come. We might say that hope is a positive attitude, and we need to realize that our attitudes belong to us. No one can make us have a bad attitude if we don’t want one.

Decide today to be full of hope in every situation you encounter and you will see a positive change in your level of joy.