Greetings;
It appears to be spring in Bellingham. I have mowed my lawn for the first time and the daffodils are blooming, and the trees are beginning to bud. I claim this as a sign of my day. Things are beginning to bud and grow! God’s loves us and the SON is shining in our hearts!
We are in a season of knowing God’s love in a more intimate and powerful way. Knowing God’s love means that we will also know true hope. Having true hope will empower us to have life-transforming faith in our lives. These three are partners in the goodness of God’s life in our lives. They are faith, hope, and love.
Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.
Psalms 130:7 O Israel, hope in the Lord; For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption.
Psalms 31:24 Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the LORD.
We must know where to put our hope in order to position our hearts and minds in the place of eternity. No matter what the circumstances are in our lives our hope is a future and a hope because of the love of God and His covenant towards us. Even when the children of God were to be bound in the captivity of Babylon the prophet Jeremiah confirmed to them that God’s thoughts for them were for a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29: 11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
We must know where to put our hope in order to position our hearts and minds in the place of DESTINY. When we put our hope in events, circumstances, or things we fall short of a having a proper perspective of life. In the time of Jeremiah God’s purpose for His children was that they would discover Him. He wanted them to know Him so they could truly know His love. God wants all people to know this experience.
Jeremiah 29:12-14a Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity…
We hope in God our Father because we know He loves us. We can find him because He wants us to find Him. He wants our whole hearts, because only when we give Him our whole hearts can our whole hearts find true freedom and life. It is a matter of intimacy and life, not one of power and ministry. When we know God loves us we are able to experience a revelation of His love in our lives. We recognize His love when the tree of the knowledge of good and evil wants us to buy into a lie that God does not love us. Christ in us is our hope of glory!
Jeremiah 17:7, 8 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.”
Job 14:7 “For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease.”
The tree that God wants us to choose and to know is the Tree of Life. It is a family tree of intimacy and love. It is an administration that allows faith, hope, and love to partner in our lives for the eternal purposes of God in our lives. The foundation of this partnership is love, but hope is a step to allow faith to produce its perfect work in our lives. That perfect work is a changed world by the power of God’s love.
When we understand the purpose of hope we are able to receive a revelation of God’s love. Hope is not about what things we will receive in this life. It is about a divine connection with the One who loves us. When we know He loves us we hear Him and faith transforms the world in which we live.
Hebrews 11:1-3 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
The word for worlds in this Scripture is aions or ages. These are not the worlds that God has made, but the ages of men that were transformed by God’s word to men. I believe the worlds spoken of here are the worlds of Abel, Noah, Abraham, and all the men and women who saw their worlds (ages) changed by hearing God, the One who loved them. God’s word to them was His rhema or personally spoken word to them. Their ages, their worlds, were framed by what God spoke to their hearts. What could have been a pile of rubble became the very building material set before them to see God’s love work in their lives. In order to frame our world we must put our hope in God not in a changed world. This is the power of faith. It is a substance that comes by hearing God and it is real! The secret to hearing Him is knowing that He loves us. When we know He loves us we hear Him when He speaks. When we know He loves us we know that we can put our hope in Him in all things. When we know that we can hope in Him in all things His words in our lives will empower belief inspired actions that change the worlds we live in.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
