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| Faith is the soil in which hope takes root. |
A Natural Response to God's Love
Hope is a natural response to God’s love. If you believe
that God loves you, you know that He may allow you to suffer but you also know
that it will never be pointless. It will be allowed only if it is the best
possible way to bring about the greatest possible good for you, just as you
know that a loving parent does not submerge a child burning up with fever into
the ice filled water that feels so painful to the child for no reason but to
help cure a problem that may kill the child if left untreated.
You have confidence that suffering will not last forever, because you know that God does not delight in your suffering but wills for your good, because He loves you. You look for that good, and you find it, because you expect it to be there. After all, love is about seeking the highest possible good for the one you love.
Hope and Faith
Faith is the soil in which hope takes root. If you do not
believe in God’s love for you because you do not believe in God, then the hope
which is planted in your soul has no place to put down its roots and grow.
Human love can help nurture hope for a time, like peat pot in a gardener’s
shed, but eventually it will fail because human love is limited and prone to
fault.
Holding on to Hope
Hope is a natural response to God’s love, but we can become
blind to that love through ingratitude or ignorance. If we don’t see God’s love
or experience it, if we do not know how to spot it at work, hope becomes
increasingly difficult to hold on to during the dark moments of life. That’s
why it’s so important to cultivate a relationship with God so that we might
allow hope’s seed to grow and flourish.
Testing the Relationship
If you are finding this chapter hard to believe, it’s
understandable. It’s natural, and even a good thing, for you to question how
you can know for sure that growing closer to God will improve your ability to
hold on to hope. Even Scripture recommends that you test all things so that you
may not be deceived but rest securely in the truth.
And that, friend, is the only way to be sure that what I am
saying is true. You must test it. There are three ways to test anything for the
truth: you may test by abstinence, by not doing the thing recommended to be
done, and see what the results are; you may test by application, by doing what
is recommended, and seeing what the results are; and you may test for the truth
by observing the results of others who have tested to see what results they
got.
Testing through application or abstinence can be dangerous.
Imagine testing to see whether something was poison by tasting it! Or imagine
trying to figure out whether shelter was truly necessary for your life by
wandering into the wilderness without anything in hand. A lot of harm can be
done in a very innocent way by testing without observing first.
The Research on Hope
In the nineties, scientists began to study hope. The first
fruit of those studies was a book entitled The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get
There from Here by C.S. Snyder. In that book, Snyder identified hope as a
motivational construct. He said it was responsible for men’s ability to believe
in positive outcomes, conceive of goals, develop strategies to achieve them,
and muster the motivation to implement them.
Anthony Scioli is another hope researcher. Scioli spent years researching hope, and six of them developing his own Comprehensive Hope Scale, used to measure the level of hope an individual possesses. “Faith is the
building block of hope,” he says.
In an interview with PsychCentral’s assistant
editor, Therese J. Borchard, Scioli stated that, “We need faith and a spiritual
foundation to experience a full hope. Exposure to caring and trustworthy family
and friends create a more open attitude for developing faith in others as well
as the universe.” One of the strategies he recommends for those who want to
increase in their hope is to make deliberate plans to grow in faith.
Hope and Love
This is just a small summary of the research that is out
there on hope. But what it does tell you about hope is that it begins with the
exposure to love as experienced by those around you. It is in this light of
love that hope begins to grow. Experience of love leads you to grow in the hope
that good things are going to happen to you, and the more that hope grows the
more that you see of its fruits because you begin to look for them, and the
more that you find those fruits the more that you have faith that you are loved
and that there is a force which wills you to have these good things.
Drawing closer to God leads you to hope because drawing
closer to God brings you closer to the very source of love, “for God is love” –
John 4:8
You begin to believe when Scripture tells you:
"We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” – Romans 8:28
And with love comes the courage to try, and the hope that
even if you fall God will help you up, and that even if you fail this time
there will be a benefit to come from it, a lesson to learn, and you will get stronger for the next time you try. So you begin to lose your fear and
your doubts and you begin to believe that you can. And believing, discover you
can do more than you thought you could. You have faith that, as St. Paul said,
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” – Philipians 4:13
Come Back Tomorrow
Tomorrow, I'll be talking about God's unshakeable, unwavering, and unchanging love for you. I'll discuss ways that you can know for sure He does love you and that His love is real. I will also talk about Hell, original sin, and the role those play in God's love for humanity. I hope you'll join me.
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