God of Hope

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

I like to take time to make sure that I have the best mental grasp of the words I am reading in order to have a better context for the message embedded in the passage and for it to be most effective. I again looked up this word hope to make sure I understood what it meant and it still inspires me to be reminded. It means to look forward expectantly and with pleasure to something in the future and it also involves faith.

This verse says that my God is a God of hope. That tells me something very important about God that I want to have permeate every cell of my brain. God is just the kind of being that can cause me to look forward with intense pleasure to what He has planned for my life and my future. I do not have to know exactly what that is, for to know something fully is no longer hope. Part of the meaning of hope is the incompleteness of one's awareness of the fulfillment. But faith, which hope inspires, trusts the heart of the One who is the source of that hope more than the supposition about what might be coming.

When I think about what hope is I also try to imagine what the opposite of hope is. Comparing something with its opposite can bring added insight and depth to the meaning of something. In my view, I think the opposite of hope might be dread, which I have all too much experience with. In fact, when I am honest with myself I have to admit that my imagination tends to dwell on low-level dread much of the time. Sometimes this is called negative thinking or scenario thinking. I began to realize sometime back that my imagination has been hijacked by the enemy for many years tied up creating scenarios of dreadful things that might happen to me in the future and how I might relate to them.

Now that I think about this more clearly I suddenly realize that I was carefully trained to think this way from a very young age. The very same method is typically used in many religious circles in mistaken attempts to motivate people to “get ready” for Jesus to come. All sorts of frightening scenarios are created in the imagination as to what might happen in the last days – persecutions, threats, torture, pressure to change our minds about our doctrines – all sorts of scenarios calculated to induce fear and dread in supposition that these fears will somehow motivate me to stiffen my resolutions and entrench me more firmly in my beliefs so that I can make it through the trials ahead.

Yes, dread has been an all too familiar companion and still is in my mind. And that is likely why hope is something that almost has the sense of being a foreigner to me. Fear and dread I can explain and experience at a moments notice, but hope is something that I have to stop and analyze and grope through my intellectual mind to explain. This is a very sad state of affairs but not at all surprising considering the planet I was born on. I suspect I am not alone in this condition which is why Paul has written this passage for all of us who are so devoid of hope.

Hope and joy – particularly joy – are words that seemed almost distant and mysterious to me for most of my life. I can distinctly remember trying to wrap my mind around what joy might feel like or what the word was referring to when I was young but realized that, given the descriptions I read about it, that I must not have any idea of what it meant or felt like. To a lesser extent I still feel that way now, though I have a much better intellectual understanding of what joy should feel like. And I do have certain events or incidents in my experience that I have to confess were filled with intense encounters with real joy, though that joy involved no sense of happiness or euphoria.

For those who know me better or have read much of what I have written they will know that when I say joy I am talking about the nervous system's definition of joy which has been discovered by scientists recently studying how the brain functions. Joy, according to the brain's most basic function and craving, is the sense I experience when someone is glad to be with me, when I am the sparkle in their eye. This may be in spite of whatever emotions I may be experiencing at the time or despite circumstances I may find myself in. I may be buried in shame, in fear, even in anger – but if someone insists on wanting to be with me and love me and cherish me no matter what I do or how I feel or even how I treat them, I am in a position to know first hand the true experience of joy.

So what does joy have to do with hope? Well, because right here in this verse I am told that the God of hope will fill me with all joy and peace in believing. As I was writing the above paragraph about joy I remembered a particularly painful, shameful day in our life where another couple refused to leave us alone. They stayed until the wee hours of the morning during a catastrophic experience we were going through, and then took us into their small apartment to comfort and care for our bodies and our hearts. The effect on our emotions and psyche was unforgettable and intense under those circumstances and I have since told and retold this story – usually without being able to contain my intense emotions in the process – as one of the best examples of real joy. It is also a classic illustration of how joy is distinctly unique from the feeling of happiness.

But as I again revisited my feelings during that horrible experience and the effect of this young couple's choice to stay close to us through it all and their ministry to our hearts at the end of that day, I also am aware of the peace that we experienced as a result of the joy they created for us. As we lay down that night to go to sleep I remember commenting to my wife that I could not imagine the emptiness and sense of hopelessness we would be experiencing right then if this couple had not laid aside their own interests and comfort to put our needs first and to be very sensitive to our emotional pain. So what I see is that there is a very strong natural link between joy and peace.

What I also see here in this verse is that the source of all joy and peace is from the heart of this God, our Father in heaven who is called the God of hope. And according to the previous verses in this passage He can become our God of hope even more effectively as we allow Him to rule over us and as we engage in praise to Him.

What is becoming more starkly clear to me is the contrast between the assumptions of my past about how to prepare for end-times and for Jesus' coming by whipping up ever-increasing levels of dread and fear and this verse which tells me that God is the source of hope and joy and peace. To me those two ways of viewing God are simply incompatible. Hope is not inspired in the heart by inducing dread and fear. Love cannot be created in the heart by inducing dread and fear. And by extension, true obedience which can only be produced from a heart of love and devotion to God cannot be elicited in the life by inducing dread and fear.

It would be very easy at this point to move into a spirit of blame against all those who have hobbled me and handicapped me all of my life using these methods. But I also have to remember that they too were equally handicapped in their lives by others previously who passed it on to them and the cycle goes back all the way to Adam. It is sin that is the root cause and it is Satan who keeps the problem going and intensifying. My only hope is to focus on the God who is my God of hope. And as I believe this truth about Him my belief in His heart of faithful love for me will displace the dread and fears that are all too familiar to me and replace them with the freshness and freedom of hope, joy and peace.

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Reliable Hope

Again Isaiah says, "THERE SHALL COME THE ROOT OF JESSE, AND HE WHO ARISES TO RULE OVER THE GENTILES, IN HIM SHALL THE GENTILES HOPE." Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:12-13)

Living presently during the intensifying heat of rhetoric in the most contested season of our country's politics, I can't help observing some of the massive use of spin on facts and the desperate struggle to capture the minds and hearts of millions of voters by both sides in this contest. Almost nothing is left untried and the temptation to indulge in deception and slander is one that is almost assumed to just be part of doing business in politics today.

As I read this text this morning I saw a parallel in what God is doing on this earth to what politicians are attempting to do in the world's counterfeit system of government. Like God, they are trying to convince as many as possible that they are the people's best hope for the future. In fact, just like God they are also very intent on trying to capture the confidence and allegiance particularly of those who are not presently considered to be on their side. There is an intense battle going on between conflicting fundamental views of reality right now and what should be done to better our situations. This is rather obvious on the political front but it is far more intense in the spiritual realm where it has far more significance for our future than any politician could ever hope to offer. And by “spiritual” I am not talking about religion here.

Spirituality simply means the things having to do with our spirit. Every person on this planet has a spirit and whether or not they are aware of it or in touch with it, their spirit is the most important aspect of their existence. It is with our spirit that we interact with others and with supernatural beings in a way that remains mysterious to most of us. But just because we cannot explain it easily in the “natural” realm of logic and words does not reduce the powerful impact that our spirit plays in our life. It is with our spirit that we deeply connect with friends and loved ones. It is with our spirit that we hate our enemies and indulge in prejudice against people we don't even know. Our spirit can be poisoned with bitterness or inspire us to amazing creativity. It is even with our spirit that we somehow receive and give important messages that we are often consciously unaware of but that deeply affect how others feel about us and relate to us – even in our relations with lower life-forms such as animals and other living things.

Jesus made it explicitly clear that God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must do so with their spirit as well as in truth. One of our greatest failures in Christianity today is that we are so ignorant about the true nature or even existence of our own spirit that we are rendered nearly incompetent in our ability to enter into any real and significantly meaningful, life-changing worship of the Father of our spirits. That is not because we do not have a spirit or even that our spirit is not worshiping. Our spirit is the part of us that is created to worship and worship it will do. But the direction and focal point of our worship may be rather surprising when the light of truth is shone on the real condition of our hearts.

So what does this have to do with politicians and a God of hope? A great deal more than might be supposed at first. While politicians right now are in a desperate struggle to outdo each other in vying for positions of power to control the lives and destinies of millions of people, God is even more intensely working to attract the affections of billions of people who still know very little about His existence and even less about the truth of His perfect, loving character.

Unlike politicians, God will never stoop to even the slightest hint of deception to gain the allegiance of the children He has created to live in His presence with joy. Because real love requires the pure environment of total freedom of choice and thrives on truth, God fiercely protects our right to choose Him freely without any coercion or distortions of truth that may play on our selfish desires. Instead of pandering to the conflicting self-interests of each group of people that wants their own desires met at the cost of others like politicians are so apt to do, God is busy forming a unified family of believers from all groups of people who are connected to Him directly as their own personal Savior.

In the previous verses in this passage Paul touches on one of the most sensitive areas of the gospel that triggered the prejudice of Jews in his day. The Jews had clearly been selected as God's chosen people many centuries before and they had become extremely proud of this fact – too proud. However, due their misconceptions of the nature and purposes of God, they misinterpreted God's motives and turned His favors into excuses for exclusiveness to prevent anyone else from joining into the family of God.

God's original purpose and intent for His chosen people was to make them the core of His plan to attract all the peoples of the earth to come into fellowship with Him. If they had followed God's purpose for their nation, instead of looking on the nations around them with prejudice and disdain they would have seen the intense need of others who were hurting and dysfunctional because of the many lies they believed about the their true Father in heaven. And if the Children of Israel had caught the passion of God for lost souls they would have allowed Him to so transform them into examples of the results of living in harmony with the God of heaven that all the world would have been streaming to Israel to discover the secret of their riches, their success and most of all the source of their happiness, joy and peace.

But that is not how they chose to live. Because God's blessings were so selfishly abused and His favors were so misunderstood, instead of Israel becoming the magnet of God in the earth they became the laughing stalk of the world and God's reputation was blasphemed in the way His representatives on earth portrayed Him to the world. Because they failed to believe the real truth about God and His blessings for them, they used His blessings for selfish consumption and used His favors to them as a people as an excuse to hate all those who were not born into their lineage.

This became so deeply entrenched in their hearts that finally God had to “divorce” them and start over with a whole new group of people. When Jesus came to earth to make one last offer of “marriage” to His chosen bride and was stood up and stiffed at the point of matrimony, sadly God had to accept their final rejection of His overtures and begin to form a new bride that would be more inclined to respond to His romances. At this time He changed the status of the Israelites and declared that they were no longer His exclusive people but that the status of “chosenness” would be opened up to all people everywhere who would respond to the drawing grace and love demonstrated by Jesus when He was lifted up on the cross.

"Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." (John 12:31-32)

This is what Paul is talking about here in Romans 15. He is celebrating the new position of the Gentiles who are now invited, even urged to join in with the Jews in praising and worshiping God. The Gentiles are to consider God as their real ruler and as a result of this new relationship they would discover their hearts becoming full of hope.

Hope is exactly what all of the politicians are trying to convince everyone that they have to offer for the future. With all of the wild uncertainty occurring right now in the world financial markets and all of the unrest and threat of war and violence facing our nation, people are becoming much more acutely aware of their need for real hope. And most politicians are eager to exploit that deep craving on the part of millions in their desperate rush to secure votes of confidence so as to usher themselves into high positions of trust and power.

However, one does not have to go very far in asking people about the integrity of politicians before it will become obvious that almost no one really believes that politicians are truthful or honest to a great extent. Skepticism and cynicism are so pervasive in politics today that is has become lucrative fuel for humor and entertainment as comedians poke fun at the obvious discrepancies in the claims and assertions of politicians of every stripe. To even say the words “honest politician” can produce howls of laughter from generally any direction as people just simply believe that those words paired together are nothing more than an oxymoron.

And yet, people are so desperate for hope that they will suppress their obvious skepticism as the promises and platitudes are ratcheted ever higher the closer election day approaches. They will temporarily suspend their skepticism and induce a level of amnesia to cover all of their previous experiences with broken promises while whipping themselves and each other into a frenzy of emotion in order to promote their favorite candidate of deception. Of course, if they could really be honest with themselves many would likely admit that they suspect in a few months, or years at the most, they will be in regret for their avid choices today and will be ready to move on to the next person who can promote themselves so effectively as to once again blind the sensibilities of people with their loud promises of hope.

Do I sound a bit cynical? Well, in contrast right now with the madness of politicians and the intensity of their followers I am sure my words are very out of sync and unwelcome. But as I ponder the real meaning of these verses I see a wonderful alternative that is still being offered as a source of genuine hope that will not leave one empty and ashamed in the future. And our real source of this hope is not a futile alternative to the real-life politics of today as many would try to assert. For each person who is willing to actually submit to the authority and rulership of the true God of heaven will tap into the only source of real hope that will actually accomplish all of the promises that come along with it.

But it gets even better. Instead of waking up a few weeks or months down the road with a serious hang-over after the intoxication of the political season has faded away and deep regrets replace the false hopes whipped up during the campaigns, God's election in our lives will result in an infilling of joy and peace in believing. Instead of regrets, we will find ourselves being swept up into the everlasting excitement of the winning ticket and our hearts will continue to expand and abound with hope as we are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit which is the very passion of God Himself.

This may at first sound like so much religious jargon to an unbeliever. But this is a reality that is far more intense and with far more important results than any politician could ever promise or deliver. If one chooses to cling to their unbelief and put their trust in earthly heroes, they will sooner or later find their dreams crumbling into ashes. But the Word of the Lord lasts forever and the God behind all of these promises is perfectly good, kind and compassionate consistently.

Father, I vote for You and only for You. I select You to be the supreme authority in my life, my soul and my spirit. Fill me with Your hope that never makes ashamed and fill my mind with Your promises that can produce new life within me. I choose to praise You with all the others who are discovering the truth about how good You are. Thank-you for this fresh revelation of Your heart this morning.

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The Truth of God

For I say that Christ has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers. (Romans 15:8)

Well, each day I think I am going to go on to the next verse but I find myself riveted to this verse for whatever reason. I don't know if it is because my background is much closer to that of the Jews than the mindset of the Gentiles in Paul's day or if it is something else. But I feel like there is more that I need to hear from God before I push on to the rest of this passage. There is certainly a lot of wonderful insights and inspiration just ahead, but I want to allow the Spirit all the time it desires to do its work in my heart from this verse if that is what is going on.

What I want to understand better is the real reason for this phrase the truth of God. I can certainly think of a number of ways this could be viewed and possibly all of them apply. But my heart wants to know what God has to reveal to me about this verse and maybe what is most important might depend upon where I am circumstantially at the time I am viewing it.

Because there can be multiple meanings and therefore multiple applications for many passages, the Spirit can use the Word of God differently for different people or even for the same people at different times in different ways. So I suppose I am asking what God wants me to absorb from this verse for me in my present place in my experience. A year from now I may look at this same verse and see something radically different that will be equally relevant and true but is not the most important thing for me to notice right now.

One aspect of the Jewish way of thinking that also resonates broadly with very many people is the idea that God is somehow partial to certain people and relates to them exclusively – meaning that He arbitrarily discounts other people in favor of His chosen ones. Included in this line of reasoning is that God also employs the use of force to implement His plans for His favorites on earth. This also leads to believing that God loves certain people much more than everyone else which is also still a popular theme with many people yet today.

In many respects it is much easier to see the faults and selfishness in the thinking of the Jews back in the days of Paul than it is to observe and confess that the same faulty thinking and assumptions are lurking in our own hearts. But I have actually found it a useful instrument of insight to remember that whatever jumps out at me about someone else's character should be viewed as a strong indicator that it may very well be one of my own weaknesses that needs to be discovered and confessed to God. Paul made this very clear as well back in chapter two.

So what does this have to do with this phrase, the truth of God? Well, most of what we think about ourselves in relationship to others is founded upon what we really believe about how God relates to us. When we embrace ideas of God being arbitrary, partial and exclusive in the way we typically relate to the idea of exclusive, then we will reflect the results of those beliefs in the way we treat others around us. When we believe God favors us over others the temptation exists to treat others with disdain or condescension. In turn, those attitudes backfeed into our beliefs about God's favor for us and our deception deepens.

Likewise, we may be on the bottom side of that cycle of deception. We may start out with the false picture of God acquired from both our fallen sinful nature and the culture and people around which we live, and may feel constantly depressed and hopeless that God will never really love us because we are simply not one of His favored ones. He can love others who are more blessed than we are, but circumstances clearly indicate that we are not one of His favorites and so we feel we must resign ourselves to an inferior position with God, but maybe if we are real lucky we might still sneak into a corner of heaven someday if we don't offend Him too much.

These two kinds of thinking tend to feed off each other and reinforce each other. But they are both based on a common deception about God that distorts our relationship with Him quite seriously. I am convinced that all of our dysfunction, our sin and our confusion is firmly rooted in fundamental deceptions and misrepresentations about the character of God and how He relates to His children. This is the very core of the controversy and is the focal point of all of Satan's false assertions about God.

Satan has worked tirelessly for thousands of years to deepen the darkness in our minds and hearts about the real truth about God. He has actually caused us to believe that many of Satan's own characteristics actually belong to God Himself and that Satan is not really as bad as he really is. This reversing of truth has created the false reality in which we have to live and are forced to face constantly in this world. But as Jesus prayed to His Father for His disciples, which includes all of us, I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. (John 17:15)

A closer look at the surrounding context in that chapter shows some strong links to this verse here in Romans in regards to this thing called truth. Everything that John wrote in the Bible is probably the clearest material anywhere of the revelation of the actual truth about God and how He feels about us. And this truth is in sharp contrast to the ideas and teachings and attitudes that were so popular with the Jews in Christ's day and are equally embraced by most religious people today. Their ideas about God's prejudice in favoring the Jews blinded them to seeing the real nature and intent of His promises to their fathers. And tragically many people today still are blinded by notions of a God who favors their particular group or subculture in such a way that they excuse their own bigotry and prejudice against anyone who appears offensive to their lifestyle or beliefs or who simply does not agree with them.

As a result of this background and context, I believe that the main reason for Jesus' life and death and the focus of this verse is a reminder that the truth about God is quite possibly not what we are so often confident that it is from our distorted perspectives. It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking we have the scoop on the truth simply because we are so familiar with our own customs or we have spent years researching and filling our minds with facts, proofs and arguments to defend our own ideas and prejudices. Of course we don't consider our own ideas as prejudices, but when the light of heaven shines into our hearts, if it can ever reach there to do so, it will expose the diabolical nature of many of our notions about God. It is then that we are faced with the choice of clinging to our own familiar ways and beliefs or allowing God the freedom to introduce Himself to our hearts in radical ways that sharply clash with our lifelong beliefs that we have cherished about Him.

This was the issue that faced the Jews in times past as well as today. But it is also the same problem with Christians and Muslims and really everyone who is under the delusions inherent from living on this planet. This verse reveals that Jesus came to challenge our assumptions about God. And for those humble enough to respond positively to His drawing them into His way of living and thinking, His Spirit will synchronize them with the very heart of God. All of the promises God gave to mankind through the Scriptures when seen in the light of the life and teachings of Jesus take on a whole new meaning and dimension.

Prophecy can almost never be properly understood until the light of its fulfillment reveals the true nature of the One who inspired the prophecy. So to deny the validity of a new view of God as well as His prophecies because they do not agree with our long entrenched opinions is to chose to resist the truth about God that Jesus came to reveal to us.

One of the main reasons that the Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah both back then and yet today was because He did not fulfill their expectations and fit in with their bigoted beliefs about their selfish desires to be God's favorites in the way they wanted to be. Their counterfeit picture of God led them to desire power instead of God's gentle Spirit. They wanted a God who would use force and fear and suppression against their enemies instead of a God who would demonstrate love and forgiveness and acceptance of His enemies. They believed in a God who inflicted severe punishments against those they didn't like while wanting Him to bless them unconditionally even when they refused to allow Him access to their affections or give Him the submission of their wills.

They helped to develop much of what is now world-wide and almost totally pervasive counterfeit religions that keep billions in darkness about the real nature of God. They worked hard to refine the art of performance-based religion believing that God was demanding of their external conformance while ignoring the more important arena of the condition of their hearts and their spirits. The Jews firmly believed that their connection to God through their ancestry gave them automatic leverage over others and that just because they were Jews that God was obligated to give them whatever their selfish hearts craved. In essence, they wanted God to be their servant to fulfill their selfish desires just as masters selfishly exploited the slaves within their culture.

The great surprise comes when Jesus indeed shows up as a servant. But instead of pandering to their selfishness and reinforcing their nationalistic bigotry, He showed them the superiority of real servanthood offered from a heart of completely selfless love and passion for the good of others. He revealed to them the true nature of their God who was nearly opposite of the one created in their minds that reflected their own sinful desires. And He came to show them the real nature and reason for all the promises made to their father's that they had misconstrued to support their bigotry and prejudice against those they hated.

How much of our own study of the Bible is designed to reinforce our biases and selfish exclusivity instead of leading us to question our own blind spots? How much do we wrest the Word of God to fit our picture of God that makes Him out to be more like us than the God that Jesus revealed and that John came to so clearly understand? It is our false ideas and beliefs about God that keep us from experiencing the power and transformation that Jesus came to give us. It is our entrenched opinions about God's character that leads us to discriminate against others and excuse our lack of real love for our enemies.

Christ has become a servant...on behalf of the truth of God. I want Christ to reveal that truth of God more clearly both to my mind and especially to my heart. And I know that as that truth of God permeates more and more of my thinking and displaces my false assumptions about Him that I will find myself reflecting His beauty and loveliness more easily and more consistently. Maybe I should say that others will find me doing that more than I will, for the closer I get to the perfect beauty and attractiveness of God the less I see myself as good. Anything truly attractive about me can only be a reflection of the attractiveness of God being reflected off of me, for as Jesus said, only God is good.

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