A CUP OF HOPE

Would you like your life to be filled to overflowing with fresh Hope, Joy, and peace?

A PRAYER OF HOPE! (Part 1)

Romans 15:13 is a wonderful prayer that God wants every believer to experience: “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.”

MAY GOD FILL YOU UP TO OVERFLOWING WITH HOPE.

I love to use this illustration of my dad’s coffee. He liked his cup to be filled to overflowing and get it as hot as possible, then even hotter. At a restaurant, he would always send the cup of coffee back with the waitress with the request for more and hotter. At home, he always took the overflowing cup of hot coffee straight from the stove to the microwave to heat for an additional one minute. (I KNOW!)

Fill up Dad’s cup and get it hot.  Why not ask God to fill you up with Hope, Joy, and Peace? And ask it to be fresh and overflowing? God will smile and gladly fulfill that request…anyplace…anytime.

In this life, we can easily get swallowed up in darkness and despair. We need some light of hope.

This is a prayer about HOPE at the end of Romans whose theme is salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Chapter 8 describes the whole book as it begins with NO CONDEMNATION in Christ and ends with NO SEPARATION from the love of Christ and everything in the middle is God’s promise to cause all things to work out for our good.

That is the theme of all the #1 Textbook from Genesis to Revelation.

God gave us a PROMISE and a PRAYER to pray for yourself, family, church family, friends, and enemies. It is a prayer for when someone is at home,at the hospital, or at the workplace…in times of loss, suffering, or difficult circumstances.

LOOK at some of the words:

• FILL-to the brim; overflowing 
• ALL-without exception, no empty spot.
• SO THAT-Purpose clause/reason 
• ABOUND-to overflow

I pray the GOD of hope, the God who is the source of eternal hope and the source of eternal life, will fill YOU up, leaving no emptiness anywhere in your life, and literally overflow YOU with joy and peace that comes in believing, that YOU may super abound in hope through the power of the Spirit of GOD. 

ASSIGNMENT: Read that verse again. Does that prayer even come close to describing you? Can you honestly say that your life is filled with all joy and peace in believing? Do you abound in hope? (Assign yourself a Score based on a Scale of 1-10.)

• JOY. . . PEACE… HOPE     How would you describe your life?

Since we all tend to give ourselves the benefit of a doubt in these matters, I need to ask, “Would your family or co-workers or good friends at church or school describe you as being filled with all joy and peace in believing and abounding in hope?”

To varying degrees, we all fall short of experiencing that verse and so we all can benefit by thinking about what it means and how we can grow in these qualities. I cannot imagine anyone saying, “I am not interested in having joy and peace. I do not want to abound in hope.”

[Or is this your preference? “I would rather be depressed, down, gloomy, negative. I prefer worry, anxiety, fear, turmoil, stress, and chaos. I like hopelessness and living in despair.]

We all want and need these qualities of hope, joy, and peace; and yet even among believers, very few can legitimately claim to be filled with all joy and peace and abounding in hope.

What describes your life right now? Do you have some hope? Little hope? No hope? Completely hopeless?

I cannot imagine that any of us would say, “I do not want more joy and more peace, and more HOPE.

That is a good reason to join in this study of the #1 Textbook. There is HOPE for you and for someone else in your life without hope.

HOPE IS THE CONFIDENT EXPECTATION OF EXPERIENCING ALL THE FUTURE GOOD GOD HAS PROMISED…SOMEHOW…SOMEWAY…SOMETIME.

Hope is a Certainty. Not a wish like hoping for rain. Not a possibility of this or that happening to change your circumstances. Hope is Assurance. You do not know HOW God is going to do it…You do not know the WAY God will do it …or WHEN God will do it…but your confidence is in God.

Your confidence of faith, hope, and love is in the God of Hope who is trustworthy, sovereign, supreme, sure, strong, steadfast and sufficient. That is Biblical HOPE.

Psalm 27 ends, I would have DESPAIRED UNLESS I BELIEVED THAT I WOULD STILL SEE THE GOODNESS OF GOD in the land of the living. That is HOPE

Psalm 23 concludes with the hopeful declaration: For surely the mercies and goodness of God pursue me all the days of my life. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

A common factor among those who are depressed is that they lack hope. Discouraged people and those who are apathetic about life also lack hope.

This is a most practical verse for us all as we navigate life’s trials!

The God of hope wants you to be filled with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

How does that prayer become a reality in you?

I want us to REXplore five things:

Part 1: (1) What is hope?

Part 2: (2) Why do you need hope? (3) Where do you find hope?

Part 3: (4) How do you get hope?  (5) What should you do with hope? 

Let’s get started digging into the trustworthy truth of the #1 Textbook.

1. What is Hope? HOPE IS A PERSON.: God identified Himself as the God of Hope, Now may the God of Hope.

“The God of hope,” points to God as the source and giver of hope. He is also the object of our hope; but the focus of this verse is on God as the source of hope.

In this verse, the is a definitive article in the Greek calling attention to emphasis, which literally translates God THE hope.

Our first lesson: Hope is a Person. If you get to know the Person, you have Hope.

Romans 16.20 is another reference with the same principle. God THE Peace. Peace is a Person. Joy is a Person.

There is nothing you can do of greater worth and importance than knowing the Person of God…through studying the Word of God, which is the purpose of the written Word of God. The #1 Textbook is God’s Self-revelation guide to Relationships of love, joy, and peace.

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, WE MIGHT HAVE HOPE. (Romans 15:4).

Therefore, if we lack hope, the first place we should look is to God, who is the GIVER of true hope. Repeat the Rexploration definition of hope.

HOPE IS THE CONFIDENT EXPECTATION OF EXPERIENCING ALL THE FUTURE GOOD GOD HAS PROMISED…SOMEHOW…SOMEWAY…SOMETIME.

We have reason to hope! What a name for God, – the God of hope, the God of certainty, the God of assurance,

God is our God of hope, not just for tomorrow, not just for the future. He is the God of hope for today, our hope in the present. Make a note of this in your mind and heart: The God of hope changes our view of our present situation.

When you know the God of hope, you have a different outlook on the whole world. These verses are your spiritual binoculars for the changing circumstantial cloud formations. This is your lighthouse for the rough seas in life.

Everything starts with God. If there is hope for joy that is deep and eternal, it will be hope that is founded on God. Any other foundation will fail. Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6).  

THE SOVEREIGN GOD IS A GOOD GOD. GOD IS A GOD OF HOPE. We must know and believe God exists as God, and that he exists as the God of hope.

That is the first and most fundamental step toward hope. KNOW GOD.

The first and most fundamental truth from this verse is that God identified himself as the God of hope.

Biblical hope is certain because it rests on God’s promises.

PART 2

(2) Why do you need Hope? THE PROMISE OF HOPE IS YOUR CONNECTION TO JOY AND PEACE AND ALL THE GOODNESS OF GOD.

The goal of hope is to fill you with all joy and peace. May the God of hope fill you.

Here is the GOAL of Hope. The Bible is the Promise of God’s everlasting goodness to us.

It will take all the coming ages of everlasting time for God to show us the immeasurable riches of His kindness and infinite goodness to us (Ephesians 2:7). 

The God of hope speaks words of promise.

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees (Romans 8:24).

But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly to be filled with all joy and peace (Romans 8:25).

In difficulties, we often lose sight of our God.

1. Joy is the deep-down sense of well-being that abides in the heart of the person who knows all is well between himself and the Lord. God-given joy is independent of whether circumstances are favorable or unfavorable

The Christian life is to be a life of “JOY”. It is founded on faith in Jesus, whose life on earth began as “good news of great joy for all people” (Luke 2:10).

• Peace is soundness of mind…literally. bound together…not coming to pieces, not chaos in your circumstances.

Peace is an inward state of quiet which is independent of circumstances.

It is time for a Big Question:  Where would the world notice you have joy and peace? In the best of times or in the midst of your most challenging circumstance? Sickness? Suffering? Stress? Sorrow?

• Fill means literally to fill to the brim. Metaphorically, the Greek word, pleroo, means to take over, to pervade, to take possession of, and ultimately to control.

This is the same verb used by Paul to command the saints at Ephesus to be continually “filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18). The idea is that what fills a person, exercises control over that person’s affections, attitude, and actions. 

• All joy and peace – “All” in Greek means all without exception. In other words, this is not a prayer for a percentage, portion, or fraction, but for all the joy and hope that God has promised. Complete. Total. Never-ending.

O God of Hope, fill us up to overflowing with Hope.