Daily Bible Study – Immanuel experience…
LEARN and PRACTICE the WORD of GOD
Reasons for Stress and Solutions
Impatience is stressful so ask God for the gift of ‘Patience’
(Continuation from yesterday…)
God’s gift of patience is one He expects us to unwrap and use. Patience is a gift of God
Patience is a gift of God, required to apply in the practical life.
Ephesians 4:2-3 “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
Isaiah 40:31 “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
Proverbs 14:29 “Whoever is patient has great understanding, but one who is quick-tempered displays folly”
This is practical gift required for every people of God. We’re going to need it for ourselves, for our relationships with others, for our relationship with God, and for just walking around in this world. Patience is God’s gift, but it comes with an expectation of use and practice – God gives us the gift and then graciously puts us into situations where we’ll need to use it.
Connection between Patience and Hope
Hope has a great value in life. If you are waiting for an answer from God, for the “whys” in your life, you need patience and you need hope – patience to ensure today and hope to believe in tomorrow. Yours is the cry of King David is Psalm 40:1-3: “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.”
Basically hope is used in three senses:
- A desire for something good in the future,
- the thing in the future that we desire, and
- the basis or reason for thinking that our desire may indeed be fulfilled.
Connection Between Faith and Hope
Hebrew 6:12 We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized.
Let’s pursue this connection between hope and faith a little further. The term “full assurance” is found in Hebrews, 10:22. “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” – there it is “full assurance of faith” instead of “full assurance of hope.” It says, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.” Then in the next verse it says, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”
Notice, hope is something that should not waver, because it is rooted in the faithfulness of God. There should be moral certainty in it because the will and purpose of God are like iron, not chalk.
Hope is that part of faith that focuses on the future.
In biblical terms, when faith is directed to the future, you can call it hope. But faith can focus on the past and the present too, so faith is the larger term. You can see this in Hebrews 11:1 (Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see). This is the closest thing we have to a definition of faith in all the New Testament, I think. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Here’s how I would paraphrase this verse. Wherever there is full assurance of hope, there is faith.
Faith is the full assurance of hope. Biblical faith is a confident expectation and desire for good things in the future.
But faith is more than that. It is also the “conviction of things not seen,” and some of these are not future. For example, Hebrew 11:3: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God.” Faith can look back (to creation) as well as forward. So faith is the larger idea. It includes hope, but is more than hope. You might put it this way: faith is our confidence in the word of God, and whenever that word has reference to the future, you can call our confidence in it hope. Hope is faith in the future tense.
Why This Relationship Is Important
There are two reasons this is important to see.
- One is that it helps us grasp the true nature of biblical hope. Most of us know that biblical faith is a strong confidence. Doubt is the enemy of biblical faith. But if hope is faith in the future tense, then we can see more clearly that hope, too, is a strong confidence and not just wishful thinking.
- The other reason it is important to see this relationship between faith and hope is that it shows how indispensable hope is. We all know that we are saved by grace through faith. Faith is necessary for our salvation. But we don’t as often speak of hope in those terms. But we should. Hope is an essential part of faith. Take away hope and the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1 (Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.) is destroyed. We are not merely saved by grace through faith. We are saved by grace through hope.
St. Paul Shares his View of Hope
Now briefly let’s notice how Paul shares this same view of hope in Romans 4:18 (Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord will never count against them). He describes Abraham as the great example of faith, and in particular, of justification by faith. In Romans 4:22 he says, “This is why Abraham’s faith ‘reckoned to him as righteousness.’” And the faith Paul is speaking about is the faith that God would fulfill his promise by giving him a son, Isaac. So the faith which justified Abraham was faith in the future work of God. Romans 4:21 makes this crystal clear: he was “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” In other words he had what Hebrews 6:11 called the “full assurance of hope.”
Hebrews 6:18 describes how faith and hope worked together:
“In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations.”
“Wherever there is full assurance of hope, there is faith. Faith is the full assurance of hope.”
“Against hope” means that from the ordinary human standpoint there was no hope: Abraham was too old to have a child, and his wife was barren. But biblical hope is never based on what is possible with man. Biblical hope looks away from man to the promise of God. And when it does, it becomes the “full assurance of hope” — the expectation of great things from God.
It is not easy to describe exactly what Paul means in verse 18 when he says, “In hope Abraham believed . . . that he should become the father of many nations.” But from the whole context I think it is fair to say that Abraham’s faith was his strong confidence in the reliability of God’s word, and Abraham’s hope was his strong confidence in the fulfillment of God’s promise.
In other words, whenever faith in God looks to the future, it can be called hope. And whenever hope rests on the word of God, it can be called faith.
A Confident Expectation
Therefore I pray that the main point of the message is plain from Hebrews and from Romans, namely, that the biblical concept of hope. Biblical hope is a confident expectation and desire for something good in the future. There is moral certainty in it. “God of hope”; (Romans 15:13) and that the central exhortation of our church is very simply and very profoundly, Hope in God and his name is Jesus Christ.
Prayer: Abba Father, Thank You for helping us. Thank You that you’ve carried and protected us through the uncertainty of deep waters, through the flames of trials, and through the pain of hardships. We are constantly aware of how much we need You, Your grace, Your strength, Your power working through even the toughest days. Help us to keep our focus first on You. Please forgive us for giving too much time and attention to other things, for looking to other people before coming to You first. Help us to follow You and seek You first. My God and Lord, Jesus, thank You that you came to give new life, peace, hope, and joy. Thank You that Your power is made perfect in our weakness. Thank You that Your grace is sufficient for us. Fill us with Your power, strength and grace. Empower us with Your Holy Spirit, we pray by the name of Jesus. Amen