Fola Komolafe

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. Romans 15:13 (KJV)

Hope comes from God and His word! Hope is a confident expectation of good.

How do you know someone who is full of hope? You see joy and peace all around them not because of the situation they are in or anything in the natural but because of their faith, their belief in God and in the power of the Holy Ghost that is on the inside of them. The opposite is true of people who are said to be hopeless – around them you sense a heaviness and a restlessness because they can’t see beyond their eyes. In a way they have defined their reality by what they see rather than what they believe and who they believe. Hope for us as Christians comes from God, He is the source of hope and it fills our hearts bubbling over every time we choose to believe God and His word.

I was in a meeting when someone read this scripture out loud and it came so alive on the inside of me that I found myself excitedly shouting in prayer (as I usually do!) that I expect good outcomes for me, my family, my house, my nation because I have hope. I have peace, I have joy, I have faith and I could see the power of the Holy Ghost at work. I remembered that the bible says, Abraham hoped against all hope, meaning that even though there was nothing in the natural to hold onto, Abraham found a different kind of hope, the biblical hope that came from the promise of God to him because he knew he was in covenant with God. So he hoped in God, in the word of God, being fully persuaded that what God has promised he was able to perform. How do you get here you may say? By staying in the word of God day and night, keeping it in your heart and in your mouth until it becomes your reality – more real than anything around you. As you read Romans 4, it talks about Abraham, a man full of joy and peace glorifying God. The word of God in our life produces hope in us, a confident unexplainable, undeniable expectation of good because of who God is.

God cannot lie, God watches over His word to perform it and in Psalm 89:34, God says, “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.” Wow, that is awesome if you can just believe it. An article I read said, “Ordinarily, when we express hope, we are expressing uncertainty.” For example we may say as we leave the house, ‘I hope I get to the shops today,’ implying that it could happen but there is some chance it may not depending on how things go. “But this is not the distinctive biblical meaning of hope…Biblical hope is not just a desire for something good in the future, but rather, biblical hope is a confident expectation and desire for something good in the future. Biblical hope not only desires something good for the future — it expects it to happen. And it not only expects it to happen — it is confident that it will happen.

Some Christians are so afraid of being disappointed that they would rather not hope just in case it does not happen. The problem with this is that, this is not faith as God wants us to trust him completely that He will do what He has promised if we believe. The bible actually says in Romans 5:5 that such hope does not disappoint us or make us ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. So, do not be afraid to hope today because God loves you and your hope is because of Him and His promises to you. So trust Him!

You see your faith needs hope (Hebrews 11:1) for faith is the divine energy that transforms your God hopes into reality. Abraham hoped against hope that he would see the manifestation of God’s promise in his life and he did! So let hope coming from God’s word fill your heart and mouth today, giving your faith something to transform.