It is no coincidence that the Bible ends with Revelation, a book that looks toward Christ’s and the Christian’s final victory in Heaven, on earth, and in the new Heaven and the new earth. The Christian hope is explained, inflamed, and sustained by God’s Word.
The Benefits of Christian Hope
Hope has lots of friends. It never lives alone. It comes with a happy company of other blessings and benefits. For example:
Hope Moves You Forward
The more you hope, the less you will reminisce. The more you long for the future, the less you will yearn for the past. Hope deletes regrets and underlines expectations. It diminishes drag and increases momentum.
Hope Energizes the Present
It is worth living today because tomorrow, the eternal tomorrow is so much brighter. What’s doomsday for most is coronation day for us. What most dread as the end of time, we desire as the beginning of eternity. But our present-energizing hope is not just looking to the ultimate solutions in the eternal tomorrow. Our hope in God also calls us to look for temporary solutions in much nearer tomorrows. By that I mean that the Christian should have hope that God will help humanity solve many of this World’s problems, just as He has in the past. Although the economist Julian Simon’s survey of world history does not credit God’s role, he does demonstrate that though society has serious short-term problems, we almost always find some kind of long-term solution. He wrote:
Almost every economic and social change or trend points in the positive direction, as long as we view the matter over a reasonably long period of time. That is, all aspects of material human welfare are improving in the aggregate.
Our problem is that we often see only the short-term problems but not the long-term solutions, which makes us more pessimistic than is warranted. I can’t for the life of me understand why so many preachers harangue their congregations with all the worst statistics while rarely mentioning any positive ones that show improvements in many areas. It is not only a prejudicial and damaging misrepresentation of God’s work in God’s world; it is also a huge demotivator and demoralizer. Cultivation of fear and anxiety may produce short-term attention and immediate responses, but over the long-term, it disillusions and discourages.
Hope Lightens Darkness
Hope does not deny or remove the reality of dark and painful providences. It shines a bright light into these valleys, however, and points to the sunrise at the end of them. But we don’t need to wait until heaven for hope to pay off. There are emotional, spiritual, and even physical benefits in the here and now. Using new brain imagery techniques, scientists “are uncovering a host of biological mechanisms that can turn a thought, belief, or desire into an agent of change in cells, tissues, and organs. They are learning that much of human perception is based not on information flowing into the brain from the outside world but what the brain, based on previous experience, expects to happen next.”
To put it simply, expecting an event can bring as much benefit as the event itself. How much joy we are missing by not exercising hope!
Hope Increases Faith
Faith fuels hope, but hope also fuels faith.
As Hebrews 11 makes clear, hope and faith are very closely tied together, the one enlivening the other. Without faith, we cannot soar in hope, but without hope, faith will limp home. The greatest believers are the greatest hopers and vice versa.
Hope Is Infectious
Just as we can drag others down by our recriminations and moping, so we can inspire and motivate through our inspirational hoping. It not only encourages other sagging Christians, but it also affects depressed unbelievers who cannot help but ask a reason for the hope they see in us.
Hope Is Healing
When I counsel depressed people and their caregivers, one of the first things I do is try to give them hope. By definition, depression is a sense of hopelessness: things cannot and will not get better. That’s why I want to give them the hope that in the vast majority of cases, they will get better, there is a way out, and there are things that they can do to help themselves in their felt helplessness. That hope itself is a huge step toward healing. Dr. Hermann Nabi’s research found that pessimism can undermine even our physical health. He found that a “low level of pessimism had a robust association with reduced incidence stroke.” The Mayo Clinic website links high levels of negativity and pessimism with increases in mortality, depression, stress, and heart disease.
Of course, pessimism is sometimes warranted and even healthy for us; we ignore warning signs at our peril. But many of us would get closer to health and balanced realism with less pessimism and greater optimism.
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