Blog

by Katie Erickson

As our political climate in America continues to be rather volatile, this is a good time for us as individuals to stop and ponder this question: who or what is your hope, trust, and faith in?

We all have someone or something in our life that our hope, trust, and faith is in. To start, we should define those words so we’re all on the same page with this. The word ‘hope’ has lots of definitions, including wanting something to happen, a feeling of expectation or desire, or a feeling of trust. Trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. Faith is a complete trust or confidence in someone or something, which may or may not be religious in nature. We all have things that we hope for in life; we all have people or systems or things that we put our faith and trust in.

So what do you hope for? Who or what is your trust and faith in? We all need to answer this question for ourselves, and that answer is a glimpse into our worldview, how we see and interpret life.

For me as a follower of Jesus Christ, my goal is for my hope, trust, and faith to be fully on God. I am not perfect at this, and at times I find myself hoping for things that may not be of God, and trusting in other people or circumstances rather than God. When I fail at this, I find encouragement in God’s Word.

Psalm 42:5 says, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” This is a perfect example of what happens when our hope is on anything other than God: our soul becomes downcast and disturbed. Perhaps we’re unsettled about life, or even get depressed. But when our hope is in God, we praise Him for everything, for He is the one that saves us.

1 Peter 1:13 says, “Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.” We know that Jesus gives us grace, or undeserved favor. We can fully put our hope in that, that when we mess up we know God will still love and forgive us when our hope is in Him.

Why should we put our faith and trust in God? God shares the reason way back in Numbers 23:19: “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” God is fully trustworthy because He will always accomplish what He says and always fulfills His promises. God is always faithful and God never changes.

All of the things in this world will change or fail us in some way. Look back even to what has changed in this world in your lifetime, or go back farther in history. Everything changes and fails at some point in some way, except God. He is the only one worthy of our hope, trust, and faith. How are you doing at fully trusting God and only hoping for what He has in store for you?

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