Hope is an eager expectation and desire for the future. When we have hope, we long to have what we do not yet have; we long to meet up with he or she whom we have not yet met up with; we long to have come to pass that which has not yet come to pass. Hope is an everyday activity, although it is perhaps most easily spotted in children: Christmas, birthdays, special treats or special adventures (as the Newlings call them, anyway!).

Whereas anxiety fears for the future, and despair cannot see a future, hope instead desires the future. Of course, in our murky experience, hope and anxiety can comingle – as we wait for test results, for instance. For some of us, we can also pre-emptively comingle despair with our hope and anxiety, where we experience despair before we know the outcome of a meeting or test result. More usually, despair is what kicks in when our hopes are proven false: our hopes are shattered and we cannot see a way forward.

Although hope looks to the future, the nature of hope is such that it determines our present (as do anxiety or despair). In the hope spoken of in Romans 8:24-25, for instance, it engenders ‘patient waiting’ (which should not be contrasted with ‘eager longing’, which is also spoken of in Romans 8). Hope shapes and defines our lives in the present as we act in accordance with our expectations of the future. And again, we see the effects of our hopes every day, even if we call them by other names like ‘expectations’ or ‘wishes’, and even if they remain as ‘unstated expectations or assumptions’. Hope shapes our decisions, our demeanour, and our dialogue.

The Bible deals with the future on a cosmic and eternal scale. Because God is the creator of all things, only he can tell us the significance of creation: where it is heading and for what purpose. And yet, because the Bible deals with the future of all of creation, it therefore deals with our futures on a personal level, since we are part of this creation too. This hope on a dual cosmic-personal scale is again seen in Romans 8. Paul states:

¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. ²³ And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:19-23)

 The aim of this short series is to provide some reflections on the grounds of the Christian hope. What gives us confidence to hope as we do (assuming we do hold to the Christian hope, rather than our own hopes for our eternal future)? Conversely, then, the aim of this short series is not to speak about the object of our hope (that is, what we have hope in). I’ve largely written about that previously in an article about ‘heaven’ and the new creation (Briefing #387).

In reality, if the Christian hope is to be cultivated in our lives, we need dwell both on the glory of the object of our hope and on the glory of the grounds of our hope. We’ll only grow in our longing for the Christian future if we actually fix our eyes on it; but we’ll only grow in the confidence of our hope if we fix our eyes on the reasons (grounds) why we can have such hope at all. The extent to which we embrace and permit ourselves to be ‘enthralled’ by the Christian future depends on both of these factors.

What God has in store for us is so glorious it should capture us on the mere telling of it. In this broken world, however, we are well wary of false hopes, of wishful thinking, and of failed hopes. We need confidence to embrace the hope God has laid out for us, and in his grace God gives us that confidence in abundance.

I will, however, say two brief and general things by way of the object of our hope in the remainder of this post.

First, we must never reduce significance of what we hope for merely to the present. Hope shapes and defines our present, without a doubt, but at the same time it preserves the object of our hope as a good thing in and of itself. We dwell on the future God has promised us, not merely because of what it cultivates now, but because the future is good in and of itself! In other words, even if the Christian hope had no ‘here and now’ effects, it would still be an entirely wonderful and glorious thing to fix our eyes upon. If the only value we can see in hope is its pragmatic value (how it makes life ‘work’ now), we’ve not understood the Christian hope at all.

Second, and related to this, we must resist the temptation to buy into the view that ‘the journey is more important than the destination’. It’s a classic high-school English kind of topic; and so much of our literature and movies is founded upon it: action or romance (or both together, more often than not), our movies focus on the struggle and the development of the relationship, not on what happens afterwards. How many sequels involve the love interest moving on in-between films so that a new journey towards relationship can be shown through the sequel?

This view of the journey being more important than the destination appeals deeply to our experience. How many of us have children (or ourselves when we were children) who longed for that special toy at Christmas, only for it to be forgotten by New Year (or Boxing Day)? Of our team to win the cup, only for … what exactly, afterwards? Can anyone say that their latest electronic device, when long hoped for, is ultimately satisfying? Why do we upgrade rather than replace, then? As a tool, they’re great (or not!), but as an end in themeselves … not so much. The object of our hopes can be so fleeting, so unfulfilling, that they don’t satisfy (and, for another day, it would be worth exploring the relationship between hope, contentment, greed and envy).

I will write later about the ‘journey’ and the Christian hope – it is a vital thing, after all (Romans 5:1-5). But we must never buy the lie that the journey is more important than where we are heading. If we do, we’ll never embrace our Christian future fully. God has in store for us a future that alone is satisfying and fulfilling beyond our ability to comprehend.

The question I’d humbly like you to ask is this: if you are involved as an elder of your church, do you believe in the clarity of Scripture? Or, for the rest of us, does your church believe in the clarity of Scripture? I don’t mean this in an “I’ve read the Westminster Confession” (or, at least, the first chapter, anyway) kind of way; I mean it in a James 2 “belief is evidenced in its fruit” kind of way.

Let me give a fairly common scenario. I want you to imagine a church where the following happens:

• The majority of preaching is done by theologically educated people. They might occasionally relax this a little and let student ministers preach.
• In the few times in the year when they don’t preach, the person preaching is usually ‘training for ministry’. Regardless of this, they generally preach during the holidays when there are a lot less people at church.
• The New Testament reading is the passage that the preacher is preaching on.
• The Old Testament reading is a passage that is alluded to or referenced by the New Testament passage. (This is assuming that the church in mind still does two Bible readings; I know many that now only do one).
• Because liturgy has been replaced by ‘informal liturgy’, other sentences or passages from Scripture are rarely read.
• The two Bible readings take four to five minutes to read in total.
• The sermon usually goes for 30-35 minutes.
• During the week, Bible study groups study the passage that the sermon is on.
• The minister preaching the series writes the Bible studies for the Bible study groups.
• Back in church, the preacher has the habit of praying before his sermon. Because of this, the service leader drops the habit (if it ever existed) of praying before the Bible is read. That is, the prayer for us to understand God’s word happens after the Bible is read, but before the sermon.

Don’t mishear me; some of these things are really good things to do, and some are good to do for a time. Some would be great if done a little differently.

Does this sound like your church at all? If so, my question for you is this: can we really say that this way of doing church really believes in the clarity of Scripture? The teaching office ought not to be set over and against the reading of Scripture—of course not—but my suggestion is that a church like this is in danger of doing precisely that. The minister’s sermon is driving nearly everything about the church’s Bible reading. We end up producing anaemic congregations—congregations who are dependent on their ministers for the word, and congregations who see so little of the word because the minister has narrowed their communal Bible reading to 10-15 verses a week.

Here are three starter suggestions for a way forward:

• Recover Bible reading in church. Can we really only find five minutes in a 90-minute service to hear the Bible read?
• If you write Bible studies for your congregation, only do it for a time—one or two terms a year.
• Stop praying at the beginning of sermons, and have someone pray before the Bible readings.

I have some other ideas, but what are your thoughts?

Have you ever stopped to think about why we pray for others, however? Or why we ask prayer from others? I was made to really consider the question when I first read through 2 Corinthians 1. And what the Apostle Paul says there continues to provoke me to thought and wonder every time I read it.

More of that passage in a moment; but I guess, at the most basic level, we pray for our friends because we love them. We desire their good, we desire their growth: we desire their conversion and conformity to Christ. And what more loving thing is there to do than to pray to the one who loves us with a love beyond our ability to conceive, a love that is accompanied by the ability to do it, and which nothing can thwart? Praying for others is more than just the best thing to do when I can’t do any more for them—a last option for love when all other options are exhausted—it is always the best thing to do for them (though not the only, of course!).

It ought come as no surprise, therefore, that Jesus calls on us to pray not just for our friends, but also for our enemies, since we are called to love our enemies too: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44).

Further, it should come as no surprise (yet so often it does, given our fallen minds), for the reason Jesus gives for loving (our enemies, no less!) with prayer is: “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:45). If we are the children of God, then we need to live that out. And as we look at Jesus, the Son of God—our adoptive brother—we see one who died in love for his enemies (us), and whose life is in love characterized by prayer for others: in his earthly ministry, in the Garden before he died, on the cross, and now in heaven itself, where ‘he always lives to make intercession for them’ (Hebrews 7:25).

More so, within the Trinitarian life of God, the Spirit too intercedes for us (Romans 8:27). The one true and living God, who is love, is the God who prays for others. And so, as the children of God, in whom his Spirit dwells, we too are characterized by prayer for others.

Prayer is more than just love for our neighbour, however. Understood properly, prayer is love for God. For in prayer we acknowledge and rightly express both his place as the sovereign creator of this world, and our place as those who trust him in all things. In prayer we trustingly live out the reality that all good things come from his hand, that our lives are in his hands, that all things happen in conformity with the purpose of his will. Praying for others is as much about giving God the power and glory that are his, as it is about loving our neighbour.

This is made most abundantly clear to me every time I read 2 Corinthians 1:11: “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” Did you notice how God-centred (‘theocentric’) Paul’s request for prayer is? He wants people to pray for him so that, when the prayers are answered, there will be many people to give thanks to God. Paul’s desire for prayer from the Corinthians is not just for thanksgiving, but for the multiplication of thanksgiving.

For what reason do we pray for others? For what reason do we ask for prayer? Is it because we love them? Is it because we love God, and want to spread the praise and thanks around, to magnify his name?

In a way, prayer letters make it easier to do this, since they tend to spell out answers to prayer and points for thanks. If it’s not your habit to do this, however, can I suggest that your Bible-study group, as well as you yourself personally, develop a ‘prayer diary’ that can be reviewed, so that the prayers prayed in weeks previous can be remembered, and given thanks for when they are answered? If you lead prayers at church, to occasionally ask not just for prayer points, but for answered-prayer points?

As for me, as I’ve written this I’ve realized the danger of my current system: my prayer diary will fill up with friends and family, but my enemies are conspicuously absent. Pray for me, that I’d learn to pray well for my enemies, and give thanks when the prayer is answered.