If you haven’t listened to the song Jirah by Elevation Worship and Maverick City, it is really a great “hope” song. I wanted to talk about hope today. You know – Man, I hope I win the lottery today. As we all know, winning the lottery is not a great retirement plan. My entire career in the Army, I was told that “Hope is not a planning option”. In warfare that is true because the enemy or the evil one also have choices. But I would tell you that there is a place for hope. General of the Army, MacArthur said it in a way that I best understand: “Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.”

So what does the Bible say about hope? In 1 Thessalonians 5:8 (8) But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. That is a gooood hope. Paul uses an example of a sentry on duty. Paul wrote of “the breastplate of faith and love, and a helmet as the hope of salvation,” That is soldier stuff . The alert soldier on guard is ever vigilant for signs of the enemy because that sentry is entrusted with the safety of those within his camp. Hopefully, he is neither lazy nor hyperactive. His armor and weapons grant him defense and protection when the enemy or evil one try to attack.

Similarly, a Christian should become neither lazy nor hyper active about the time of the end without the controlling factors of faith, hope, and love. There is nothing wrong with speculating about the time of Christ’s return. It is a great hope we should all aspire – to see the return and go to the Father. And to be honest, speculating is a natural result of watching and evaluating the times as are mentioned later in Revelations. Now we hope for Jesus’ return, however since even Christ did not know the time of His return – He said that only the Father knows. We would be very egotistical to claim that we might have had it revealed to us. In reality, if someone claims to know when Christ is coming, you have to question if they are arguing against what Jesus said. I won’t go so far as to say that person is calling God a liar, but in Mark 13:32, Jesus Christ says nobody knows, not even the Son, and the implication is that the Father will not tell the Son until it is just about time for Him to return.

Back to the helmet. My military and rider friends can relate to that we used to call helmets: “brain buckets” because they are wrapped around your brain to keep brain stuff from falling out like a bucket does. The helmet protects the head, the part of the body most vital to quality of life. It is where you do your thinking – you know – that free will stuff. It is where choices and judgments are made, where your personal ideals reside and ideas come out. It is the part that holds knowledge and memories of life’s experiences that determine the kind of life we lead AND guess what: it is that part where Satan aims most of his fiery darts.

In this comparison to military life, hope is not an offensive weapon but a defense; it is a motivator to protect us from losing sight of the glorious end of God’s purpose. Why? Use that thing under your brain bucket and think about it. The only thing that can really defeat or destroy us is for us to give up. Jesus said in Matthew 24:13 “But he who endures to the end shall be saved”. What hope gives you is not just a happy, optimistic, and positive outlook but also the power to never give up, to endure whatever may come to continue to drive forward. Only the people with hope can do this. The hopeless will give up. They allow hope to become forlorn.

Let us not forget that hope’s action is so powerful that Paul says in Romans 8:24-26 that we are saved by it! He says 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it). 25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us.
Although we may not see God every day, if we hope for what we do not see, we can still eagerly wait for it with perseverance. By the way, this in no way conflicts with his declaration in Ephesians 2:8 that we are “saved by grace through faith,” because both faith and hope are necessary for salvation. Faith mainly occurs in the present as evidence of things that we had hoped for but not yet seen. Hope, though it is also operating in the present, hope mainly focuses on the future. Paul then says that, if a person has hope, he is then motivated to wait patiently for what he actually hopes to see happen. In simple terms, the hopeful are motivated to endure whatever it takes to receive what they hope for.

I would tell you that hope is not a planning option, but it is something that you can use to endure the trials and tribulations of life. It is a powerful defensive weapon that allows us to endure as it protects you. Most importantly, when it is combined with faith, we can endure all. Our faith builds our hope for a better future. Not a better tomorrow, but a better future that comes with our faith to guide us to where we finally want to be. Let us temper our faith with hope and look forward to what comes to us.

So the good news is that you can win the lottery this week. The one that has the highest return ever  just buy your tickets.