Anyone who has been to a Christian wedding has heard this famous Bible verse—1 Corinthians 13:13—“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.” Christians and Christianity will never thrive without all three. However, the Christian church has spent years majoring on two and leaving hope out of the equation.
We major in faith. Every church has a statement of faith. You can’t get hired to work at a church without agreeing to one. You could fill stadiums with books on faith. I crammed three years of seminary into five years to study the Christian faith.
We major in love. We sing about it, talk about it, practice it, fill libraries with books about it, and nearly every movie has it as a theme. Faith and love get a lot of attention.
Few ever talk about hope. There are no classes on it. There are no Statements of Hope. God puts it in the list of the top three human essentials, yet for decades we have left it on the shelf.
God clearly values hope a great deal more than most of us who follow Him. I have eight years of advanced education and have sat through scores of classes and thousands of lectures, and amazingly, the subject of hope never came up. Not once!
While I have come to see hope as the most critical ingredient to success in life, family, and leadership, not one word was said about it. No wonder so many of God’s people are faithful, caring, and yet deeply discouraged.
It is true:
- Hope liberates.
- Hope unleashes compassion.
- Hope encourages people.
- Hope motivates.
- Hope helps people attempt new things.
- Hope motivates people to find new strength.
- Hope propels people forward—even when it seems impossible.
In my next blog, I’m going to write about what hope isn’t.
YOUR HQ BOOSTER
Faith, love, and hope work together to produce a life that is faithful, caring, and encouraged.