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.

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Faith, love, and hope work together to produce a life that is faithful, caring, and encouraged.

The post Faith and Love . . . but Where’s the Hope? appeared first on Hope Quotient.

On one trip, I knew a contested election had sparked riots across Kenya and angry mobs had torched practically everything since our last visit. Hilda greeted me, then said, “You have got to see this.” She dragged me over to the fence.

“Look over there. What do you see?” Everything had been burned and blackened—except the church.

“Do you know what happened?” she said. “When the riots broke out, everybody hid in their houses. But when the mobs started to approach the church, the women of the community ran out of their houses and stood in front of the building. ‘You will not torch this church,’ they insisted. ‘This is where our children get help.’ The mobs walked right by the church, and it was left untouched.”

I was standing in the middle of what looked like a war zone, listening to a lady who has very few resources but who has a huge heart and even greater hope. Her church building still stands today, instead of lying in a smoldering heap like the buildings around it. Why? Because her hope infected her neighborhood. Her unyielding compassion, fueled by hope, deeply encouraged her destitute community and, in turn, emboldened its members to seek ways to spread that compassion.

Adequate resources don’t change the world. People with hearts strengthened by hope change the world!

In my next blog, I’m going to write about the top three human essentials.

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Compassion—fueled by hope—makes your courageous.

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This is something I see every time we visit Africa. Every November, I take teams of leaders to Nairobi, Kenya. I love the people. I love the culture. I love the grandeur and beauty, and I love seeing what people of hope can accomplish. Every year, we visit the same vibrant church in the slum of Dandora. The streets are dangerous, but the people are warmhearted.

Despite its poverty, this church has an AIDS center, runs a jobs program, and houses a school for three hundred children—all in facilities that are so inadequate you would never imagine that anything could happen. This place is transforming their community. Why is this place having such a positive effect? One dynamite woman with hope named Hilda.

In 2007, on my second visit, Hilda led me to a structure built to be a worship center. It had no windows, and the floor was mud. It had the potential to be good building, but as it stood, it wasn’t usable. The three hundred children under her care desperately needed to use this building. She took me on a tour.

“What do you use this for?” I asked.

“We can’t use it,” she said. “It’s too muddy.”

“What would it take to make it usable? You have three hundred kids with no place to meet.”

“We’ve been saving money to put pebbles on the floor,” she said. “At least that will soak up the water.”

“When did you start this project?”

“Fifteen years ago,” she said, “just as the economy went down.”

“Fifteen years?”

“Yes,” she said, “and it’s going to happen! Once a week I come and take off my shoes because this is holy ground. I pray that God will do a miracle and we will finish this building and the children will be able to use it.”

Then she looked me straight in the eye and said, “This is going to happen.”

There is a lot of power in one person having hope. Back home, our church gathered leaders, raised money, and returned a year later. Scores of people from the community and fifteen guys from our church rebuilt the entire floor with concrete instead of just pebbles. That building has been used to reach that community ever since.

Adequate resources don’t change the world. People with hearts strengthened by hope change the world!

In my next blog, I’m going to write about the courage that hope brings.

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There is incredible power in one person having hope.

The post The Four Things That Only Hope Can Do, Part 4: Hope Is the Fuel that Makes the World a Better Place appeared first on Hope Quotient.

Hope gives birth to dreams, which creates momentum. I often tell leaders, “Momentum attracts support. It leads to personal renewal, relational renewal, and organizational renewal. Momentum and vision keep your ministry future-focused. But without hope, you won’t have momentum. And without momentum, you’re in trouble.”

Hope sparks dreams, and dreams bring into existence some incredible initiatives. Every one of those initiatives started with hope. Corrie ten Boom hoped for freedom for Jews in the Netherlands. Martin Luther King had enough hope to have a dream of better days ahead for every person who had faced discrimination. Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan took a bullet to the head because she believes in better days ahead when girls can attend school. Dr. Carolyn Koons, a professor at Azusa Pacific University, launched the largest student mission in the world because she believed that God had better days ahead for every underresourced person in northern Mexico.

Last year, the high school kids in our church had a dream to build a child survival program in Dandora, Kenya. These kids raised fifty thousand dollars and sent it to Kenya. The year before, some students heard about a homeless couple with three children living outside of Mexicali, Mexico. Their youngest child had died of exposure. Our students gave up their spring break, went down to Mexicali, and built this family a home. Other members of our church built more homes. But that one family is now in a safe place and their kids are out of the cold because a group of high school students had a dream that the world could be a better place for them. Those kinds of dreams don’t happen without hope.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about how hope is the fuel that makes the world a better place.

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Hope builds momentum—and momentum attracts support.

The post The Four Things That Only Hope Can Do, Part 3: Hope Sets You Free to Dream appeared first on Hope Quotient.

Check out this list and see if you can find yourself:

• Joseph endured mistreatment from a dysfunctional family. I bet there isn’t anyone who doesn’t have some relative the others try not to sit next to at Christmas dinner.
• David bounced back from several devastating failures: moral, leadership, career, and even worse. Have any past failures? A great comeback is possible!
• Elijah suffered personal criticism. I speak to over twelve thousand people every weekend and thousands more by radio. Usually, people each week write in or come up to say something encouraging. I remember very little of that. But I can tell you every critical comment. Why do we remember the things we ought to forget, and forget the things we ought to remember?
• Nehemiah was discouraged with harsh political, legal, and social circumstances at the highest levels. He had wall-to-wall problems—literally.
• John Mark was rejected by a high-ranking Christian leader. I know people for whom one negative comment from an authority figure—be it a teacher, a pastor, or a coach—has marked them for life.
• Peter was disappointed with his inability to withstand pressure and also disappointed with himself. Sound familiar? My number one source of discouragement is, unfortunately, myself.
• Jesus was let down by people of all types—friends, relatives, religious leaders. At His hour of greatest need, He takes three guys and says, “I need your support.” When He comes back, they are fast asleep.

Every person in the Bible had to bounce back from something (Lazarus even had to come back from being dead)! In almost every case, whether somebody bounces back or not has to do with one question: “Does that person have hope?” Hope looks at what can be instead of what is. Hope looks at the future rather than just the past. Hope believes in future possibility rather than resigning to current reality. People bounce back when they have hope.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about how hope sets you free to dream again.

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Every successful person has had to come back from discouraging circumstances.

The post The Four Things That Only Hope Can Do, Part 2: Hope Helps You Bounce Back appeared first on Hope Quotient.

1. Hope liberates. Hope releases you from your past.
2. Hope motivates. Hope helps you bounce back.
3. Hope initiates. Hope sets you free to dream again.
4. Hope activates. Hope is the fuel that makes the world a better place.

In this blog, let’s talk a look at how hope releases you from your past. It sets them free from past failures and hurts, dysfunctional family patterns, guilt, low expectations, and even crippling lack of confidence.

I grew up in something of an executive, jet-set family, where divorce ruled. Everybody got divorced. We cannot find a lasting marriage in 150 years of our family tree. Add to that my family’s raging alcoholism and explosive anger, and maybe you can see why divorce was epidemic and how I grew up convinced that my life probably wouldn’t feature a lasting marriage. At no time did I ever think, I can have a fulfilling family life.

That belief got a major makeover after a bunch of terrific couples put their arms around me in an awesome Southern California church of 110 people. For the first time in my life, I saw couples that had been married for ten, fifteen, twenty, and even thirty or more years. During five years in that church, I never saw a single couple break up. That totally changed my frame of reference. For the first time, I thought, Wow! I could really have a lasting marriage. That could be my future.

My wife, Carol, and I just celebrated our thirtieth-first anniversary, which means I am in the longest-lasting marriage in the history of my family. We have four children—Mark, Scott, Christy, and Leslie—whom, as of the date of this writing, I still like, and who, more amazingly, like me. They are incredible young adults who love Jesus and who look forward to one day creating their own strong marriages and loving families. Thirty years ago, I couldn’t imagine any of this.

The couples in that church gave me a great gift. They liberated me from the expectation that my past background would be the determining factor in my future relationships. Hope will do that for you. Hope liberates from past failures, from bitterness, from anger, from insecurity, and from the kind of low expectations that keep people chained to the past.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about how hope helps you bounce back.

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Hope releases you from your past.

The post The Four Things That Only Hope Can Do, Part 1: Hope Releases You from Your Past appeared first on Hope Quotient.

“I just try to get 10 percent improvement,” he said. “When couples get that 10 percent improvement, they get hope. And when someone gets hope, anything is possible.”

It’s an amazing thought. When a struggling individual gets just a 10 percent boost in hope, almost anything becomes possible. I looked back over my life and realized that I’ve seen a 10 percent rise in hope transform horrendous situations into amazingly great ones.

Hope is so potent that you don’t need to get 50 percent more hopeful, or 40 percent, or even 25 percent. Just 10 percent more hope is enough to launch you into a new and better orbit.

That makes hope the highest-octane fuel in the universe.

• When you get 10 percent improvement, you get a higher Hope Quotient. And when your HQ is high, anything’s possible. Hope is the beginning of everything.
• When people become more hopeful about their health, they start on the path to getting in shape.
• When people get hopeful about breaking bad habits, they start winning battles they haven’t won before.
• When people become more hopeful about their kids, they find new energy to invest in those kids.
• When people get hope in their marriages, they start making better decisions.
• When people become more hopeful about their financial future, they begin to develop the patterns that lead to financial freedom.
• When people become more hopeful about their future, hope is the match that lights the fuse that sends them back to school or helps them apply for a new job or helps them grow and develop.
• When people become more hopeful that they could actually connect with God, it fuels the kind of actions that lead them to spiritual vitality and health.

Hope is the most important factor, because when you have hope, anything is possible. I’m convinced that any great thing that ever happens in your life, in your family, in your marriage, in your community, in your country, and in your world happens because someone has achieved a higher hope level.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about the four things that hope does that nothing else can do.

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Hope is the most important factor, because when you have hope, anything is possible.

The post The 10 Percent Solution appeared first on Hope Quotient.

Over the course of my four-hour interview, it seemed that Louie’s life story could be described with three words: it gets worse.

Louie ran in the 1936 Olympic Games, but his hopes for future Olympic glory were derailed by World War II. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, but in May 1943, his bomber crashed into the Pacific.

Louie survived. Then things got worse.

For more than a month, with no food or water, Louie and the two other survivors drifted on a pair of canvas rafts before hitting land. They were near death when they were captured.

That’s where the real nightmare began.

Torture, hours of beatings, raging thirst, emaciation, maggots, mosquitoes, rats, humiliation, loneliness, interrogations, experimentations—a total loss of dignity.

And then it got worse—just when it looked like it was getting better.

Louie’s prison camp was liberated. He came home to the embrace of his family and a hero’s welcome. Louie was a celebrity, but inside he was a mess. Haunted by nightmares, he turned to alcohol for relief. As Louie told me, “Nobody back then had ever heard of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

For the first five years of his post-POW life, homicidal hatred toward his captors consumed him. Nothing in him could prevent his free fall into despair.

Yet Louis Zamperini didn’t slide into the abyss. What stopped him? His answer, in a word was, hope. Louie’s wife, in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, dragged him to a Billy Graham crusade.

Over the course of two nights, Louie encountered Jesus and everything changed. After the second night, Louie told me he went home and walked over to the liquor cabinet and threw all the bottles into the trash. He hasn’t had a drink of alcohol ever since. That night, for the first time since his liberation, the nightmares didn’t come, replaced instead by peace that passes understanding.

Infused with a new energy—he founded a boys’ camp, embarked on a worldwide speaking tour, carried the Olympic torch at five different Games, regularly ran a six-minute mile in his sixties, began skateboarding in his seventies, and in his nineties was still climbing trees that needed pruning.

I walked out of Louie’s house with a profound appreciation for the power of hope. It was hope that liberated Louie from discouragement, despair, and potential suicide. It was hope that kept him alive in a concentration camp. It was hope that replaced hatred with forgiveness. It was hope that, during the worst circumstances imaginable, allowed him to remain “unbroken.” And it is that kind of fresh hope that continues to make Louis Zamperini one of the most delightful, fun, joyful, and resilient people on the planet.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about a remarkable conversation I had with a psychologist on the transforming power of hope.

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Even in the worst circumstances, hope gives you power not only to survive—but to thrive.

The post The Greatest Single Human Being I Have Ever Met appeared first on Hope Quotient.

• You’re more successful
• You feel more satisfied
• You’re less affected by stress
• You have more satisfying relationships
• You’re physically healthier
• You’re more productive
• You’re more compassionate
• You’re more willing to help people in need
• You hold yourself to higher standards
• You’re more likely to assume leadership
• You’re more likely to see God as loving, caring and forgiving!

That’s a pretty impressive list! I hope you believe that rising hope can change everything for you too. Regardless of your background, regardless of your job, regardless of your personal makeup or life history, the priority of staying encouraged by learning how to increase your Hope Quotient can change everything.

But let me give one caution here. Hope is so much more than pious platitudes and anemic answers. Hope can seem like cotton candy, which tastes good at first, but there’s nothing to it. Real hope is a deep and powerful force when it is anchored in the seven factors that sustain hope. We’ll be exploring these in this blog in the coming months.

The last thing anybody needs is a shot of hope, a temporary high followed by a crash. On January 1, people get a temporary shot of hope and set New Year’s resolutions, and by January 6 they’re done with it. People get a temporary shot of hope, decide they’re going to lose weight, and three pounds later, they give up. Countless people have said, “This is the year I’m going to read the Bible,” and then make it all the way to Genesis 6. The common denominator in these situations is a temporary, emotional, shallow burst of hope not anchored in the seven factors that support, sustain, and strengthen hope.

My book, and the online test you can take with it, will help you build the seven factors of your life that will help you not just get encouraged but stay encouraged. This is the battle you want to win and the one battle you cannot afford to lose.

In my next blog, I’m going to talk about my time with the greatest single human being I have ever met.

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Real hope is a deep and powerful force when it is anchored in the seven factors that sustain hope.

The post The Eleven Major Differences That Hope and Confidence Create appeared first on Hope Quotient.

Howard Hendricks gave a gripping definition of discouragement: “Discouragement is the anesthetic the devil uses on a person just before he reaches in and carves out his heart.” He’s right. When people lose hope, they lose their ability to dream for the future. Despair replaces joy. Fear replaces faith. Anxiety replaces prayer. Insecurity replaces confidence. Tomorrow’s dreams are replaced by nightmares. It’s a lousy way to live.

Think hope doesn’t make a difference? Let’s get real for a second. Two people are walking in your direction. One of them is the most encouraging person you know. The other is the most discouraging person you know. Which one do you want to spend time with? That is true in every setting.

In fact, picture what happens when a person of genuine hope comes into your life. All it takes is one. In a flash, the whole atmosphere changes. The impossible actually starts to look possible (think Steve Jobs). Defeat starts to look like it could be turned to victory (think Peyton Manning). Difficult things begin to look like they might actually be possible (think Nelson Mandela). Courage replaces fear, and strength chases away powerlessness.

Yes, hope is that important!

In my next blog, I’m going to talk about the eleven major differences the presence of hope and confidence creates.

YOUR HQ BOOSTER

It’s only possible to be spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, or relationally healthy when we live with a high level of hope.

The post What Happens When People Lose Hope? appeared first on Hope Quotient.