Here are seven Bible verses that I believe will make you feel hopeful in this life.
Isaiah 40:31-31 “Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
Trust or belief is the nearly the same thing as hope and for those whose hope is in God, they shall not be disappointed. They might go through disappointments but at the consummation of the kingdom, all that will be history and be replaced with a joy that cannot be described by human words. If someone has true hope, they can more easily “wait for the Lord.”
Romans 5:5 “Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
The Apostle Paul tells us more about hope by writing that hope does not put us to shame, either today or at Christ’s appearance “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name” (1st Pet 4:16) but the key is we must “abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming” (1st John 2:28) so let us not be “of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls” (Heb 10:39).
First Corinthians 13:7 “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Since God has delivered us from the wrath of God, “He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again” (2nd Cor 1:10) and so it is “through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Gal 5:5) and as the Apostle John wrote, “everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1st John 3:3).
First Thessalonians 4:13 “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
We must all remember that before we were saved “that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph 4:4) because “our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil 3:20-21). Doesn’t that give you hope?
Romans 5:2 “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
Without our High Priest entering into the sanctuary with His own blood, we had no hope of access to God because our sins had cut us off from Him (Isaiah 59:2), but through the redemptive work of Christ at Calvary, we can enter into the holy presence of God through Jesus Christ and by doing so, we have access to saving faith and now, “we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” that is to be revealed someday.
Proverbs 10:28 “The hope of the righteous brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.”
The hope that the righteous have is not like a hope-so faith but a know-so faith that shall never disappoint since “Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off” (Prov 23:18). Just as God said to Israel, “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11) but outside of saving faith in Christ, all hope disappears but without hope in Christ, we only have “a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Heb 10:27).
Psalm 33:18-19 “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.”
What a great Psalm chapter 33 is! The eye of the Lord rests upon those who have a deep, holy, reverential respect and fear of God and that’s why we put our hope in Him. Our hope is not based upon human reasoning but upon the sure Word of God and He declares that He will “deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine” because He has promised to never leave us or forsake us (Heb 13:5) and that should bolster our hope in Him.
Conclusion
Since God has redeemed us, we should “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (Rom 12:12) so my prayer for you in writing this is that you “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Rom 15:13) so “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Gal 6:9) because we all know “The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him” (Lam 3:25).
Article by Jack Wellman
Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.