Save as PDFHope: a light when circumstances say give up
Most of us can recall documentaries about people who were regarded as down and out by everyone around them, yet persisted in hope and ended up victorious against all odds. Others, rich and famous, lost all hope and spiralled downward.
In both cases hope, or the lack of it, did not change the circumstances. It shaped what people could see beyond them, and what they fixed their eyes on.
Hope is like a single candle lit in a power cut. The storm outside keeps raging, but you can see the next step and find the people you love.
That is what hope does. Fear and hopelessness tell us the darkness is all there is: the diagnosis will only get worse, the marriage can’t be mended, the debt will never be paid, the loneliness will last forever. Hope doesn’t pretend the storm isn’t real. It simply refuses to believe the storm is the end of the story.
Most of us know what it is like to run low on hope. Maybe you are there right now. This article looks at why hope matters so much, what Scripture shows us about people who lived with it and without it, and why the only hope that will never let us down is hope in Jesus Christ.
“Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.’”
John 8:12 (WEB)
Why hope matters
The Bible is honest about what happens to us when hope runs dry:
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when longing is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.”
Proverbs 13:12 (WEB)
Hope is not a luxury for people whose lives are going well. It is what keeps us getting up in the morning, keeps us praying, and keeps us loving people who are hard to love. Without it, we stop trying. We withdraw, we numb ourselves, or we simply give up.
Biblical hope is also different from the way we often use the word. When we say “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” we mean we would like it not to, but we can’t be sure. When the Bible speaks of hope, it means a confident expectation built on the promises of a God who cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18). It is closely tied to faith:
“Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen.”
Hebrews 11:1 (WEB)
That is why hope can stand firm when circumstances don’t. Its strength doesn’t depend on how we feel or how things look. It depends on who God is and what he has promised. Even in the ruins of Jerusalem, the writer of Lamentations could say:
“This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope. It is because of the LORD’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don’t fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.”
Lamentations 3:21–23 (WEB)
Notice what he does. He doesn’t wait to feel hopeful. He deliberately calls to mind what is true about God, and hope follows.
With hope and without: lessons from Scripture
The Bible is full of ordinary people facing frightening situations. Some faced them with hope in God. Others lost sight of him, and fear took over. Their stories are written “for our learning, that through perseverance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).
Same giants, different hearts: Israel and Caleb
Twelve spies explored the land God had promised Israel. All twelve saw the same fortified cities and the same powerful people. Ten came back with fear, and the whole nation caught it:
“All the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. … ‘Wouldn’t it be better for us to return into Egypt?’”
Numbers 14:1, 3 (WEB)
Joshua and Caleb saw the same giants, but they measured them against God, not against themselves:
“If the LORD delights in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it to us … the LORD is with us. Don’t fear them.”
Numbers 14:8–9 (WEB)
The circumstances were identical. The difference was where they put their hope. A generation without hope wandered in the wilderness for forty years. Caleb, who “followed me fully” (Numbers 14:24), lived to walk into the promise.
Hoping against hope: Abraham
God promised Abraham descendants as many as the stars, yet he and Sarah were old and childless. Paul describes his response:
“Against hope, Abraham in hope believed … Yet, looking to the promise of God, he didn’t waver through unbelief, but grew strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was also able to perform.”
Romans 4:18, 20–21 (WEB)
Abraham didn’t ignore the facts. He looked at them honestly, then looked past them to the God who keeps his word.
Strength in the darkest hour: David at Ziklag
David came home to find his town burned and every family taken captive. His own men were so grief-stricken they talked of stoning him. In that moment:
“David was greatly distressed … but David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.”
1 Samuel 30:6 (WEB)
Hope didn’t remove his distress. It gave him somewhere to take it.
When hope runs out: Elijah and Naomi
Hope can drain away even from faithful people. Straight after a great victory on Mount Carmel, Elijah ran into the wilderness, sat under a juniper tree and told God he had had enough (1 Kings 19:4). Naomi, after losing her husband and both sons, came home and said:
“Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the LORD has brought me home again empty.”
Ruth 1:20–21 (WEB)
What is striking is how gently God responds. He sent Elijah an angel with food and water and said, “Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you” (1 Kings 19:7), then met him in “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). For Naomi, he was already at work through Ruth and Boaz, and she would end up holding a grandson in the line of King David, and of Jesus (Ruth 4:16–17; Matthew 1:5). Losing hope is not the end of our story when God is still writing it.
“We were hoping”: the road to Emmaus
Two days after the crucifixion, two disciples walked home with their heads down. When a stranger asked why they were sad, they said:
“But we were hoping that it was he who would redeem Israel.”
Luke 24:21 (WEB)
Were hoping. Past tense. Their hope had died with Jesus. But the stranger was Jesus himself, risen from the dead. As he opened the Scriptures to them, their hope came back to life: “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us along the way?” (Luke 24:32). That is the heart of Christian hope. It doesn’t rest on our circumstances. It rests on a Saviour who walked out of the tomb.
Hope in the wrong places
Everyone hopes in something. The question is not whether we hope, but what we hope in. And here Scripture gives a serious warning.
Right at the start of the Ten Commandments, God says:
“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol … you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.”
Exodus 20:3–5 (WEB)
We might think idolatry is about carved statues, something we’ve long outgrown. But an idol is anything we look to for what only God can give: security, worth, rescue, a future. Paul says that greed “is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). The second commandment reaches right into the modern heart.
Think of the places we are tempted to put our hope:
- Money and possessions. “Charge those who are rich in this present age that they not be arrogant, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on the living God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17, WEB).
- People in power. “Don’t put your trust in princes, in a son of man in whom there is no help … Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD, his God” (Psalm 146:3, 5, WEB). Governments, leaders and elections matter, but they cannot save us.
- Our own strength and plans. “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7, WEB). Today the chariots might be a career, a qualification or a well-planned retirement.
- The people we love. A spouse, a child or a friend is a wonderful gift. But when we make them our hope, we load them with a weight no human being can carry, and we are crushed when they fail or are taken from us.
Jeremiah paints the contrast vividly:
“The LORD says: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man, relies on strength of flesh, and whose heart departs from the LORD. For he will be like a bush in the desert, and will not see when good comes … Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, and whose confidence is in the LORD. For he will be as a tree planted by the waters, who spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes, but its leaf will be green, and will not be concerned in the year of drought. It won’t cease from yielding fruit.’”
Jeremiah 17:5–8 (WEB)
False hopes are like building a house on a riverbank that floods every few years. It may look fine for a long time, but when the water rises, everything goes. Jonah, praying from inside the fish, put it simply: “Those who regard vain idols forsake their own mercy” (Jonah 2:8, WEB). When we cling to substitutes, we turn away from the very mercy we need.
This isn’t about despising God’s good gifts. It is about putting them in their proper place. Money, people and plans are wonderful blessings, but they cannot save us.
Jesus, our living hope
If every other hope can fail, where can we stand? The New Testament answers with a person. Paul calls him simply “the Lord Jesus Christ our hope” (1 Timothy 1:1, WEB).
The whole story of the Bible leads here. God made a good world. We turned away from him, and darkness, death and despair came in. But God never stopped promising rescue, through Abraham, through Israel, through the prophets. Those promises all come together in Jesus, who died for our sins and rose again. Peter, who knew what it was to fail Jesus and then be restored by him, writes:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an incorruptible and undefiled inheritance that doesn’t fade away, reserved in Heaven for you.”
1 Peter 1:3–4 (WEB)
When we were small, many of us put our hope in a father or another guardian, if we were blessed with one. Whatever went wrong, we would calmly say, “No problem, Dad will sort it out.” As we grew up, we learned they were only human, with limits like the rest of us. But there is One to whom the whole world will one day bow:
“Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Philippians 2:9–11 (WEB)
This hope is different from every substitute in at least four ways.
It is living, because he is alive. Every other hope eventually dies: riches fade, leaders pass away, our own strength fails. Our hope is a living person who has already beaten death. Paul is blunt about what depends on it: “If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable. But now Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:19–20, WEB).
It is anchored, not adrift. An anchor works because it is fixed to something outside the boat. However wild the waves, the boat holds. Our hope is fixed to Jesus himself, who has gone into God’s presence for us:
“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and entering into that which is within the veil; where as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”
Hebrews 6:19–20 (WEB)
It is personal, because he lives in us. Christian hope is not just a set of promises about the future. It is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27, WEB). The One we hope in is already with us in the dark.
It will not disappoint. People can let us down, and things can be lost. But “hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5, WEB). And it points to a real future, when God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” and death will be no more (Revelation 21:4).
That is why the God of the Bible is called “the God of hope”:
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 15:13 (WEB)
We don’t have to manufacture this hope ourselves. It is given by God, and kept alive by his Spirit.
Living as a light in the darkness
Hope in Jesus isn’t only something to hold on to. It is something to share. Jesus, the light of the world, says to his followers:
“You are the light of the world. A city located on a hill can’t be hidden. … Even so, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 5:14, 16 (WEB)
A candle doesn’t make its own light by trying harder. It burns because it has been lit. In the same way, we shine because Christ lives in us. Here are some practical ways to keep that light burning:
- Preach to your own soul. The psalmist talked back to his despair: “Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence” (Psalm 42:5, WEB). When fear speaks, answer it with God’s promises.
- Recall God’s faithfulness. Like the writer of Lamentations, call to mind what God has already done, in Scripture and in your own life. Write it down so you can return to it on dark days.
- Name your false hopes. Ask honestly: what am I relying on to make me feel safe or worthwhile? Hand those things back to God, with thanks for the gift and trust in the Giver.
- Stay close to God’s people. Hope grows in company. Caleb and Joshua stood together. Elijah thought he was the only faithful one left, and God showed him seven thousand others (1 Kings 19:18). Don’t face the darkness alone: encourage others, and let them encourage you (Hebrews 10:24–25).
- Be ready to share your hope. “Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear” (1 Peter 3:15, WEB). A friend who is struggling may need your quiet confidence more than your advice.
If you are walking through a season where hope feels completely out of reach, please don’t carry it on your own. Talk to a pastor, a trusted Christian friend or a doctor. Reaching out for help is not a lack of faith. It is often how God sends his angel with bread and water, just as he did for Elijah.
For reflection
- When have you felt hope drain away? What, or who, helped to bring it back?
- Which of the people in this article do you most relate to: the fearful spies, Caleb, Elijah, Naomi or the disciples on the road to Emmaus? Why?
- What good gift of God have you been tempted to turn into a source of hope in its own right?
- Who in your life might need you to be a candle in their darkness this week?
A prayer
Lord Jesus, you are the light of the world and my living hope. Forgive me for the times I have looked for security in other things and other people. Thank you that you have conquered death and that your love never fails. When fear and darkness close in, help me to remember your faithfulness and to hold fast to you, the anchor of my soul. Fill me with joy and peace in believing, so that I overflow with hope by the power of your Holy Spirit, and let my life point others to you. Amen.
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (British Edition), public domain, as presented on biblevise.com.
