Written by: Pastor Charasea Curell
We talk a lot about having faith and what that looks like. For some faith is going to church, for others it’s being the church wherever they go. It takes faith to obey God and sharing our faith is crucial to spreading the Gospel of Christ. Sometimes you may hear people say that they’re struggling with their faith, or that they lost their faith. But what is faith and where does it come from? How can we get more of it?
When I think of faith, I cannot help but think of hope. Hebrews 11:1 says this, “Faith shows the reality of what we HOPE for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.”
This scripture is showing us that hope is the root of our faith! Sometimes we don’t talk about hope as much as we should, we simply assume it’s there not realizing the important role it plays.
As a Christian, I want to be full of faith and that means I need to be full of hope. When my hope is high, my faith is high and that is the sweet spot when it comes to living for Jesus. It’s easy to obey God when our faith is high because we have high hope in the result of that obedient step.
September is suicide prevention month and that has me thinking a lot on the topic of hope because it plays a huge role in preventing suicide. Lack of hope leads to lack of life and life abundant which Jesus came to give us. I recently heard that Americans have more now at their fingertips than ever before, yet as a people, we are more unhappy than we have ever been. Why is that?
The bible says that three things last forever…faith, hope, and love, and that the greatest of these is love. This got me thinking, while hopes fuels our faith, what fuels our hope? What causes hope and can help us pull out of the mental health crisis that is so prevalent across our country? The answer is clear to me…love.
The love of God, the fact that God Almighty is mindful of me, cares for me, died for me, even a while I was rejecting Him, starts to ignite hope in me. His relentless love causes me to hope in Him. God is love and this means that God is patient, God is kind, God is not self-seeking, God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices whenever truth wins out, and most of all He never gives up on us.
When I sit and reminisce on who He really is and all He has done thus for me, I start to feel that all will be alright no matter what, good or bad, and that is the hope we need. His love is not flawed like others, it’s perfect. God sent His only son because He loved, nothing more, nothing less.
When we have misconceptions about who God really is, mistakenly thinking His love is conditional, it can cause our hope to lack, and in turn harms our faith, which harms our life. My prayer for you today is that He reveal His love to you and that you embrace it, because that is where hope ignites, and when you have hope you can walk in faith, and when you walk in faith you truly can begin to live.
– Pastor Charasea Curell
