Faith That Preserves The Soul

It seems that, for several weeks now, I have been drawing from the same well. With very few exceptions the time I spend in fellowship with the Lord has resulted in inspiration in the area of faith. This past weekend, while pursing what I believed was an unrelated thought, God led me into another facet of the whole subject that should have been obvious all along but had managed to remain concealed to me. The scripture that I was using for my text led me to a study of the myriad of Hebrew words translated as hope in the Old Testament. I discovered in the course of that study that the common thread between all those words is the fact that they reference a faith that is directed towards the future.

Hope is, simply put, forward facing faith. It is hope that invites us to look ahead in confident expectation. Hope rises up and says that the current circumstances are not final. Hope declares to us that this is not the end of the story. No matter how bad things may get or how contrary the evidence may be, it is hope that refuses to lose heart. According to 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 it sees te momentary affliction as a transient, temporal, passing thing. Hope, according to verse 18, "looks not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen."

This forward facing faith that peers into the future looking for the fulfillment of a promise is, after all, the essence of hope. Paul said, in Romans 8:24-25, that hope that is seen is not hope at all. Rather, hope reaches for what it does not, even can not, see. This is what hope really is. It is an intense optimism of the spirit that refuses to relinquish the belief that a better future is just ahead. It strives, with all that it has, for that which has not yet been realized. It tops the mountain and gazes across the valley with the firm belief that the destination lies just across the way. It will not give up and it will not back up. Hope is thoroughly convinced that the promise that hasn't yet come to pass, is just about to be realized. It invests itself, fully, in what it cannot presently see.

Perhaps this is why Paul said, in Romans 8:24, "for in this hope we are saved." Because our salvation relies on this hope. Paul said that we groan inwardly and wait eagerly, in anticipation of the promise that we have only heard of but have never seen. There is a significant longing of the pirit that manifests itself in hope that propells us towards heaven's open door. Every person that is saved will possess within their being this fervent hope that declares, this world is not my home. It is a hope that is constantly striving for a city whose builder and maker is God. It is a hope that propells the sinner form the pew to the alter, it is a hope that persuades the bound to leave their habits behind and pursue a better way, it is a hope that persuades men and women to lay down their lives and lal they have and reach for that which they can only see through the eyes of faith.

The greatest challenge to this kind of hope is the tendency, that we all possess, to get bogged down in the present circumstance. Today's affairs, today's circumstances, today's problems and doubts and fears will attempt to entangle and entrap you and rob you of your hope. If we aren't careful we will allow the circumstances of this life to temper our hope. I want to encourage you today to make a conscious effort to keep hope alive in your heart. If we aren't careful our faith may become jaded and our hope may dim. Life will give us every opportunity to turn back, to shrink away from the promise of God. With this in mind, the writer of Hebrews said, in Hebrews 10:39, "we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls."

I feel compelled today to remind you that there is a faith, born of hope, that preserves the soul. When the things of this life would damage and destroy you, hope rises up and preserves the soul. When trouble and tragedy would diminish your fervor, hope looks to the future and propels you on. There is a preserving hope that results in a persistent faith that refuses to give up and toss in the towel. Perhaps this is why Paul says, in the next verse (11:1), that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith is the assurance of the thing that you can only hope for, it is the conviction of the thing that has not yet been seen. That's the kind of faith that preserves the soul, it endures the moment but strives for the promise.