Imagine you are a prisoner. You were captured long ago, chained up, and locked into a cell. You aren’t given much to eat and your body and mind are weak. You’ve tried and failed to get out many times and have given up.
From your cell, you can see the door to freedom. There are five gates, each manned by a guard, between where you sit, chained, and the outside. The bars and locks on the gates are strong and so are the guards, who have been trained to fight and supplied with weapons. The longer you are imprisoned the more you lose hope.
Then one day, something new happens. The front door opens, and a Man walks in. He looks straight through all 5 gates at you and says, “I’m coming to save you.” You feel a little hope swell in your chest, but you don’t know anything about this Man. He seems like a capable guy, but you know the guard that stands between Him and the first gate. You have faced this guard yourself and lost in the past, so your hope fades.
The Man goes for the first guard and there is a struggle, but the Man defeats him and the guard lays dead on the ground. He steps over the guard’s body to the first gate and picks the lock with a tool He pulls from under His jacket, and your hope grows. Who is this Man? Why has He come to save you?
The second guard is bigger, he lunges at the man with a knife but doesn’t stand a chance and is killed as well, and as the Man walks to the second set of bars, He sheds His jacket, and you see just how many fierce weapons He is carrying. When He gets to the bars, He simply grabs them and rips the gate off the hinges, tossing it aside and continuing to the next guard. “You’ll be free soon,” He calls to you with a smile. Hope is growing by the moment, but others have promised to save you before and never could.
The third guard pulls a gun, but the Man’s gun is bigger, and He’s a faster draw. Down goes the third guard, and open goes the third gate. The Man now has the keys to the gates, because He found them on the guard.
You are beginning to have serious hope. You are standing now, having gotten up off the floor with your weak legs. The chains are heavy but you stand because you don’t want to miss a moment of this. You know the last two guards are the strongest and highest ranking, but you have seen what the Man can do. He’s strong, He’s fast, He’s strapped to the teeth with weapons, and He wants you free.
The fourth guard dies in a swirl of movements, too fast to understand, and the fourth gate opens at the sound of the Man’s voice. How did that happen?! Then there is just one more guard and one more gate. The Man looks over the guard’s shoulder and tosses you the keys to your chains and you hurriedly unlock them. Your chains drop to the ground in a clatter, and you are shocked at your ability to stand easily without the weight.
He looks at the last guard and says, “Get out, and never come back,” and the guard drops His weapons and runs, too scared to look back.
You stand on either side of your prison cell bars. You now know that He will have no problem opening the door, but then again neither will you, you have the keys. “Hi, I’m Jesus,” He says. “Do you want to stay here, or do you want to come with Me? I can carry you till you get stronger; I have a feast waiting for you with all the other freed prisoners, we will get you a hot bath and heal your wounds and you can wear some beautiful new clothes I bought for you.”
This story is how I think of hope. It grows as I see the evidence of our Good God, the God of Angel Armies. It grows as I get closer to Him.
The Hebrew words for hope could be translated as expectation or waiting. Hope in the Bible has a certainty that is very different from the Merriam-Webster definition. If you meet someone who has hope in Jesus, it’s because Jesus has proven to them how much He loves them, and what His intentions are toward them. They have seen the display of His power over darkness and death.
If you do not have hope, you may not have Jesus. If you have Jesus but you still don’t have hope you may not know enough about Him. If you have lost hope that you will ever be right with God, ever be healed physically, emotionally, and mentally then I encourage you to dig into the scriptures to find out Who the triune God is.
Find out what His intentions are toward you, what weapons and strength He has to defeat your enemy and rescue you with, and what He has already done to free you.
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2 responses to “How Does Hope Grow?”
Thank you for this powerful description of what it can look like to ‘wait on the Lord’ or ‘hope’ in him. It gives one of my life verses Isaiah 40:31 a deeper meaning. “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.
Evelyn, Yes! We speak Isaiah 40:31 often but it’s hard to visualize HOW that renewed strength comes. Thank you for connecting that for me.
-Whitney