In which, I share some of my personal journey towards hope and also some encouragement from 1 Peter for you to live in hope, as well.

On December 31, 2022, I was hanging out with my church family, ready to ring in the New Year. 2022 was dead to me and needed burying. Our family had faced loss, hurt, and health issues all year. It felt like every day had multiple reminders of my failings and faults. That year, it had seemed like every decision I made was wrong, and every good intention got me slandered.

I was done.

But, as part of our New Year’s Eve festivities, we pulled a big whiteboard into the church gym. My wife suggested having those who wanted to write one word on the board to represent our New Year prediction. We did, and people had a lot of fun with it.

Here’s the board:

Looking at that board, I knew I couldn’t keep dwelling on the negative. I made a conscious commitment that I was going to change my focus. I also knew that all my “hard” times were pretty petty compared to many.

That led me to write my word for 2023: “Hope” (in green, lower right).

As a Christ-follower, I missed hope in 2022. That board, with that word, was a call back to what I knew to be true: with Jesus, there is always hope. I’d been so focused on my problems that I’d forgotten.

It’s easy to lose hope today. We live in an incredibly cynical and despairing society. Even as Christ-followers, it’s easy to drink the cultural water since that’s what we’re swimming in.

But, when you think about it, the prevalence of despair in our day and age is ironic. Here most of us sit, possessors of technologies that prior generations would regard as magical, with the instant gratification of almost every desire a flick of a finger away, and we’re freaking out. Give us access to near-limitless knowledge and the means to alleviate massive problems that plagued our ancestors, and we spiral into hopelessness. With the world at our fingertips and the planet at our feet, we’re stuck frantically propping up our tiny, fragile, purposeless cardboard castles of self-indulgence.

Oh, Christ-lover, this should not be the case! We are people saved for HOPE, defined by HOPE, and meant to live in HOPE.

I love the Book of 1 Peter and recently preached a message from chapter 1, part of which says this:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being guarded by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Wow. Just wow.

Mercy.

New birth.

Resurrection.

Inheritance.

Guarded by God’s power.

Rejoice.

Praise.

Honor.

Glory.

Love.

Glorious joy.

Salvation.

Living hope.

“Hope” isn’t just a “word of the year.” It’s not just a vague wish that things will get better. Hope is where we live, in Christ. Hope is the air we breathe, in Christ.

And hope is what our world most desperately needs from us right now.

So, how do we live hope? Here are four ideas, drawn from 1 Peter, that can get us started:

Remember that Jesus is alive.

It’s easy to forget this central truth of the Good News we proclaim. It’s easy for Christians to treat Jesus like just another Bible story, to leave Him on the pages of our New Testaments. But Jesus is alive. If I can say it without being blasphemous, He is even more alive today, reigning over His Kingdom and the universe, than when He walked the streets of the Middle East 2000 years ago. We have every reason for hope when we remember that Jesus is alive.

Remember that you are alive.

Seriously. This is one of those things that could go without saying but leave something unsaid for too long, and it tends to disappear or rot. Stephen Hawking, probably the most famous theoretical physicist since Albert Einstein, said, “While there is life, there is hope.” It’s a sentiment that has echoed through the ages of human history, and sometimes we need to let it resonate in our minds when we’re tempted to despair. Life = hope.

Don’t rely on your strength; trust God to guard your hope.

One of my favorite scenes, from one of my favorite movies, based on my favorite books, illustrates this point. I’m talking about the Battle of Helm’s Deep in the movie adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers. Here, the good guys retreat to a fortress that has never fallen, never been conquered, despite wise advice urging them not to trust those defenses. The great, big wall is immense and well-defended, but it has a weak point that the enemy exploits, and within just a few minutes, all hope seems lost.

That happens when we trust our mental fortitude and strength to preserve our hope. Instead, we need to rely on God’s strength to focus our eyes on Him, His Word, His people, and His plan. There are no weak points in God’s power, no exploitable points in His wall. We need to trust Him to guard our hope, not ourselves.

Don’t let trials distract you from your hope in Jesus.

Earlier, I quoted Stephen Hawking. Do you realize how incredible it is that those words came from him? Here was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, and he used a wheelchair for most of his life. He couldn’t walk, breathe, or even talk on his own. He could only speak those words of hope because a computer synthesizer had been rigged up for him to use. And he didn’t know Jesus. Friends, if a man facing those trials could maintain that kind of hope, how much more radical should our hope be, we who see the hope of Jesus Christ?

Let’s live in hope for the glory of God and the good of those around us and for our own sanity in these despairing times.