Strobel - The case for hope : looking ahead with confidence and courage

The Case for Hope

Copyright 2015 by Lee Strobel

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Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

ePub Edition August 2015: ISBN 978-0-310-35404-8

Special thanks to Mark Mittelberg for his invaluable contribution to creating this book.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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Contents

These three remain: faith, hope and love.

1 CORINTHIANS 13:13

FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE THESE are three indispensable and eternally enduring commodities, ones we ultimately cant live without.

Love, said Jesus, is the driving principle behind Gods greatest commands. We must love God first, with everything weve got. And we must love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:3440). Its no surprise that these are Gods central values: the Bible tells us that at his very core God is love (1 John 4:8, 16, emphasis mine).

Faith, biblically defined, is trust in God and in the payment he made for our sins when Jesus died on the cross. The apostle Paul said, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith (Ephesians 2:8). Grace is a blessing we have not earnedin this case the gift of salvation that Jesus purchased for usbut faith is the means of receiving that gift.

And hopethe subject of this bookis the sense of expectancy and optimism that God wants to instill in all of us who love him and have faith in him. Its an overriding confidence he gives, reminding us that, even in the midst of our greatest problems, God is still with usand he is greater than any challenge we might face.

Hope is the inextinguishable flicker God ignites in our souls to keep us believing in the prevailing power of his light even when we are surrounded by utter darkness. Its the unswerving belief that better days are ahead, probably in this world and most certainly in the next. Its the quiet resolve he hardwires into our spirit that clings to the seemingly impossible truth that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and that, in the grand scheme of things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Romans 8:28, 37).

It was the apostle Paulthat unsinkable carrier of divine hopewho proclaimed, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:3839).

That, my friend, is a great reason for our hope, a truth that we need to let soak into our very being, because we live in a culture that seems bent on spreading, with evangelistic zeal, its relentless message of complete hopelessness.

Maybe that message has been getting the best of you. Perhaps your future feels uncertain, or a sense of guilt from your past weighs you down. Problems never seem far away.

In this world you will have trouble, Jesus warned. But take heart! I have overcome the world (John 16:33).

We must, with Gods help, learn to cling to that rare and wonderful thing called hope. Otherwise, were destined for despair.

A CASE STUDY IN HOPELESSNESS

Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with their captors. The Marine agreed to cooperate with the enemy, and in return the commander of the prison camp promised he would let him go.

The young Marine did whatever was asked of him. He became a model prisoner, and he even became the leader of the camps thought-reform group. But before long it became clear to him that the camp commander had lied to him and that the Viet Cong had no intention of actually releasing him.

This is how Major Kushner described what happened next to the Marine: When the full realization of this took hold, he became a zombie. He refused to do all the work, and he rejected all offers of food and encouragement. He simply lay on his cot, sucking his thumb. In a matter of weeks, he was dead.

The cause of this prisoners death might be summarized in one word: hopelessness.

Theres little doubt that hopelessness can kill. In World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, many prisoners died from a condition doctors nicknamed give-up-itis. The prisoners faced grim conditions and had no apparent prospect of freedom, and some of them became demoralized and deeply mired in despair. After a while they turned apathetic. They refused to eat or drink. They spent their time staring blankly into space. Drained of hope, these prisoners gradually wasted away and died.

The human spirit needs hope to survive and thrive. Said Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, Since my early years as a physician, I learned that taking away hope is, to most people, like pronouncing a death sentence. Their already hard-pressed will to live can become paralyzed, and they may give up and die.

The Bible set forth the essential nature of hope almost three thousand years ago, when King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 13:12: Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Pollster George Gallup observed, People in many nations appear to be searching with a new intensity for spiritual moorings. One of the key factors prompting this search is a need for hope in these troubled times.

Its not surprising that if God created us with a craving for hope, he would also serve as our ultimate Source of hope. Romans 15:13 refers to him as the God of hope. In fact, the Bible is a book brimming with hope. All told, there are ninety-seven uses of the word hope in the Old Testament and another eighty-three in the New Testament. The theme of hope is woven throughout Scripture.

God offers a hope so powerful that it can transform a persons life and rewrite a persons future. But its not the kind of hope we usually think of when we use that word. In fact, we use the term all the time to mean different things. Much of what we call hope falls into three categories: