A Word in Season: The God of Hope (Romans 15:13)

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God's revelation of himself is neither accidental nor irrelevant. He has made himself known so that we can approach him in accordance with that revelation.

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And so when we read of the various names and titles that God gives to himself in the

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Scriptures, it ought to increase our understanding and embolden our faith. And so it is in Romans chapter 15 and verse 13, where the

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Apostle prays, Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Our God is the God of hope. The Apostle Paul has just been describing how the

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Lord Jesus Christ has been sent, the servant of God, the root of Jesse, the son of David, who shall rise to reign not just over the people of Israel, but over the

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Gentiles. He's going to gather a kingdom from every kingdom of the world. And in him the

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Gentiles shall hope. They will put their faith in him with confident expectation.

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And now, says the Apostle, to this church in Rome, composed both of Jews and Greeks, men and women have been brought from every background, every walk of life.

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Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Paul is one of those preachers where you would say, yes, we get the point.

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The God of hope filling you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope just as you have hoped in him.

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He is the God of hope. The God from whom hope comes and the

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God in whom we hope. He is the author of hope. There would be no confident expectation were it not for the fact that we have such a

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God. And our hope is in him. It is because God is

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God and all that he is that we have any of this expectation of future blessing.

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For the hope of which the Apostle speaks here is that confident trust with confident expectation, not the vague possibility of some future good, but the fact that God has made certain promises to us and that we are absolutely persuaded that he will bring to pass all that he has said.

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And so it is from the God of hope that believers can be filled with all joy and peace in believing.

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It is by laying hold upon Christ, the Son of God. It is by entering into this relationship with God by Christ Jesus that we come to be filled with all joy and peace.

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And you notice how the Apostle fills up the language there as well. Filled with all joy and peace.

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All joy, all peace abounding in it so that there is no space for anything else.

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There is joy in knowing the God of hope. There is peace in knowing the

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God of hope. And that joy and that peace come through our faith in Jesus Christ by which we are brought into a relationship of peace with God.

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His smile is known and felt in our midst. And with that, we may then abound in hope by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. And here again, there is abundance filled with all joy and peace and now abounding or overflowing in hope.

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Now, how can you and I do that? Well, it is because we have a God of hope, but also because the power of the

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Holy Spirit is at work in God's children. There are many things then that would dent our hope in this world and in our walk through it.

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There are many things that would dim our eyes. There are trials and temptations that might seem to shake our relationship with Christ.

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There are difficulties that we pass through that might make the promises dim in our eyes.

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There are circumstances into which we go where, like many believers before us and all who come after us, we will be crying out to God in the midst of gloom and darkness and asking that he would lift up our souls.

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And by the power of the Holy Spirit, hope will conquer. This confident expectation will rise to the surface.

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Our hope then does not rise and fall without circumstances. Our hope then should not be in its peaks and its troughs because of what happens in the world around us.

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Our hope needs to be settled in the God of hope, grounded in the faith in Jesus Christ, and abundant because of the power of the

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Holy Spirit at work in us. And then it is both settled and sure.