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iamlost4ever Vice Captain
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Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 7:31 pm
Do you know the difference between Faith and Hope? Hope means to expect with confidence or trust. Faith is a firm belief in something for which their is no proof. It means to believe and trust in and loyalty to God. Hebrews 11:1 "Faith makes us sure of what we hope for and gives us proof of what we can not see." Romans 8:23-25 23 Not only the world, but we also have been waiting with pain inside us. We have the Spirit as the first part of God’s promise. So we are waiting for God to finish making us his own children. I mean we are waiting for our bodies to be made free. 24 We were saved to have this hope. If we can see what we are waiting for, that is not really hope. People don’t hope for something they already have. 25 But we are hoping for something we don’t have yet, and we are waiting for it patiently.
This lets us know that our faith helps us to strive for the things we hope for. Hope is something we are reaching for in the future and gives us a reason to exercise our faith. Our love for God keeps the things we hope for in line with His word. 1 Peter 1:3-9 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God has great mercy, and because of his mercy he gave us a new life. This new life brings us a living hope through Jesus Christ’s resurrection from death. 4 Now we wait to receive the blessings God has for his children. These blessings are kept for you in heaven. They cannot be ruined or be destroyed or lose their beauty. 5 God’s power protects you through your faith, and it keeps you safe until your salvation comes. That salvation is ready to be given to you at the end of time. 6 I know the thought of that is exciting, even if you must suffer through different kinds of troubles for a short time now. 7 These troubles test your faith and prove that it is pure. And such faith is worth more than gold. Gold can be proved to be pure by fire, but gold will ruin. When your faith is proven to be pure, the result will be praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ comes. 8 You have not seen Christ, but still you love him. You can’t see him now, but you believe in him. You are filled with a wonderful and heavenly joy that cannot be explained. 9 Your faith has a goal, and you are reaching that goal—your salvation.
This lets you know that your faith is to be ever growing. It should change and shape you into a better person than you were before. Christ is your hope and your promise for something better, even through troubles and trials. You should be reaching for Him, always. You will have troubles because His word tells you so but that is how faith and hope work together. Hope is born in times of troubles. It is what keeps you going and wakes you up in the morning. Faith is born of knowledge and understanding. Faith is a firm belief even when there is no proof but it is still born from understanding and knowledge. That is why we take a leap of faith. We say that even though we can not physically see God we know He is real. The world around us gives us all the proof we need. Life can not be formed from no life unless God wills it. Faith and Hope work together to strengthen our faith and keep us focused on moving forward. It keep us from giving in and giving up. It tells us that if Christ could endure all He did for us while on Earth, then we can endure anything we may face here on Earth as well.
We must always be on the look out for false teachers. They were back in biblical times and they are here today. The only way to do that is to stay grounded in the Word. Try as the devil may, he cannot defeat a child of God who knows the word. 1 John 5:4 4 because everyone who is a child of God has the power to win against the world. Matthew 7:15-20 15 “Be careful of false prophets. They come to you and look gentle like sheep. But they are really dangerous like wolves. 16 You will know these people because of what they do. Good things don’t come from people who are bad, just as grapes don’t come from thornbushes, and figs don’t come from thorny weeds. 17 In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, and bad trees produce bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 You will know these false people by what they do.
Remember Christ is our hope because He is our salvation, He changes our hearts, and we will share in His future glory. Hope, love and faith keep us strong in the Lord, so we have purpose and direction. Knowledge and wisdom in the word keep us from being deceived.
Romans 5:1-5 (Easy-to-Read Version) 5 We have been made right with God because of our faith. So we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through our faith, Christ has brought us into that blessing of God’s grace that we now enjoy. And we are very happy because of the hope we have of sharing God’s glory. 3 And we are also happy with the troubles we have. Why are we happy with troubles? Because we know that these troubles make us more patient. 4 And this patience is proof that we are strong. And this proof gives us hope. 5 And this hope will never disappoint us. We know this because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts through the Holy Spirit he gave us.
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Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2013 1:08 pm
I remember it like this: faith is the noun, and hope is the verb. We as Christians have faith in the words of God (we have a sense of "surety" about them) and we hope for those promises (fully expect his promises to come to pass).
The world uses "hope" as if you have a wishy-washy feeling that something might happen, without knowing what the end result might be. Totally different meaning from "fully expecting" a thing to happen, and thus why many remain blinded; it shouldn't be surprising since the world is secular and that is where most of us learn our vocabulary from. Yet it's still a blindness that has to be overcome as a non-believer and it's only overcome by reading scripture; only those who seek and read God's words, and choose to stick with his definition of things, will know the truth about God, will come to an understanding of who God is and how we relate to him. Then all those contradictions fall away. There's also the fact that they don't have the Holy Spirit and are reading from a stubborn, "pre-conceived notions" mindset, choosing not to believe no matter what.
When I started reading scripture as a non-believer, these verses that defined the terms allowed me to understand a lot of views that I previously thought were stupid, crazy, extreme or baseless. One of the most pivotal of words that affected my understanding was "holy". Worldly people in normal conversation use that word to mean "religious", "self-righteous" or "of the church" instead of the scriptural "set-apart" or "consecrated" for YHWH's use only and to be used only as YHWH has said. Hope, Faith, and Holy are the big three I used to be blinded to.
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