Hope For The Future

[Edwin]

The Apostle Paul said that if we have hope only in this life we are of all men/women most miserable! But we do not have hope only in this life, but we have hope of eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ! The hope of Glory that we have within us is a down payment or a deed of eternal life in our future. We not only have eternal life that will be in our future, but we have the hope of eternal life within us. We have eternal life now! The Bible says that the person who lives in sin is dead while that person is living, but the person who live for Jesus Christ is alive through Jesus while living. Do you really want to live? You can experience real life in Jesus Christ that does not just start in the future, or does not start when you die or are resurrected, but you can experience real life in Jesus Christ now, and the same eternal life that you will live with forever. A person in our church many years ago used to get up in church and tell the people that when she came to Jesus she found a fairy tale that was really true! Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Personal Savior and live forever with Him in your heart, and have the Holy Spirit to lead you, guide you, and comfort you in everything you do, because what you will be doing will be in the Will of God for you! Do you want that? You can have that! All you have to do is accept it! It is free for you! Are you not good enough? The Apostle Paul was a murderer, and he found life in Jesus Christ. One of the thieves that hung with Jesus on the cross was dying because he had been a bad person. He asked Jesus to remember Him, and Jesus said to him, "This day you will be with me in paradise!" This is real hope for the future! And you can have it today!

[mystic]

I would point out that there are 2 ways. Ed refers to the easier way that people usually understand. It is easy to tell a positive command, such as "you should want this, put your energy and hopes in this". However, this is also a way of struggle, because we are creating a motion of our will that has to exit a scheme of mind and break it. And therefore, we are creating an unbalance. If there is not a true rebirth, our life, environment, everything comes back to us to restore the previous order of things and make balanced the unbalance. And thus we find ourselves that we can never reach a perfect faith, a perfect hope. We are miserable and always fall back again to sin.

The second way is more hidden and is in the image of God. He does not intervene in human matters, usually. This is the way of "not". Not hope, not expect anything, etc.
Renouncing to everything in our current life as well in the future life annulls the issue of balance/unbalance. There is nothing more to balance or counter-balance. When we reach this state of inner calmness, our will is free to move in the Lord without constraints, without falling back into the net of the Tree of Good and Evil. This is an ascetic way, such as those holy hermits that secluded themselves from society, just to enforce that inner silence, which led to an authentic communion with God. This way is usually very difficult to follow and only for a few, because the human mind is made so that it cannot "understand" negative commands (for example: do not hope). It is easy to do, but hard "not to do". We can picture in our mind something we can do and we can take strength from it. But how do we picture something that does not exist? It is the same for God, if you think. We cannot picture Him.

Strangely, many things require the complete loss of hope before they start working. You can call it also "abandonement".