By Steve Backlund

Hope and faith are both necessary for victorious living. Hope is an overall, optimistic attitude about the future based on the goodness and promises of God. Faith is more specific in its beliefs, while hope is more general. Faith says, “THIS is going to happen.” Hope says, “I don’t know exactly what is coming, but I know good things are going to happen.”

Hope makes our faith healthy. Faith-people who do not value hope have a difficult time overcoming disappointment and struggle to delight in the Lord while waiting for promises or answered prayers to manifest. They are more prone to experience “spirits of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:3). They also tend to have a “tunnel vision” in how God is going to do things.* 

This is certainly what happened to the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They expected the Messiah to come in a way he did not come. They thought he was going to establish an earthly kingdom for them that would overcome political oppression and establish God’s government on earth. They had faith for that, and it blocked them from seeing what God was really doing. 

Many people miss what God is doing because of preconceived notions of: 

• Who He will use
• How it will look
• Believing future revivals should look like previous ones

In my lifetime, there have been many unexpected things God has done. Here are a few:

• The Jesus movement of the late sixties and early seventies - Long-haired, not so good smelling, hippies starting flocking to traditional churches. 
• The Charismatic renewal - This occurred approximately the same time as the Jesus movement. The Holy Spirit broke out in traditional and Catholic churches with tongues, encounters, healings, and miracles. 
• The Toronto Blessings of the 1990s - The Holy Spirit broke out in laughter, bizarre encounters, and deep intimacy. 

Each of these were rejected by many as being “not from God.” They broke the paradigm of what was expected, but history has shown they have powerfully and positively impacted the church and kingdom. 

In my book, Help! I Am a Pastor, I have 80 core values for creating strong, healthy leadership. One of the core values is this: I recognize the tendency that current moves of God are often persecuted by those impacted by a previous move of God. I explain this core value with the following:  “Because of this, I withhold judgment against new things happening (or new doctrinal emphasis) until I actually understand what is happening. I realize most great truths or outpourings are “messy” at first. I will not let excesses or weird spiritual happenings cause me to do a pendulum swing reaction to the other extreme. I will always look for what God is doing in the midst of seeming excesses or apparent theological extremes.”

So, let’s surrender our preconceived ideas of how it is going to look and expect the unexpected. This will set us up to be on the cutting edge of what God is doing now and in the future. 

* Hope without faith is also not healthy. Hope people who do not have faith for things will tend to be passive and fatalistic. They will tend not to fight to see promises fulfilled. More thoughts on this in a potential future blog. :-)