Love Hopes All Things - David Mitts

For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. (Rom 8:24-25)
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Love hopes.  Hope is probably one of the most fundamental gifts of the heart of God to man and the most misunderstood and casually dismissed as inferior to faith and the working of miracles.  I have heard hope defined as premature faith, kind of pilot light in the arsenal of God’s spiritual weapons.
And yet, in the context of love, hope is treated as a deeper reality than faith.   There is something fundamental to the life of the Spirit that is accessed by hope.
What is hope?  The culture teaches that hope is something like a wish or a wistful wondering.  This is revealed by statements such as, “I hope it happens.”  Biblical hope, however, is based on certainty rather than a wish.  There are many scriptures that develop what hope is, biblically but they can all be colored by our cultural perspective. So, let’s start with one that is clear: EPH 4:4.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling;(Eph 4:4).
You can’t be called to a maybe!  Imagine going for a job interview and meeting all the qualifications to be told that the job may not happen.  That’s very different from the job being real and you needing to qualify.  You have a calling, and it is certain.  In fact, it is so certain, that it is without the need to repent.
For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.(Rom 11:29)
Another translation says the gifts and callings are irrevocable.   Essentially, that means that your calling in life is beyond your performance as are your gifts.  They are immune to being revoked.  Even you cannot revoke them!  They are of God for you and through you.  
This is an idea of biblical hope.  It is a treasure of God for you and through you.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1Co 13:7)
Hope is an assurance from God of His promise to you and through you.  It is a product of true love.  Love doesn’t “see” through what is currently present but through the eyes of the promise, the gift and the calling of God.
The Hebrew word for hope is tikvah.  The national anthem of Israel is called Hatikvah, or the hope.
As long as in the heart, within
A Jewish soul still yearns,
And onward, towards the ends of the east,
an eye still gazes toward Zion;
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope two thousand years old,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem. The hope.
The root of tikvah is kavah.  Kavah means to be bound or restrained by something.  It is the heart condition of expectation.  My hope constrains me.  It holds me in place and guides me and directs me.  I am inseparable from it.  Israel was promised the return of Israel.  That hope was bound up in the heart of the Jewish people.  Throughout the centuries it cried to them in their soul.  It is the promise of God, the hope of Glory, the promise of His faithfulness.
The Bible tells us:
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.(Pro 13:12)
It hurts to have hope.  There is a hurt of expectation.  The delays of hope challenge our heart.  The waiting is the place where hope is challenged.  The Hebrew word for waiting is mashak and it is the picture of slowly drawing back the string of the bow/
In the waiting of hope, as the bow string of the promise is drawn back, all our doubts and weaknesses of faith and trust are exposed.  We knew with certainty at one point the promise that we are in hope about.  Yet as time stretches us we begin to wonder if the string will hold, will the promise happen?
This is a dangerous place for our heart.  We can “lose hope” and reduce our expectation to an interpretation of the hope, the promise.  2000 years to wait for a promise is a long time.  In Poland and Germany, it was easier to believe that Israel was a figurative promise.  God couldn’t mean the return to a physical strip of land in the middle east.
Yet after 2000 years, the promise, the hope was materialized. It wasn’t without struggle and it wasn’t without cost, but it materialized, a promise fulfilled.
How does this affect us?  Well, hope means to be bound to a promise.  So, when God gives us hope, He binds Himself to His Word or His promise.  Then we bind ourselves by receiving the promise, we have cemented the agreement.  The good news is that God’s promises never change.  The only thing that changes is our hope.  SO Yeshua told us:
"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."(Mat 16:19)
We thought that He was speaking about spiritual warfare against the demonic realm.  The reason we thought that was because of the strongman scripture.
And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them, "Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand. "If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? "If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason, they will be your judges. "But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. "Or how can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. "He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters. "Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.(Mat 12:25-32)
It seemed logical to think this was about binding demons and principalities over homes.  But I think the key to unlocking the principle of the “key” is the phrase, “he who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me scatters.” This is connected to our speaking for or against the Holy Spirit. How can we speak against the Holy Spirit? Well, charismatics have told us when we speak against the baptism with tongues that is blasphemy. BUT is that what Yeshua is telling us?
Remember His message is love.  Love hopes all things.  So what is this about?  I believe it is about hope.  You see hope is the binding force.  When we give hope to others, we see them through God’s eyes.  He promises them eternal life.  He promises heart healing.  He promises abundance.  He promises purpose and destiny.  When we share that message, we share hope.  It gives people the opportunity to bind themselves to that promise.  God already is bound.  All they must do is accept the bounds of hope.
It’s like a marriage.  The husband binds himself to his bride through a promise.  The promise is hope.  The wife then binds herself to her husband through her promise.  They come into hope together through their love. Love hopes all things.
The same is true with the Lord and us.  He has bound Himself through the death and resurrection of the cross.  This binding was because of love.  We then, as the bride give our promise to Him and hope is born in our hearts.
This is the hope that love is grounded in the binding of our hearts to a future with Him and with eternal life.
Now, let's look at a couple of scriptures to anchor this revelation:
and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  (Rom 5:4-5)
Hope does not disappoint. Why? Because of the love of God poured into our heart by the Holy Spirit.
Remember that love never fails.  Our hope, our confidence, and our expectation are built upon the promises of God.  The promises of God are built on the love of God, because He is love, and Love never fails.  We can be confident because the same Love that He is, is the love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Love hopes all things.  See it???
OK here’s another anchor:
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Rom 15:13)
God calls Himself, the God of hope and then when we are filled with joy and peace in believing, the outcome is abounding in hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hope is God, and the more hope we have, the more God we have.  Wow!  This is the explosive goodness of our God.
Finally, one more anchor:
to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.(Col 1:27)
The promise of your glory, your destiny comes from Christ in you, the anointing of Messiah in you which is the hope or the promise of “glory.”
Glory isn’t just a place called heaven.  Heaven is glorious to be sure.  But Glory is not for the afterlife but this life.  When we die, there is no more glory.  The only glory in death is resurrection and a glorified existence.  No! Glory is all about life.  Whose glory? God’s!  How is it expressed? By the children of God becoming their destiny in Him.  Like any father, our heavenly Father hungers for His children to become their unique and special destiny.  This is the Hope of Glory, the promise that was activated in our life when we received Yeshua, Christ-Messiah in you the promise of Glory.
Love hopes all things activation:  The key to hope as the expression of love is the promise of God.  He has a plan for us, a plan for good and NOT for evil, a plan with a future and a hope!
'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.(Jer 29:11)
In this activation, we are going to press in for the good plan.  We will be praying prophetically for one another what we see, hear or feel for our partner regarding the good plan God has for each of us.  This is a hope building exercise full of His love!

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