My Gospel Thoughts: Hope

In my recent ongoing personal trial, I have been praying and hoping for something that has yet to happen for us. Because of this I was losing patience, hence the reason for my first two topics. Through learning that trials are needed and that patience has to do with God’s timetables over ours I have come to believe that it is still okay to hope. It’s also okay to feel a little sad if what we hope for doesn’t happen yet. We just need to be careful about this emotion turning into bitterness and leading us away from Christ and our Heavenly Father.

On the church’s website it points out that the meaning of hope is often misunderstood in our world today. We often think of hope as wanting something but not being sure that the thing will happen or come true. In the gospel the word hope is seen as unwavering and sure. The exact definition of hope on LDS.org is ‘the confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness’. The word confident sticks out to me. I usually use the worldly definition of hope in my day to day life. My hope is usually followed with a hint of doubt. It turns out that I didn’t understand this word myself.

When we have hope, we TRUST God’s promises. Real hope is more than just wishful thinking. Hope is having the assurance that if we do “the works of righteousness,” we “shall receive our reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come” (D&C 59:23). In chapter 7 of the book of Moroni we are taught that we can have hope because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ: “What is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise” (Moroni 7:41).

Something new that I learned about hope is that it can be strengthened. Hope can be strengthened through keeping the commandments, studying scriptures, praying, and repenting of our sins. In Alma 22:16 we read “if thou wilt repent of all thy sins, and will bow down before God, and call on His name in faith, believing that ye shall receive, then shalt thou receive the hope which thou desirest”.

In a 1998 general conference talk Elder Neal A. Maxwell described hope as a realistic anticipation which takes the form of a determination – not only to survive adversity but, moreover to endure well to the end.

I have hope that my trial will pass. It’s because of hope that I can continue to develop patience. I have hope that I’ll receive the blessings that were promised to me. I can use hope to help me get by day to day. In my opening paragraph I wrote that I believe it is okay to still hope when things don’t go the way we would like, but now I know that we must hope. It is because of hope that we can see past the here and now and focus on an eternal perspective.

I do want to mention that feeling sadness during adversity is not a weakness. It's perfectly okay to feel sorrow. I once read a blog that pointed out that the shortest verse in the scriptures is two words. "Jesus wept". Christ was not lacking in faith of his own divine power. He was not questioning his Father or falling to weakness. Christ wept because he felt sorrow.

This very week I had a moment of sadness come over me, but that moment did not take away from my hope. We cannot know joy without pain, happiness without grief. Hope is knowing that what God has planned is far much better than what we could ever anticipate; even if right now might be difficult.