"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."First of all, this is a great Scripture to commit to memory, as these are words we all need to pray for ourselves and for those around us.
This is because it is assumed and implied that we are very needy of these things. In a life full of disappointments and discouraging reports, we need to be filled with "all joy and peace." Without and within there seems to be anything but joy and peace.
And so we with Paul need to pray.
As the heat of persecution against Christianity was being turned up in Rome, the believers in Rome, like a pot of boiling water on a stove, were being tempted to boil over and lash out at one another. Doing so would compromise the message of Christ's powerful gospel to save His people from not only the penalty of sin, but also the power and presence of it in our lives and churches.
And so Paul prays for them.
This is because God is not only the God "of" endurance (15:5); He is also the God "of" hope. That is, there is hope to be found in this hopeless world. And this hope is found only in, and is dispensed only by, "the God of hope."
What good news for us today! The triune God offers hope to all, and grants it to those who ask.
And He does so in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, through our faith in the gospel.*
Romans is all about God's power being unleashed through faith in the gospel of His Son (cf. Rom. 1:16). As we prayerfully gaze upon Christ by faith as we ingest the gospel, the Spirit produces joy and peace to our hearts, which overflows in [this true] hope. Let us marvel at this, for it is as glorious an expression of God's power in our lives as the Spirit producing saving faith in our hearts through the gospel.
In light of this logical progression, let's pray accordingly:
1. That we would not neglect meditating and rehearsing and feasting on and believing in the gospel. Every day.**
2. Let's pray that for those in the slough of despond, that God would send an "evangelist" to shine through the dark clouds with the light of the gospel of Christ.
3. Let's pray that we would not just 'acquaint' ourselves with the 'facts' of the gospel, but that we would be believing it***, for without faith in the gospel, true joy and true peace are elusive and illusionary.
4. Some people cannot be themselves in certain environments. But when we're at home, we can be who we are. In the same way, let us pray that our hearts are a suitable "home" for the Spirit (cf. Eph. 3:17; Col. 3:16). When He feels at home in our lives, He brings the gift of God's hope in "every" circumstance of life.**** The Spirit loves the heart where Christ dwells richly. So let's pray to this end, for ourselves, and for our brothers and sisters at GCC.
5. The world is full of counterfeit hopes. What people need to see in us is true and abounding hope (cf. 1 Pet. 3:15). Let's pray not only for a little hope here and there, but for hearts and lives that are so "full" of Christ our hope (cf. 1 Tim. 1:2) that they irrepressibly "abound" and refresh this parched landscape around us.
May this be so, Lord Jesus!!
In Christ, the hope of the world,
pastor ryan
* literally, Paul says, "Now may the God of the hope fill you." Paul is not just talking about 'any' kind of hope here, but "the" hope that comes as a fruit and when we see and believe in the gospel (cf. 8:20-25).
** that Paul uses an aorist tense for the verb may imply that we need 'fresh' fillings regularly. Thus we need to pray regularly to be 'refilled.'
*** the Greek verb "to believe" is a present infinitive, meaning that as we believe on and rest in the gospel, the Spirit produces all joy and peace and hope in our lives.
**** the Greek word pas/pan is translated "all" by the ESV, but also conveys the idea of "every", as in we need this gospel-empowered hope for "every kind" of circumstance or need.
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