The Power of Hope

I started a new sermon series this week at my current church, where I’m the interim pastor. I’m calling it “The Remedy of Hope” and it’s been interesting as I’ve prepared for the series; choosing passages and planning the structure of it. Interesting in that it’s simply not like me to be so… positive.

I say this with a caveat: if you know me and have met me, I’m a joyful person. I have Jesus and my hope is in Him. Yet I was also wired with “worst-case” personality syndrome, which I find myself leaning into more naturally than I do into a hopeful one. I’m a 4 on the Enneagram, which I’m told is the Eeyore of personalities.

There was a scientist names Curt Richter, in the 1950s, who ran an experiment on rats as he was studying psychology.

And morbidly, he took a bunch of rats and put them in buckets full of water to see how long it would take them to drown. This is a famous experiment! He used domesticated rats and wild rats – each time observing that all of them drowned within a few minutes, even though wild rats are far more resilient out in the world. He expected them to survive longer. But no, both kinds died after just a few minutes. He decided to take his experiment further. He took the same kinds of rats and this time, he noted the moment at which they gave up then, just before they were about to die, he rescued them. He saved them, held them for a while and helped them recover.

He then placed them back into the buckets and started the experiment all over again. When the rats were placed back into the water they swam and swam, for much longer than they had the first time they were placed in the buckets. The only thing that had changed was that they had been saved before, so had hope this time.

When the rats learned that they were not doomed, that the situation was not lost, that there might be a helping hand –  that they had a reason to keep swimming—they did. They did not give up. They kept going.

By the end of his experiment the rats swam for almost 3 days before they died, compared to the few minutes they swam when they didn’t realize they might be saved.

So apparently hope does that.

I fight against my Eeyore nature when thing are hard, uncertain, complicated, or messy. And this only shifted in my once it was pointed out that this was my default. When I make this shift in my mindset, and when I lead as a pastor from that mindset, I’m amazed at the difference it makes in my own heart and in the attitude of those around me. Because here’s the rub: who am I to limit God? Why should I focus on what is merely attainable when I simply don’t know what God has planned?

Hope is a powerful thing.

I don’t want to discount practicality, nor have I any interest into veering off into prosperity gospel territory. There will be no “name it and claim it” declarations here. I’m seeking to find the right balance of Jesus in the garden: willing to ask for the big and impossible thing, but also to submit to the sovereign will of my Heavenly Father.

I’ve written a lot about expectations over the years (click the topic link “expectations” on your right to scan through them) and it’s important to note how hope and expectations are deeply connected. No one like disappointment, and I think that’s precisely why it’s hard for us to hope. But I also find myself less disappointed when things don’t happen who I hope them to, because I know and trust in who God is. And much of that is surrendering to the truth that He allows what He allows and withholds what He withholds. I almost never understand why (expect maybe years later) but when I understand His sovereign will within the foundational truth He is a good and loving God, who loves me with a hesed love, I become much more willing to accept what I do not understand.