Hope: The Goal-Setter of Your Faith

Faith is the substance of things, but hope is a necessity. Sometimes people say, “You don’t get anything by hoping.” And that’s true to a certain extent, for there is no substance to hope. Yet, hope is a very important partner to faith. Hope is the goal-setter. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. The substance of “things”— what things? The things you hoped for. What do we hope for? We hope for the things that God has given us.

That’s why the Bible says in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith it is impossible to please God. In other words, God is not pleased when we don’t enter into the provisions He made for us. Some things we will never enter in to except through faith. God’s willingness is multiplied to us through the knowledge of God. We must know what God  has given, or we can’t have faith in that promise.

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his  divine  power  hath  given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness (2 Peter 1:2-3).

God’s Word Gave Hope to Abraham

Look at what Abraham did when there was no hope: As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations, before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall they seed be (Romans 4:17-18).When there was no hope, Abraham believed in hope. There are people today who have no hope medically. Doctors have done all they can do. When the doctor says there is no hope, do what Abraham did: go to the Word of God and get supernatural hope. He decided to agree with God. That’s what we are doing when we make a decision to confess the Word of God. We are coming over to God’s point of view by saying what God declared about us.

Some might say, “There is no hope, so you might as well give up.” You can always go to the Word of God and get some hope. I don’t care if it’s physical, financial, or spiritual. When your situation seems to be hopeless, go to the Word of God. God’s Word is hope for you.

Hope is a goal-setter. Your faith must have a goal.

If you don’t set any goals, or if you don’t know where you are going, then how will you know when you get there? How long will it take you to get there? You don’t know where you are going, and you don’t know how to get there, but a goal gives direction.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for. There must be some direction of faith. Some have said, “Well, I’m just waiting on God. I’m believing God.” Some of those people have been waiting for years, and they haven’t done anything. They are not waiting on God – God has been waiting on them. They have made a decision by doing nothing.

When there was no hope, Abraham decided to believe in hope. He made a decision to believe God’s Word. That is where his hope came from – the Word of God. Don’t try to use faith where hope should be, and don’t try to use hope where faith should be. Hope has no substance. Faith is the substance of the thing hoped for. So there must be faith and hope. They are partners. They go together. Faith is the divine energy of God. It comes by hearing God’s Word. It is the substance of things desired.

Natural Things Reflect Spiritual Things

Sometimes, when we see these things in the Bible, we tend to take them completely out of their natural setting. When Jesus talked about sowing a seed, He didn’t take it away from the soil and say, “This is a spiritual thing.” We make a serious mistake when we totally separate the natural from the spiritual. God’s Word is spiritual, but it works like a natural seed. The heart of man is spiritual, but it works like natural soil.

Let me give you an illustration of how the heart is designed to produce. Let’s bring it down to the natural level where we can all understand it.

There is a piece of equipment at your house called a thermostat that helps you understand all about hope.

The thermostat is the heart of the heating and cooling system, and it is designed by an engineer to control the temperature of your house. That’s all it was designed to do. It is designed to produce whatever you dial into that little thermostat on the wall, which we will call a goal-setter. The heart of that unit was designed to produce whatever temperature you dial into that thermostat.

The numbers on that thermostat represent degrees of temperature. Let’s say it is 100 degrees outside, and you want the temperature to be 70 degrees inside. Your job would be to turn that goal-setter to 70 degrees. As long as it is kept on 70 degrees, that unit will  work night and day to see that the goal is reached.

You wouldn’t have to fast and pray that it would get cool in your house. The unit knows how to do it. That is what it was designed to do. You would simply dial the goal-setter, and it would send an impulse to the heart of that unit and say, “Get us some cold air in here. It’s hot.” With the thermostat on 70 degrees when it’s 100 degrees outside, you have created a problem for the heart of that unit. But it can handle it. That is all it knows to do, but it can do it well.

That unit won’t wash your clothes, it won’t cook your dinner, it won’t clean your house. It wasn’t designed to do those things. It was designed for one purpose: to produce what you have dialed into the goal-setter.

The Heart Produces

Now let’s relate this to the heart of man. The heart of the heating-cooling unit is like the heart of man. You must set the goal for the thing you want produced. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and hope is the goal-setter. Hope works in the head. What you continue to speak becomes your goal. Your head is the goal-setter. When there is no hope, there is no goal set for the better—although “no hope” sets negative goals.

Like the thermostat on the wall, your spoken words send an impulse into your spirit. By saying, “In the name of Jesus, by His stripes I am healed. I am redeemed from the curse of the Law, and I forbid sickness and disease in this body,” you set your goal on healing.

What are you doing by that action? Someone may say, “You are lying, because you are sick.” You may be sick all right, but the purpose of speaking God’s Word is to set your goal and plant seed. Some people don’t understand how you can say you’re healed by the stripes of Jesus when you are hurting. But you must decide to establish that goal regardless of present circumstances.

Let’s relate this concept to the way a thermostat works. Let’s say it is 90 degrees in your house, and you come in and turn the thermostat to 70 degrees. Someone might say, “Hey! You can’t do that. That’s a lie. It’s not 70 degrees in here.”

But it’s not a lie. That’s the way to make the heating-cooling unit work the way it was designed. That’s the reason you set it on 70. You are calling for that temperature. You are calling for the temperature that is not manifest. That is the way the system is designed, and that is the only way it will work. If you set 90 degrees in the thermostat when it is 90 degrees already, there will be no change. The unit will remain inactive, producing nothing.

The Heart Is True to Demands Placed on It

Surely no one would be foolish enough in natural things to argue with you when you turned the thermostat to 70 degrees. But they will when you set your goal on God’s promises. Some will argue that you are lying. You have to give some time and meditation to these  things to fully understand the design of the heart (spirit) of man.

It’s easy to understand the way that goal-setter (thermostat) works. By looking at this example, it’s easier to understand that faith and confession work that way on your heart. You may not believe it works that way. You may not like it, but that’s the way it works.

No one would argue with you about turning that thermostat to achieve the desired temperature, and no one would call you a liar. They understand that it will be 70 degrees in the room in a few minutes. The heart (spirit) of man is like the heart of that heating-cooling unit. It is designed by God to produce the very thing that you plant in it. You plant it or set the goal by speaking it.

When you first hear your voice recorded, you usually think it is someone else. You can’t believe it is you, because you have been hearing your voice mostly with your inner ear. Your voice is picked up by the inner ear and fed directly into your spirit. When you heard your voice recorded, you heard it for the first time totally with the outer ear and could not believe it was you.

God designed you this way.

Your voice feeds the impulse of what you desire right down into the garden spot, the heart, which is the soil (Luke 13:18-19.) There it will produce what you are speaking.

It is also renewing your mind as you are confessing God’s Word.

Suppose someone turns the thermostat to 70 degrees and then, in a little while, they turn it to 95. Then they turn it to 60. It will not work properly that way. It will probably blow a fuse. It is not designed to be flipped from one extreme to the other all at once. It will blow a circuit.

Someone might say, “Who would be dumb enough to do that?” Christians do that all the time. They start making faith confessions: “Glory to God, my needs are met according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” They say that for a few days, then they look at circumstances and say, “Dear God, it’s never going to happen. We will never get these debts paid. I don’t know what we are going to do.” In speaking this way, they just changed the  thermostat.

Set your spiritual thermostat where you want it and leave it there. That unit will work day and night to produce what you have dialed into it. It will never argue with you!

If you’re not satisfied with the spiritual harvest you’re getting, check up on the goal you’re setting and the seed you’re sowing.

The soil of your heart does not decide whether what you plant (say) is right or wrong. Its job is to produce the information needed to cause what you are saying (planting) to come to pass, whether it is right, wrong, or indifferent. Mark 11:23 is not a one-way street. But Jesus only told us how to operate faith on the positive side. He didn’t want us to operate the principle on the negative side.

“For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23).Here's another way to say it: Believe that those things you sow will come to pass, because the saying is the sowing.

The goal is to be set on removing the mountain or the tremendous problems you face. Your hope then will cause you to speak your faith. What you believe for may not happen overnight, but it will happen if you are diligent to agree with God and confess what He said. Confess God’s promises daily! Your faith will grow. Your productivity will increase. And God's promise will manifest.