Beginning Again: The Hope Of The Gospel

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” ~Romans 15:13

Late summer is the time that families begin to turn their attention away from summer and vacations to consider the beginning of another new school year. There is excitement and anxiety as children ponder their entry into a new grade, with new classmates, and possibly at a new school or homeschool. This is also a great time for parents to seize the day and an opportunity to practice the discipline of building hope in their children.

Central to the worldview of the Gospel is the doctrine and practice of repentance. New beginnings are the promise of the Gospel, a central point of the biblical worldview, and a necessity for avoiding mental problems.

The diminution and dilution of the comprehensive message of the Gospel has had terrible consequences in our lives and culture. The biblical Gospel has been so neutered as to limit it to the “plucking of brands from the burning” when in reality it is the message and promise of God to restore all that the fall corrupted, or as Issac Watts has written in his wonderful hymn Joy to the World, “as far the curse is found.” The hope and promise of the Gospel is a comprehensive hope that promises to restore all that has been damaged by the fall of man into sin, beginning with the renewal of the heart of man by the power of the Holy Spirit. But the hope of the Gospel is not limited to the heart of man. God’s grace and the renewal of the Gospel seeks to restore all things (Matthew 28:18-20).

The failure to see this comprehensive hope of Gospel renewal has led to all sorts of faithless pessimism among God’s people. “Don’t polish brass on a sinking ship” has been a by-word for all of my Christian life. It is symptomatic of the failure of God’s people to understand the comprehensive nature of the Gospel because of the failure of the pulpit to teach the comprehensive nature of the Gospel, and evidence of our surrender to anti-Gospel pessimism.

The stories of G.A. Henry are exceedingly valuable tools to inculcate a mindset of hope in our children. His historical fiction uses real history to unfold the lives of men and women who were grounded upon, and lived in terms of, the hope of the comprehensive Gospel of Christ. These are people who applied the mindset of the hope of the comprehensive Gospel to their real life circumstances. These are true stories of perseverance through amazing difficulties, trials, persecutions, and challenges. Stories that flesh out the reality of Gospel hope in the midst of a fallen and broken world. Stories that help prepare your children to face a life that will bring them many and unexpected difficulties and pain, yet enable them to face them in hope.

C.S. Lewis observed this about the centrality of hope for this life and the next: “Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”

Hope, within the framework of the biblical worldview, is certainty. It is a certainty based on revealed reality. It is grounded upon the certainty of God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture and His Son Jesus, the certain of the fulfillment of all that God has promised, fulfilled in time and in history, which is grounded upon the certainty of God’s unchanging character.

Hope for the Christian is with an exclamation mark (!) while for the non-Christian it is with a question mark (?) … Simply, it is the difference between certainty and uncertainty.

The loss of Gospel hope is deadly to an individual and to society. The darkness of depression is always accompanied by the loss of that hope. Embracing and applying the comprehensive Gospel is medicine for the soul.

Thomas Chalmers, a Scottish minister used to renew and restore Scotland in the latter part of the 19th century, observed, “…the sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you.” Here is the foundation of hope.

Make the self-conscious practice of renewing hope a regular part of your daily practice, routines, mindset, and family life. Celebrate the grace of God and the hope of the Gospel. Celebrate the renewal that occurs over and over again when there is repentance and the untold opportunities to start again. The start of a new school year, the start of another year of marriage (an anniversary), the start of another year of life (a birthday), the start of a new life with the birth of a new child or grandchild, the start of any new beginning is a signpost to hope. A marker to remember the “God of all hope.” Find reasons to celebrate hope and new beginnings.

Include hope building as a part of your child training and homeschool curriculum. How you ask? I’m glad you did! Read the Bible daily and thereby renew your hope prayerfully (Romans 12:12) every day (Psalm 130:5). Celebrate hope with gratitude (Proverbs 10:28). Celebrate the incremental progress that children make day-by-day and year-by-year. Celebrate new books, and new stories, and new school supplies, and new opportunities for growth, and new challenges. Celebrate the fact that you are preparing this child for the time when you will launch them in adulthood, on their way to eternity. Celebrate your success and repentance from your failures.

Celebrate the hope of eternity in your everyday life. Make it a practice, a habit, and pass it on to your children.