Faith is the God-given ability which makes its dreams come true. While hope pictures and longs
for substance, faith enjoys! Hope is not yet persuaded to believe. It lies passive and latent. It says, “Yes, I believe,” but remains dormant. Faith has the will to step into the direction of its desire as though it already possessed, for it does possess in the act of believing.
Faith has that dominate expectant attitude. Hope dreams but does not actually expect to receive what it hopes for because it makes no preparation for possession. If it did, it would not be hope; it would be faith. That’s the difference!
Hope expects God to drop its desire on the doorstep “someday,” while faith gets ready to receive. You see, faith does the receiving, not God. He does the giving. It’s man that exercises faith. Hope is only a dream; faith gives substance (reality) to the thing once hoped for (Heb. 11:1).
Faith is turning on the electricity and calling the water department so you can move into your dream house. It is getting ready with an expectancy that moves you to preparation. Hope is only an illusion, while faith is the substance of the thing dreamed--the very confidence to grasp. Hope desires--but cannot activate the ability to produce; hope is not creative.
Faith is the releasing and setting in motion of one’s desire with the absolute expectation to obtain response. Faith is leaving behind the days of idle dreaming and going forth to take possession. It is the dissatisfaction of only dreaming and becomes the persistence to enjoy. It is the laying claim (ownership) on one’s desire even before he feels the weight of it in his physical hand. Faith is believing that WHEN one prays he receives (Mark 11:24).
Let’s look at the hoper now that we have looked at faith. The hoper will soon become weary. Prov. 13:12 says, “Hope deferred (delayed-postponed) makes the heart sick...” In other words without an appropriating-attitude one becomes weary in well doing. He (the hoper) may hope for a long while but eventually he will grow weary and become discouraged. Unavoidably he will begin to murmur and complain because he thinks that his hope is faith. The hoper will feel sorry for himself, and in place of the real thing, he will turn to others for their comfort and sympathy. He has no comfort of his own. He has no substance. He must feed upon others and what they have. The hoper takes sympathy instead of substance because he has been deceived into thinking that if he hopes hard and long enough he will someday possess. But faith doesn’t happen that way. The hoper does not realize that it is doing God’s Word that brings him personal possession. Faith is acting on what you believe. Faith is acting upon your confession and your conviction.
If the hoper does not see the error of his ways, he may cry to others, blame them, and sometimes even God for his failure. The hoper becomes bitter but seldom better.
The hoper becomes discouraged because his dreams never become reality. He desires but cannot obtain. He is frustrated because he asks but cannot seem to arrive. He longs for but again cannot possess. This is simply because he only hopes and he really does not believe. He must realize that his very own hopes are deceiving and deluding him. He is like the one mentioned in the book of James where the Word says, “But be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only deceiving your own selves. For if any man be a hearer of the Word and not a doer (believer), he is like unto a man beholding his real face in a mirror: For he sees his true self and then goes his way and immediately forgets what kind of species he is.”--James 1:22-25. He has not learned the difference between hope and faith (desiring and possessing). “He that believeth hath...” I John 5:10-12. He that hopes has not. Believing or acting on what you believe brings possession.
The one who only hopes does not know that hope (the futuristic attitude) will leave him one day stripped naked of all that his heart could have possessed and enjoyed now by faith. One day he will find that he has been tricked into believing that hope was what he needed when faith was knocking all the while at his hearts door. (Faith comes by hearing THE WORD. See Rev. 3:20.)
At the hoper's gravestone, it will read, “Here lies a hoper; he lived with nothing and he died with nothing because he only hoped.” What a tragedy that so many Christians have been tricked by Satan and made to believe that hope is faith. One must believe against hope as Abraham (Rom. 4:18).
Many hearts are robbed of comfort because they feel that “someday,” all will be well--“When we all get to heaven things will be better by and by.” They have not yet realized that the kingdom of Heaven has come and is at hand, that they can lay hold of all that it provides now. Many people live with only a hope, a hope that evades them every time they would grasp it. But faith is always now; hope is always future. Hope is waiting while faith is taking. There is no substance in hope--only in faith.
Many worship a Christ who is still only a hope to them. They long for the day when He may return and then He will heal their broken hearts when it is now that their heart aches. They have not understood that NOW is the accepted time, that NOW IS the day of their salvation.
Their Christ is a dream, an illusion, a hope--a hope that is limited and does not possess the ability to meet their needs in this day and hour. They look afar off over the horizon when Christ says to them, “Behold, look, I stand at your door and knock; and with me I bring the substance of your hopes, your desires, and your dreams.”
Is not the believer in Christ? Is not Christ in the believer? Then there is no more waiting. NOW is the accepted time. God would have us to know that IN HIM there is nothing lacking. He is all sufficient and we in Him are complete, entire, lacking nothing. Christ has been made by God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. In knowing this, our hope becomes faith, and this faith gives us substance. For faith IS the SUBSTANCE of the thing once hoped for. Christ is this substance--reality, and He lacks nothing. All that He is we have become because faith is provided in Him.
Yes, CHRIST IS the substance of things hoped for the evidence (presence) of unseen realty. He now Lives and dwells within the believer's heart--but not by hope. It’s by faith!--Eph 3:17