The God of Hope

⁴ For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
¹³ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 15:4, 13

An Australian Community Survey conducted by National Church Life Survey (NCLS) Research in 2025 found that hope about the future of the world is on the decline. Only 19% Australians said they felt hopeful or very hopeful about the future of the world, compared to 24% in 2024. Around four in ten people (44%) described themselves as being not hopeful or low in hope.

The survey found that the issues affecting people’s sense of hope include war and conflict, economic insecurity and the climate.

The survey also revealed a fascinating insight about hope: the closer to home we get, the more hopeful Australians feel. In the 2025 survey, only 19% felt hopeful about the future of the world. But that figure rose to 29% when considering the future of Australia, 32% for their local community, and 44% for their personal future. Hope increases as we zoom in on the more local and personal spheres of life.

God’s Word tells us that hope increases even more when we zoom in on something – or Someone – else, the hope that is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hope doesn’t exist in a vacuum, or by itself. Hope always has an ‘object’ – something that gives us reason or cause for hope, or something in which we can put our confidence.

There are two main places we can look for hope. First, we can look to things in this world. However, things in this fallen world are bound to let us down. People don’t always behave the way they ought to. The fallen natural world does not function as God intended it to do.

In short, our own sinfulness and life in a sin-ridden world will always destabilize hope, first by causing us to look in the wrong place for our hope and then by causing us to lose hope as the things to which we look inevitably let us down.

The good news of the Christian Gospel is that there is another place we can look for hope. St Paul calls him ‘the God of hope’. He is the object of our hope, the one who gives us reason for hope and the one in whom we can put our complete confidence.

By sending his Son as our Saviour, God has freed us from needing to look for hope in this broken world. By his powerful grace he has connected us to a hope which St Paul describes as a ‘hope that does not disappoint us’ (Romans 5:5).

God connects us to this hope, ‘through the encouragement of the Scriptures’ (Romans 15:4) and through the gift of his own Son – the Word made flesh – as living proof of this hope (Romans 15:8). Jesus came; he lived, died and rose again so we may know the hope to which he has called us. He is our hope in a world where hope is diminishing. By his grace and power, in Word and Sacrament, we remain connected to him and to his gift of eternal hope.

We may not always feel hopeful about things in this world, but the Scriptures reassure us that our lives in Jesus can ‘overflow with hope’; and that it is possible to be ‘filled with all joy and peace as we trust in him’. That is not 19% hopeful, but 100% hopeful!

As we near the end of one year and look toward the next – whatever it may hold – may St Paul’s prayer of hope be our personal prayer, and our heartfelt desire for each other and for all people:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!