As we walk through the season of Advent, we begin to hear more and more about hope. 

But like joy, hope is often hard to define and hard to know if we have it. 

Many of us confuse hope and optimism. We use words like: wish, desire, want, and dream. But hope isn’t any of those things. 

But hope is everywhere in our daily lives, especially at Christmas: 

• I hope it doesn’t rain today. 
• I hope we get a white Christmas. 
• I hope I get engaged at Christmas!
• I hope they win the championship. 
• I hope we don’t fight at Christmas. 
• I hope our kids get along. 
• I hope we don’t get sick this week. 
• I hope our kids sleep past 6 am on Christmas morning. 

When life, relationships, our jobs, or our health don’t go the way we hoped, we try to protect ourselves by becoming cynical or by deadening our desires. We think, “Maybe if I want this less, it won’t hurt as much.” So, we try to want marriage or kids less. We try to want to be retired a little less. We try to stop dreaming about that house or dream job. But all that does is make us want something more, and the heartache grows. 

In Advent, we can bring our longings and yearnings to God. We don’t have to hold them in. I love what Tish Harrison Warren says about hope: Christian hope is not a “whistling in the dark,” a way to minimize the stark facts of reality. It is a conviction about the ultimate outcome of history, which is not in jeopardy: Jesus Christ has conquered sin and death.

In Advent, we are told that our hope is assured. Peter writes in 1 Peter: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

Our inheritance is assured in Christ. 

But why is hope so hard for us? Especially at Christmas?

Adam Young, in his excellent book Make Sense of Your Story, said, “The biggest reason we hate hope is that hope forces us to wrestle with God.”

Hope forces us to come to God and say, “This is what you promised. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. This isn’t supposed to hurt this much.”

When we do that, and when you read the people of Scripture from Jonah, Abraham, Elizabeth, Sarah, Moses, Paul, the list goes on, you find men and women who have wrestled with God. 

But that’s only the first step to hope. 

The second step, then, is to surrender to God. And this is so, so hard.

Dan Allender said, “The word surrender implies there has already been a long, drawn-out, bloody war. You can’t surrender until you have fought with God. In war, you don’t surrender until there is no hope left for accomplishing your objective and defeating your enemy. You fight until you have no strength left to fight any longer. Surrender only comes in the moment of exhaustion.”

In Advent, we come to God and say, “I’m tired. I’m exhausted from fighting for hope,” and we throw ourselves on the mercy of God. 

Advent reminds us that we can take off our armor, we can cry out, “God, I am hopeless,” and know that He meets us.

And some of us need to stop pretending to have hope. We need to be honest with ourselves and someone close to us.