Faith vs. Hope

((This is our 250th post! Cue the Hallelujah Chorus and confetti flying everywhere!))

I just got off of the phone with a very dear friend of mine, and I wanted to share something that she said with you.

In my mind, faith and hope are very similar. If I have hope, I have always thought that I have faith, too. "Well, this situation is bound to get better eventually!" I say as optimistically as possible. That's hope.

Or...

"In the name of Jesus, I call this situation in line with the perfect, heavenly will of God!"

That's faith. She backed it up with a scripture that I haven't thought about in quite awhile:

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Mark 11:24

Those are the words of your Jesus.

Here's how she put it: "Hope is for the future. Faith is for right now." Notice how Jesus puts "believe that you have received it" in past tense. We must believe that the things we need are already ours, because that's faith.

Otherwise, all that we have is hope- and hope might take longer than we should be willing to hold out for.