Faith, Hope, & Love

Faith, Hope, & Love

By Trey Armstrong

These three words often get thrown around, especially these days when we live in a society that is a ‘throw away’ culture. We buy something we desire, get tired of it & then throw it away (or put it in storage). Man seems to be caught in a vicious cycle of desire. A desire that is never satisfied. Just take a listen to contemporary secular music, it is all about desire, something that someone ‘thinks’ they want. Where is our faith?

As soon as the desire is met, then the desire moves on to another object of affection/attention. This is the proverbial carrot in front of the horse. Distraction after distraction fills our lives, then one day our card is pulled & the game is over. What did we accomplish? What did we achieve? I mean really, what was all of this for? What do we place our hope in?

Our Creator & sustainer exists outside of the time space paradigm. For us, it seems time is all we have, & there is no shortage of unproductive forces chomping at the bit to steal our time or hood wink us into giving it away. What do we love?

We have to ask ourselves, where do these distracting thoughts come from? Are they our own? The answers to these two questions may surprise you. These thoughts do not come from us & they are not ours. They exist on the outer perimeter of our awareness (not the deeper inner awareness that does belong to us). Many of us who are a little older remember the old cartoons where there is an Angel on one shoulder & a devil/demon on the other. Believe it or not there is a lot of truth in this illustration that many are familiar with. The Angelic thoughts & influences are very rare & many who think they are receiving some type divine revelation are being deceived by the evil forces. Most of our thoughts come from the devil whispering in our ear (feeding us thoughts & images). It is up to our conscience (the being within us) to play the role of referee between the two forces. The Bible mentions that we are to ‘test the spirits’. It also mentions that Satan himself can transform into an ‘Angel of light’. This is a sobering reminder of just how tricky the chess-board of life can be.

The thoughts & images provided by the ‘prince of this world’ & his cohorts are only there to pull us off of the path of total restoration. We have to diligently guard our eyes & even our thoughts. When these images come to us we have to fight hard as not to pull them into our inner awareness & make them our own.

Man is enslaved by his desires that are fed to him through the five senses. To combat this man must develop a sixth sense or spiritual awareness. This goes completely against the animalistic nature of man. We are a composite being made of spirit & matter, but in this ‘world’ we are only fed those things that appeal to our base nature so as to increase our desire for these empty forms of pleasure.

So when it comes to faith, are we going to put our faith in Him who can work all things together for good? Or are we going to put faith into empty desires that promise the treasures of this world? A wise Rabbi once said “store up your treasures in heaven”. Treasures in heaven last forever, treasures of this world are temporal like our time here, a mere vapor used to distract us & pacify the ego (the devil inside).

What do we place our hope in? Do we hope for things we ‘think’ we want or desire? Or do we place our hope on the solid rock of our salvation? When we hope for the greater good for all others & ourselves despite our own selfish desires then we have truly defeated the devil. Not my will, but Thy will Lord do we place our hope. This is true freedom that frees us from the shackles of empty desire.

What do we love? When discussing Faith, Hope, & Love, the latter is definitely the most complex of the three. Truthfully, what is love? Do we even know? For most, they think of love in terms of something that gives them some type of pleasure. When the oxytocin wears off & the hormones die down, is there any love left? Even in systems like Kabbalah there is a saying that true love doesn’t exist in this world. This is known as ‘the love of fish’…Do you love fish? Yes. Then, why do you eat them? This can seem a little tongue & cheek, but there is evidence of this. Many people think they love something or someone only if there is a benefit to them personally. Let someone not get what they want & then you will see how much they ‘love’. The saying, it is more blessed to give than receive, is true. When we give without expecting anything in return, then we are more like the Creator. He is constantly bestowing to us whether we realize it or not. The closest example of this love is often seen with a mother’s love for a child. She will sacrifice her own wants & needs to provide for & nurture her child. No matter how much her little one (or big one, if they are grown) messes up or makes mistakes, she still has an unconditional love for them. So is the love of the Creator for us. It is said that He makes the sun to shine on the wicked & the righteous. It is also said that He takes no pleasure in the punishment of the wicked. Those of us who are parents know that we do not like having to discipline our children. But do we discipline them when needed because of indifference to them or because of love for them? The Creator has placed things in our life to give us all the tools we need to correct our soul. Most of the time, these are things that we would never choose due to our limited understanding. His love for us is far greater than we could ever imagine. When we can be altruistic in giving along with the nurturing love of a mother, then we have a little taste of what true love is. God is love!

In the book “Faith, Hope, & Love” by Emil Brunner. In regards to faith he writes “It means that God, mystery in Himself, has removed the veil & revealed His heart to man, has changed man’s condition entirely, from that of a godless rebel to that of a beloved son”. When writing about hope he says “It means that life as a whole, & particularly human life, is thought of as a general or universal process, a movement upward from a lower to higher level, whatever the criterion of this lower & higher may be.” As for love (God’s love) he states “His love, therefore, is entirely spontaneous, motivated only by His will to give, to share, to communicate His own, an expression solely of His free will. He loves for no other reason than that He wants to love.”

“…faith is a relation to God’s act of revelation & redemption in the past, & that hope is the expectation of what God will do in the future,…love is the way by which God changes our present.” (Pages 21, 38, 61, 65)

My words nor Mr. Brunner’s can come close to what Saint Paul wrote. It is one of the most beautiful passages in the entire Bible & is included below. May you have Faith, Hope, & Love in something that is real & eternal!

Love

1If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.

4Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, 5doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; 6doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with. 11When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known. 13But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)