Whats The Difference Between Faith & Hope

Today I want to answer the question, what is the difference between faith and hope? This question has so much packed into it because often, people like to interchange these ideas or we have misinterpreted definitions of them.

1st Corinthians 13:13

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

If you’re looking at this from a New Testament perspective, if love is first, we know that faith and hope are either second or third. They’re very important to the life of a believer. And very important to creating your best life, so it is important to understand the difference between the two and the role that each of them take in your life.

So let’s talk about what we know the Bible says about faith; it says through faith, the world was framed by the word of God. We know that the Bible teaches us that we believe and therefore speaks. The Bible teaches us that faith is a fruit of the spirit. When we list out the fruits of the spirit as love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control; we see that faith is one of those. That as the Holy Spirit and our new spirit produces fruit; one of those is faith, from the Spirit and when we believe IT. MOVES.  And when we speak, we are taught that is how things are created.

The woman with the issue of blood in the Bible says that she pressed her way through the crowd because she said within herself, if I just touch the hem of his garment, she would be made whole. So she pressed through to him, she touched him and the power came and she was made whole. Jesus stopped. He said, Hey, who touched me? Disciples said, Jesus, we got all these people touching you, what do you mean? Who touched? You know, someone with faith touched him. Faith believes, therefore speaks. And it creates NOW.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses].

This passage teaches us that faith gives us the title deed to what we are confidently expecting: Hope. Hope once again (if you have read the prior blogs, HOPE is huge) is to have confident expectation. Here’s the chemistry between these two Hope: Confident Expectation and Faith: Title Deed. So faith and hope working together is what is critical in creating our best life.

So once again, often people are taught on faith and the power of faith, but I literally have only heard a couple of lessons ever on hope. Most of them have been misguided, like the hope for something way out in the future. And I am here to tell you, HOPE is NOW. What are you confidently expecting to take place in your life? Because whatever it is that you are confidently expecting your faith, what you believe in and speak is going to give you the title deed.

Now here’s the disconnect I have found with a lot of people. They’ve learned the power of their words. So they;re out there trying to call it daith. Like we trying to say the right things but never worked on their confident expectation. YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE FAITH AND HOPE. They’re trying to go in two different directions and they don’t know the law of faith is simply going to give you the title deed to what it is you are confidently expecting, so they need to work on faith. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Hope is what I am confidently expecting. One is from the Spirit, one is from the soul; my mind, my will, and my emotions.

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There was a time where the gift of faith I’ve operated in a few times. And in this one particular situation, a friend of mine who we’d prayed for years to have a baby boy. We prayed with them and they conceived, they had this baby boy.

When the baby was around 8 months old. They put the baby down for a nap and while it was sleeping the baby had got stuck between the bed and the wall… when they had found the baby, he had suffocated. They were able to resuscitate the baby; they called 9-1-1 and then got the baby to the hospital. The doctors were saying that the baby was brain dead and they had advised to take him off life support.

I had been officiating a wedding for another friend of mine when the call came in. And it’s one of those calls that just hits you right in the gut; devastation for those that are close to you, that you love and care about. I had tried calling him back after getting the message and there was no answer… it wasn’t long before he called me back. In the meantime, I spent time praying in the Spirit, “Lord, what is it that you want me to do? God, we need you to work a miracle.” When he had called and I got on the phone with them, the word came to me, what the Holy Spirit came to me was the word Faith. And that it was his will to speak that the baby will live and not die. So I told my friend Phil, “Phil, you go into the ICU where the baby is and you say: Pastor Bill (I was the pastor of the church he attended at the time) says, you will live and not die.”

Phil went back and forth and I urged Phil once more to go in there and speak those words. Those words were filled with faith. And that baby in 48 hours left the hospital totally whole and normal. That is the power of faith speaking.

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That. Is. The. Power. Of. Faith. Speaking. And the change that can happen with words of faith, what I’m here to show you what the difference is between faith and hope, right? Everyday faith. I believe, therefore I speak… You know when I speak, I am the head and not the tail out of Deuteronomy 28. It is important that I develop my confident expectation along with it. And as we talked in the last blog, confident expectation is built through repetition and imagination, repeating on a daily basis. What it is that God says about you, Deuteronomy 28, faith filled words, I build in that confident expectation. And then I speak words of faith. And the two together combined makes such a powerful force for creating your best life.