What To Do When You Are Feeling Hopeless

Do a quick Google search, and you’ll see hundreds if not thousands of lists sharing different ways to handle despair, find joy, feel hopeful, and the list goes on and on. Now, these lists can be helpful, practical, insightful; you name it. But 95% of them are missing one key component — the presence of God.

We live in a culture desperate to finding meaning, identity, and answers. The events of the past six months, the upcoming election, all this has left us feeling anxious, full of uncertainty, looking for hope. Some small speckle of hope to bring us through to the other side.

In the book of 1 Peter, Peter is writing to a group of Christians facing exile from the culture and climate around them. They were a group of individuals who had every right to feel hopeless, wondering why God would allow this to happen to them. However, Peter tells us in the beginning verse of his book that in times of hopelessness, times of uncertainty, or times where we feel displaced, Jesus is our living hope.

As we navigate through times of hopelessness, looking at 1 Peter, here are three things we must do and remember.

1️⃣ Praise God that heaven is secured

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time”[1 Peter 1:3–4]

These verses share with us that if we have a relationship with Jesus, we are born again into a living hope. So those moments of hopelessness or despair, Jesus has already conquered for us. Our relationship with Jesus has given us a hope that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. What a promise! Not only that, but this inheritance is kept in heaven for YOU. YOU!!! The word YOU means God knows YOU. He knows your name. God knows your thoughts, your deepest joys, and your deepest pains. Those moments of hopelessness, He knows. And in Him, and Him alone, we find our identity.

Like the Christians Peter was writing to, we are exiles in this world. If we are in Christ, heaven is our home. When we feel like we don’t belong, we know that our eternal home is secure. Praise God!

2️⃣ Praise God that our suffering reveals our faith

“In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” [1 Peter 1:6–7]

This passage is pretty straight-forward when it says we will have trials, hardships that will test our faith. Thankfully, he doesn’t stop there. The difficulties we face are temporary. But they reveal the faith we have in God. It can be challenging in suffering to find hope. However, Peter encourages us to look past the suffering, past the trial, and look ahead to our Savior, who knows more about suffering than we ever will. He knows what it feels like not to belong.

John 15:18–19 says,

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

In times of hopelessness, we must praise God, for we know our suffering reveals our faith in Jesus, our living hope.

3️⃣ Praise God that salvation has come

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” [1Peter 1:10–11]

Hope has already come. Jesus’ resurrection means that every trial, frustration, every moment of hurt or pain, Jesus has overcome. In times of hopelessness, we must put our faith and trust in the only one who can bring us hope. Hope is alive in us because Jesus is alive! He will not let us down.

No matter how many “How to” lists you read, none of them will matter if you don’t know where true hope comes from. Jesus is the only one who will satisfy you. The only one who will give you hope. If you have not put your faith and trust in Jesus, what is stopping you? If you want to know more about what it means to have an eternal hope that will never fade, please contact us.

Jesus is our living hope.