Unshakable Hope IS Possible

What is Courage for the Journey?

Welcome to Courage for the Journey with Julie Fillinger where real stories and honest conversations inspire the strength to take your next step.

Podcast 23

Unshakable Hope IS Possible
Recorded 02/20/26
Posted 02/24/26

Today we are going to talk about Unshakable Hope. Hope has become one of my
favorite things to talk about.
What comes to mind when you think about hope?
Do you remember when your mother would light the birthday candles and tell you to
make a wish?
Then you would tear into your presents to see if what you wished for magically
appeared.
Sometimes your wish came true but sometimes it did not.
As much as little Julie seemed to think so, blowing out birthday candles was not a
guarantee that my wish would come true.

This stark reality punched me in the gut when my wishes changed from the stuffed
teddy bear I named Furry when I was 5 to…if only I could just hear my loved one’s voice
one more time.

My daddy is the original #girldad.
He taught me how to play basketball, change a tire, and shoot a gun. He was a picture
of God’s protection and provision.
My mom can tell you he wasn’t perfect. He put his children before his marriage and
expected her to also.
But growing up, he felt pretty great to me.
He had four girls and dared anyone to act like one of us should have been a boy.
I am number 4 and I had no idea that some dads preferred boys until I went to college.

Today is the anniversary of my daddy’s departure from earth.

Some of you may call that death. But if death is separation from God, then he is more
alive than he has ever been in the presence of Jesus.

My parents had come down from Ohio to Alabama to celebrate my birthday. We had a
really great weekend with them.
But they left a day earlier than planned because my daddy wasn’t feeling well.
On the way home they were in a car crash.

It’s hard not to associate this very hard day with my birthday. And for years I struggled
with believing lies that it was my fault.
As if I had some measure of control over the number of days God gave him on this
earth.
It is thankfulness that keeps me from being angry.
When I struggle to come up with something to be thankful for, considering what God did
to secure eternal life for His children changes my heart and works a miracle on my
outlook.
I am so very thankful for the blessed hope of seeing him again and spending eternity
together in a beautiful community of believers. All for the glory of God.

Biblical hope is not making a wish. It’s not just a cheery outcome.
It is a belief in an outcome that is certain. To believe in good even when things are bad.
It is relying on the Truth that God is good and just and loving and holy.
And He will be faithful to keep His promises. Because that is who He is!
You desire the good God is promising and you have a certain expectation that it will
happen.
And that HOPE is unshakable.

But before I had the joy of learning what real biblical hope is, I knew what it was like to
feel hopeless and helpless.

Maybe that is what you were feeling when I asked you what comes to mind when you
think about hope.
The hardest things I have endured are related to grief. You may have been asked to
endure a different trauma.
It’s not helpful to compare suffering. But most suffering leads to a sense of
hopelessness and helplessness. And that’s where the similarities align.

As much as I grieved for the loss of my daddy. It really did not prepare for the anguish
God would ask me to endure years later when Nicholas died.
Each year, in the days and weeks leading up to Nicholas’ death, I would relive the
horrific event, expecting a different outcome that never came.
My head knew the truth, but my heart refused to accept it.
This went on year after agonizing year and as much as I tried to preach to myself a little
sermon, I felt helpless to stop it.

A few weeks before the ninth anniversary of Nicholas's death, as I was crying out once
again, God heard me.
He had heard me before, but this time was different.
This time the heavy grief cloud with all of its thunderous torment was lifted.
The sun was shining and I didn’t have to pull the blinds.
I could wear bright colors again.
I could laugh and not feel guilty.
And I could take a deep breath and let it out without pain. I hadn’t realized how long I
had been holding my breath until that moment. It felt so good to just release it.

It was if God was saying He kept me under the weight of suffering for a purpose and I
was being released.
The suffering had produced endurance. Endurance produced character. And if I had the
courage to not give up too soon…character would produce HOPE.
And when His time was right, He would use the work He did in me to encourage others
to do the same.

Why can I rejoice in suffering? Because HOPE does not disappoint. HOPE does not put
me to shame.

The source of this hope is God’s character. We keep coming back to that because it’s
the sure foundation.
David puts it like this in Psalm 33:17-22,
17  The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
    and by its great might it cannot rescue.
18  Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
    on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19  that he may deliver their soul from death
    and keep them alive in famine.
20  Our soul waits for the LORD;
    he is our help and our shield.
21  For our heart is glad in him,
    because we trust in his holy name.
22  Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
    even as we hope in you.
David is saying when battles come, we cannot put our trust in manmade weaponry or
skilled marksmen any more than we can rely on our intellect, money, or power to save.
Satan is so deceptive in the ways he gets us to believe in anything to deliver us other
than the steadfast love of the LORD to save us.
These are false hope. They cannot rescue us. They are doomed to fail.

But God sees those who fear Him. We show this by our reverence, obedience, and
hatred of evil.
Fearing God and hoping in His love are linked together.
The puritans would say,
“God is so great that I am afraid of displeasing Him and so good that I am afraid
of losing Him.”
We wait with eager expectation for deliverance.
We don’t make unholy alliances, and we don’t just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

We trust God will protect and provide as we fully rely on His character.

An Old Testament example of the strength of Hope is Father Abraham.
Every time I say Father Abraham I want to start singing.
Do you remember this little ditty from children’s church?
Father Abraham had many sons.
Many sons had Father Abraham.
I am one of them and so are you,
So, let’s just praise the Lord.
Then we would start swinging our arms and legs.
I am not sure what right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot had to do with God’s promise to
Abraham. I think it was a ploy for our teachers to get us to sit down and be quiet.

Abraham is an example of hope. He waited a very long time for God’s promise of a son.
You can check it out in Genesis 17 and 18.
Sometimes during the wait, Abraham strayed a bit. Sarah was so beautiful, twice he told
her to say she was his sister to save his own hide. He feared he would be killed and she
would be added to some other nation’s harem.
And then he had a child with Sarah’s maid.
God had already made a covenant promise with Abraham that He would make a Nation
from a child with Sarah.
So, when Sarah said, “just go ahead and sleep with my maid,”
Abraham should have realized Sarah was tired of waiting and felt like a failure because
she had not given him the child God promised.
She felt like it was her fault, like something was wrong with her.
Listen up husbands! Because I think God held Abraham more accountable for this failed
attempt to take matters in their own hands.
Sarah needed Abraham to gently say,
“No Sarah. Even if this is an acceptable custom in our culture, sex with a woman
who is not my wife is not God’s way. I could never love another woman. Your

God’s best for me, and we will wait on His provision together for as long as it
takes.”
Eventually, when Abraham was 100 and Sarah 90, God opened her womb. God wanted
it to be known that only He could have done this.
So that when the time came, they would believe God when He said, “Is anything too
hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14).

A number of years later, when their son Isaac was a young man, God told Abraham to
take his son, his only son, the son of promise whom he loves…take him and offer him
as a sacrifice to the Lord.
What?!?!
Genesis 22 records that by this time, Abraham had grown in character and hope,
trusting God would keep His promise.
So, when Isaac asked where the sacrifice was that they were going to offer to God,
Abraham calmly told Isaac God would provide.
And just as Abraham is raising his knife over Isaac to sacrifice him, the Angel of the
LORD stops him and says,
“Abraham! Do not stretch out your hand against the lad. Now I know that you fear
God, since you have not withheld your only son from Me.” (Genesis 22:12)
Then Abraham lifted his eyes to behold a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. And
Abraham offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.

If you’re like me, this story leaves you with a lot of questions, not the least of which is
why Isaac didn’t make a run for it. I think he could have outran his 100-something-year-
old father. But he seems to simply comply with the request.

Thankfully, Hebrews 11 gives us some insight into what Abraham was thinking. Verse
19 tells us he reasoned that God was able to revive Isaac from the dead.
To my knowledge, no one had ever been revived from the dead before.
Now compare that to Romans 4 which tells us in verse 18 that when all human
reasoning for hope was gone, Abraham did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith
and held hope in God against hope in man. Hope against hope.

Giving God the Glory, he was fully assured that what God promised, He was able to
perform.
This faith was credited not only to him, but also to all who would come after him in the
family of faith, who believed that God would and did raise Jesus our Lord from the dead.
It is because of His resurrection that we have hope.
Continuing in Romans 5, by this faith we are justified and given a right standing with
God. Because God introduced to His Grace, we stand and rejoice in the hope of Glory.
This is a prized and satisfying hope because it is based on the significant and weighty
dignity of God Himself.
God is the only one who has intrinsic, eternal, self-existent dignity.
We rejoice because Go has promised that He will make us dignified as well in the
ultimate completion of our justification which the bible calls our glorification.

What do we learn from Abraham?
1. There are no shortcuts. Hope is the result of a long, persistent journey that
comes from the character God develops in the process of enduring hard things.
Suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character. And if we have the
courage to not give up too soon, character produces unshakable and satisfying hope
that will not disappoint but instead will make sense of what we are being asked to suffer.
2. Nothing is too difficult for the Lord and He will provide.
3. There is hope for future glory.
As a child of God, He puts in our hearts a desire to glorify Him. To worship Him.
Nothing else will satisfy.

We get glimpses of this Glory that whet our appetite for what is to come.
Consider the sunrise and sunset, the scent of the most beautiful flower, listening to the
melodious sonnet of birds singing in the coolness of the morning, the satisfaction of a
job well done, the thrill of winning a hard-fought contest, and the pride you feel when
your child succeeds at what they are gifted to do.

All of these are but a taste of what God has in store for His children when Christ returns.
Then we will not only see the Glory of God, but we will also bask in it.
God’s Glory will shine brilliantly all around us and through us, much like it was in the
Garden of Eden. Except we will be incapable of messing it up with sin.

1 Corinthians 15 tells us the reason for this hope is the resurrection.
Without the resurrection, there is no faith and there is no hope.
If our eager expectation is only for this life, we are to be pitied.

The world says our faith is a crutch.
Without the resurrection, this accusation is accurate.
But because we are assured of the resurrection, we have a true and better hope.
Because of God’s great mercy, He caused me to be reborn to a living hope…one that is
active and vibrant and full of life…through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead.
When my Lord conquered the grave, He ascended to heaven and is protecting the
inheritance that is waiting for me by His power. (1 Peter 1:3-5).
Now I live with the certain expectation that what awaits far outweighs any suffering He
asked me to endure (Romans 8:18).
Because my glory and victory already reside with His, this changes my perspective on
this life. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57).

In closing, I want to talk about our basis for hope
the biggest difference between how the world hopes and the Christian hopes is the
basis for the hope.
The world’s hope is based on man’s ability. Even with the best of intentions and pure
motives, man fails.
You may feel confident after an interview, only to discover there are a dozen qualified
applicants.

One team may be favored to win a game, but you still have to play.
Parents plan for their children’s future to be secure, knowing anything can happen to
their investments.
There is no certainty because the basis, even in the best of circumstances, doesn’t
come with a guarantee.

The guaranteed inheritance of every child of God is the reward they will receive in
heaven.
The seal of that guarantee is the Holy Spirit living inside of us to help us discern and to
lead, comfort, and encourage us here.
Our Hope is based on entrusting our souls to the One who created us and gives us a
guarantee to keep us for all eternity.

When bad things happen, it can feel like our hope is misplaced.
But maybe our Hope is not misplaced, as much as our view of God’s plan is
impoverished.
I wanted Nicholas to be saved on this Earth to accomplish and experience the best this
world had to offer. And I would be here to see every bit of it.
But God had a different plan. God had a short earthly life for Nicholas, but an
everlasting eternal life in heaven.
Is heaven better than athletic accolades, prom, graduation, college scholarships,
marriage, having his own children?
As God has been faithfully showing me, my conclusion is an emphatic YES!

Once I started to believe that Heaven is so much more glorious than anything this Earth
has to offer, I slowly started to believe it was good for God to take my loved one there
with Him.
He didn’t make us for this life; He made us for the next one.
As I consider the reality of what awaits us in Heaven, I pray for Christ’s return every day.
There is nothing here that compares.
God created everything here to give us a picture of the Glory that awaits.

It’s not harps and clouds. It’s like the Garden of Eden, only no way to mess it up with
sin.
We have purpose and work we enjoy, good conversations over good food and drink.
Beautiful gardens and music. Dancing. Competitions for the joy of it.
This is a promise that comes with present day encouragement to keep looking toward
eternity so I will not give up too soon.

I am guilty of wanting heaven to come in my timing instead of God’s.
I mean let’s just get on with it already. Come, Lord Jesus!
But God has been teaching me that I can live today with the realization that my eternal
life has already begun.

I think we should stop saying our loved ones who died and went to be with Jesus are
dead.
I alluded to this earlier and I am coming back to double down.
If death is separation from God, then His child who left this earth is more alive than they
have ever been.
Let that sink in.
Stop saying your loved one who left this earth to go Home to heaven is dead. If they are
with Jesus, they are more alive than they have ever been!
And they have joined the cloud of witnesses who are cheering us on to victory when we
cross the finish line at God’s appointed time.
The question is as long as I live and breathe on this earth, will I keep believing God can
be trusted to keep His promises?
Therein lies my Unshakable Hope.