Like all good things on reddit, it got beaten to death, but that OG use was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in that site.
I used old reddit and RIF. I don't think I ever actually saw someone's snoo icon thingy. A lot of the new reddit stuff just passed me by.
Perhaps it would be more accurate of me to say that:
If we lose our hope in Christ, our faith will eventually be lost, too. It might not be immediate, but sooner or later we will lose faith, too, if we've truly lost hope. Often hope is not felt, per se, just as faith is not always felt. Emotions come and go, after all, but hope and faith are something deeper.
I'll be honest; I've never modded anything before. When I got to lemmy, there was no general Christian community that I could find - at least not in English. I have no idea how much work this will wind up being or if I'll be able to keep up, but so far, so good!
Welcome! While this community cannot replace church, I hope that it helps fill in the gaps.
You may not have had hope about the specific circumstance you were in, but you still had hope in God - if nothing else, in His salvation. I'm speaking of hope in a much deeper sense than our everyday experiences or expectations. Hebrews 6 calls hope the anchor for our souls, but the author is speaking of our hope in Christ and His finished work at the cross.
I think our ability to have faith is rooted in the love God has for us. It is because He loved us that He sent his Son in whom we have faith. If God didn't start from His end and reach out to us, we would have neither faith nor hope. The true realization of the love God has for us is what sparks our faith in His salvation in the first place.
I would actually postulate that it's not possible to have faith without hope. Hope is the expectation of good, and faith is that expectation of good combined with thoughts and behaviors that are in accord with said expectation. Why would I have faith that God will save me if I did not have the hope of salvation?
But faith and hope are predicated upon God's love for us. Without that, the rest is moot.
Now, faith should produce more love in our lives, and I would argue that true faith, in fact, does so. The closer we draw to God in faith, the more of His character is developed in us, and God is love.
Is love equal in importance to faith or is it subordinate to it?
But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love. - 1 Corinthians 13:13
Scripture outright states that love is greater than faith. That's not to say that we don't need faith, for without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), but Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 makes his point very clear that faith without love is nothing and does no good.
@ForTheLoveOfGod
@lemmy.world