It's a funny moment when you realize a word means something different than what you thought it meant, and you use it in public. For example, in my 10th grade biology class, we were learning how to give CPR. My teacher asked the class the question, "What bone do you press on to apply CPR to someone?" Me, being in 10th grade and having "paid attention" throughout the majority of the class, confidently raised my hand to answer the question and said matter-of-factly, "The scrotum."
*crickets*
Then the teacher proceeded to call me out into the hallway for a chat because the scrotum is obviously not the bone you press on to apply CPR. It's something else. I know that now; I didn't then, but I sure thought I did (No, I wasn't smarting off with my answer. I sincerely thought the scrotum was the sternum. Oops).
Messing up words can get you in trouble. It can get you detention (like in my case), it can just create an awkward situation for you, or it can make you believe a word means one thing your entire life when it actually means something else, creating a misunderstanding of most sentences that word is used in. This is what has happened to me with another word, "hope."
For the longest time, I just thought hope meant something a long the lines of "wishful thinking," and I guess it does mean that to some extent. . . to "hope" to win the game," or "hope to feel better." Today, however, I found out that it means much more than that, at least from the Christian context anyway.
Today, I found out that hope for a Christian isn't just a wishful thinking; It's an expectant waiting, a knowledge of fact. It's superior to wishful thinking, and it's an expectancy of God to fulfill all of His Word and all of His Promises because "God cannot lie" (Heb. 6:18). Learning this today seemingly flipped my world upside down. So many verses made much more sense, so much confidence filled my heart, and so much more life came to God's promises; They became more than wishful thoughts; they became fact. I don't think I didn't believe these promises before, but changing the definition of hope from wishful thinking to expectant waiting separated what once sounded like God hoping to be for me, to knowing God is for me. It just sounds so much better.
Now, I know why hope is not timid. Hope is confident because hope is Truth. Hope is more than wishful thinking. It's what saves us. After all, "Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently (Rom. 8:24-25)"
-Cliff
Cliff's Note: Biblical hope is more than well-wishing; it's belief in fact and waiting expectantly for it.