The Hope Character Cycle
The following video transcript has been lightly edited
Recently my son was asked in an interview to tell them about something he has overcome. I think for all of us in life, we know that there’s something about overcoming challenges that builds our character. As we effort, push through, and persevere, our character grows deeper.
Today, that’s what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what Paul, I think, would refer to as the hope–character cycle. He cues it up in Romans chapter 5 by telling us that because of the hope we have in God’s future—promised through the person of Christ—and because we are now in a place of a whole relationship with God and one another, we can not only boast in that, but we can also boast in our sufferings.
He goes on to say that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character returns us to hope.
So if we want to think about building our character, as we’re talking about in this series, we want to learn that cycle. We want to be people who, because of the hope we have, boast even in our sufferings, which creates endurance, which then makes us people of character. And as we become people of character, we experience hope—and we can do that cycle again and again.
I want to sketch out a few ideas that I think are really helpful. Hope, I think, gives us the capacity to live. It’s not a question of whether we will have to overcome things—we will. We will face challenges and setbacks. Some of those we create ourselves, others happen to us, and some are just random. Whatever it is, our ability to have a kind of battery of hope gives us the ability to continue to press on.
Think of it this way: if you don’t have hope, the challenges you go through will eventually stop you, because you’ll get to a place where you feel like there’s no purpose, no meaning—what’s the point? But hope is the belief that one day God will restore the world, and the good world will be the only world—not a good and broken world, but a world where love and beauty and wonder and goodness are the whole thing, the whole enchilada, as they say.
Our ability to have that battery of hope helps us persevere. One of the things we always need to be thinking about is how we are restoring that battery of hope. We do that through prayer, reflection, coming to church, the songs we sing, the sermons we listen to, and the conversations we have with friends. All of these help restore our battery of hope so that we have capacity.
Next, Paul says that because of that hope, we can even boast in our sufferings. Here’s what he means. He doesn’t say that suffering in and of itself is good, and he doesn’t say we rejoice about our sufferings. Rather, he says we rejoice in our suffering. Paul believes and knows that because of the hope of Christ and the hope of a restored future, the sufferings we go through—the challenges, setbacks, and struggles—are not the final word. They cannot defeat us.
Because of that, we can see suffering as something that will shape us and build us. In that way, we can rejoice even in the midst of suffering because we believe God can use it to shape us.
Here’s what happens as we go through these experiences. While the events themselves may not be good, they expand our ability for compassion and empathy, and they strengthen our ability to move forward. So we can boast even in our suffering.
Next, Paul says that suffering produces endurance. Think about it this way: when you’re going through challenges or trying to overcome something, you have two options. You can quit and give in, or you can endure and overcome. When you overcome, you build endurance.
As we face the challenges we will no doubt face in life and persevere through them, we build endurance.
When I was a kid, my mom would sometimes punish me by putting Tabasco sauce on my tongue because I had a smart mouth. At first, it was brutal. But as I received more and more Tabasco—because I didn’t seem to learn the lesson—I built up endurance. I could withstand more and more heat. It got to the point where putting Tabasco on my tongue had no impact at all.
Life works the same way. As we go through suffering, because of the hope we have, it produces endurance. We realize we’re not going to quit—we’re going to keep pushing forward and persevering. That endurance then impacts our character.
That’s where Paul goes next. Because of the hope we have, we can boast even in our sufferings. Because suffering produces endurance—either you quit or you endure, developing patient perseverance—and that produces character.
When we think about character, there are really two elements. One is the quality of character. In Scripture, that means kindness and patience. It means forgiveness and mercy. It means rejoicing in the truth. It means bearing all things, enduring all things, and believing all things. That’s the quality of character.
On the other end, there’s negative character—evil—things like slander, malice, greed, envy, and spite. So character is both the quality of who we are and our capacity to live that out.
As we build endurance, we increase our capacity to act in whatever circumstances come our way with high-quality character. Our capacity to pursue love, regardless of the circumstance, is a great definition of good character.
Think about it like a quadrant. Up and to the right is good character: high capacity and high quality. We have endurance, and we are patient, kind, gentle, meek, and compassionate. Developing character would be having the desire for those qualities but not yet having the endurance to live them out consistently.
Up and to the left would be bad or evil character: desiring malice, greed, strife, and envy, and also having the endurance to act on those things repeatedly. Weak character would be someone controlled by greed, envy, and strife but without the endurance to act on it consistently.
We want to be people pursuing good character—having both the endurance and the desire to act with love and goodness.
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and what I love about MLK is that he gives us a picture of high character. Not only did he pursue forgiveness and reconciliation, but he endured and lived it out over and over again.
He called his followers to the same thing, saying that even though they were experiencing hate and violence, they could not return it. If they did, they would be giving in to evil. If their goal was reconciliation, hating their brother would prevent them from achieving that goal.
You and I may never do something of that magnitude in history, but in our families, workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods, we can commit to truth and kindness. Doing that over and over again reshapes families, communities, and workplaces.
Be inspired by MLK to be a person of truth and kindness, and to practice it again and again.
In the end, because of the hope we have, we can boast even in our sufferings. Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character returns us to hope.
Paul tells us that as we live this way, we experience the love of God in our hearts. That’s how it returns us to hope. As we live with high character, we resonate with true reality. The true reality of this world is goodness, beauty, mercy, kindness, patience, and gentleness.
As we live that way, we experience that truth. It fills us up, develops our character, and builds our hope. And we’re able to move through that hope–character cycle over and over again.
I hope this week you’re able to grab hold of that and apply it in your life, so that you too can grow in character and experience the hope of Christ.
Have a great week. Talk to you soon. Bye now.
