A Sermon
Delivered on Wednesday Evening, February 25th, 2026, by
Evangelist PAUL ACQUAH,
Live on MZ Radio London, London UK
Life often brings moments that test the strength of our faith. We hold onto God’s promises, yet the waiting can feel long, and the answers seem far away. But even in those quiet, uncertain seasons, God gives us another precious gift — hope. Hope is the gentle companion of faith. It whispers peace into our hearts and reminds us that God is still working, even when we cannot see the way forward. Faith trusts God in the present; hope looks forward to the future He has prepared. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, we are reminded of three things that will last forever – faith, hope, and love. And while love is the greatest, faith and hope remain side by side, strengthening and renewing our hearts day by day. In today’s message titled, “Hope is as important as Faith,” Evangelist Paul Acquah invites us to rediscover this divine balance – the power of believing and the beauty of expecting – as we lean on the promises of God together. Be blessed as you listen!
I want to talk about the importance of hope in our lives. There are amazing things about hope that can really make the subject of hope come alive on the inside of us. Hope means different things to different people. For example, we hear some people saying well how are things going and they’ll start telling you about how bad it is and then they’ll say well is it going to get any better and they say well I hope so. What that means is that they don’t have any faith, they’re just wishing and hoping and it can be used in a very negative way. But the way that scripture uses hope is a powerful force and I think a lot of people have a concept of hope as being something that is somehow or another inferior. Some People have seen the power of faith and as a result rejected hope; they don’t esteem it. Somebody would say well, I’m hoping that things work out and then you just criticise that and say you need to believe God, quit hoping and start believing. But if you start learning about Hope and Faith you will realise that there actually is a balance between hope and faith.
Let me refer you to 1 Corinthains 13:13 where it says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Some people have rejected hope or at least attributed it to immature Christians. That is not so, hope is right there with love and with faith and so hope is a powerful force. Most of us have heard many messages on faith and love but, however, hope has mainly been put to the sideline. Let me ask you, how many messages have you heard on the subject of hope? In some faith circles, even hope is being treated as less important. They say, hope is future tense, faith is now. It’s bad to be in hope. You need to be in faith. So, it’s actually been treated as less important in some faith circles. But hope is one of the most powerful weapons that we have, which means it’s much more important than we think. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and our faith is linked to our hope (Romans 5:4).
Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen”. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. The word substance here in the Greek Strong concordance, means assurance. Faith is a heart assurance. You know that you know in your heart you have something, but you can’t see it on the outside. You can’t see it in the physical senses. You can’t see it with your eyes. You can’t hear it with your ears. You can’t touch it with your physical touch. But in your heart, you know that you have it. That’s faith. But you need to know that faith will bring substance to what is hoped for. Faith brings things that are in the realm of Hope into physical reality but it has to start with things that are hoped for. You have to start with a hope before you can get into faith. Knowing this will enable you to elevate Hope to a place that is really powerful and recognise that it’s an important thing.
Hope is what God has for us in Christ Jesus. It’s what we have in the spirit realm. There’re two realms. There’s a spirit realm and there’s a natural realm. Everything Jesus died for, is existing in the spirit realm. We need to actually have it in the natural realm though. So how do you get what’s in the spirit realm to manifest in the natural realm? That’s called faith. Faith brings it in, but hope is that confident expectation of a future good. So hope is that vision of what God has for you in the spirit, what is available to you. But let me say this, you must have a confident expectation of what God has for you before you can actually lay hold on it by faith. Therefore, if we don’t have hope, which is a confident expectation of what God has for us, then faith can’t bring it into the natural realm. Faith does not operate independently of hope (Hebrews 11:1). You can say it this way, If you don’t have anything that you are hoping for, faith cannot provide substance to it. In other words, faith is controlled or motivated by hope. There are a lot of people who want to skip hope and go to the faith stage. Hope is the motivator; it’s the thing that determines how your faith works.
Trying to operate in faith without hope is like a farmer trying to harvest where there’s no seed planted. It’s like going to his farmyard for a harvest and then frustrated why he’s not reaping a harvest. He goes out and he enters his farm and looks at the grounds. What’s wrong with my farm? Why can’t this farm bring in harvest? But the problem is there’s nothing sown to be harvested. And that’s the same thing that if you don’t have that vision on the inside of what God has for you, faith can’t lay hold of it. Faith can’t make substance to it. So many are looking at their faith and love lives and say, am I operating in faith? What’s wrong with my faith? Or say, well, maybe I’m not walking in love or maybe I’m not receiving God’s love. Why am I not getting my healing or my answer. But a lot of times, my friend, it’s not a faith problem and it’s not a love problem. It’s a hope problem.
If you don’t have heart assurance that something you have right now, you don’t have that faith in your heart. What do you need to do? Many people say, “well, you just need to focus harder on operating in faith. Confess more. “I have it. I have it. I have it.” But really, what you need to do is to focus on developing hope first.If your hope has been affected, instead of there being a positive anticipation of good in the future, there is fear about the future, so you are killing faith in your life. I tell you. there are a lot of people listening or reading this right now that I have described you. You don’t have hope. You are trying to believe God but you don’t have any hope. For example, when there’s an election, instead of people being positive they are so negative about the future. I don’t care who is the president or the prime minister, my hope is in the \God of hope. I’m not saying that I’m in agreement with the way the politics is going but look at it this way, in the midst of terrible situation you can have hope and praise God.
Even though things may not be going on well , we still can be praising God. We can still have hope. There are a lot of people whose hearts are failing them looking at the things that are going on. Hope is the antidote to it. Hope is going to be a powerful force in your life.
Instead of people having hope which is a positive view of the future, people are going to be afraid. Because of lack of hope men’s heart are failing them. Currently people are more hopeless than they have been in the past. People are committing suicide, but if you have hope about the future, if you know that your future is bright, you wouldn’t commit suicide. People committing suicide are hopeless people. Hope is a powerful force. Hope is very important principle in scripture ( see Jeremiah 29:11 and Ephesians 2:10).
