Hope in the Small Things
11/25/2025
Simon Howling
As we move closer to Christmas, like many churches around the world we’re beginning our Advent series, exploring the themes of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. For the third year in a row, I was assigned to preach on hope. I joked with a friend about it, and he replied, “Simon, God must really be wanting to teach you something about hope.” We both laughed, but the more I pressed into the topic, the more I realised how vital hope in Jesus is for sustaining ministry.
Hope is a word we use often. We say we “hope” things change, we “hope” kids make better choices, we “hope” families stay together. But when you work day in and day out with children and young people whose lives are complicated, unstable, and unpredictable, hope can sometimes feel fragile.
There are days when progress feels painfully slow. Days when you’re not sure anything is changing at all. Days when everything feels completely out of your control—like when kids you’ve spent months connecting with and supporting move away overnight with no warning, leaving behind a real sense of helplessness and discouragement across the whole project. Ministry has a way of exposing how limited our control really is.
And all of this happens while we live in a world addicted to instant gratification. We want results, success, and relief, and we want them now. If we aren’t careful, that mindset can slip into our ministry as well—wanting instant transformation, quick conversions, bigger numbers, immediate maturity. And when those things don’t happen overnight, we begin to lose hope. But the Christian journey isn’t completed overnight. In fact, Scripture prepares us for the opposite.
Hebrews 12:1–2 says: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith…”
Faith is a journey, one that requires perseverance. And if something requires perseverance, we should expect it to be hard. A stroll in the park or eating ice cream on a hot summer day doesn’t require perseverance. Ministry does. Everyday Christian living does. Our personal walk with Jesus does. Following Him is a race we run faithfully not for a moment, but for a lifetime.
And it requires hope—hope rooted completely in Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. Those words alone should steady our hearts. Jesus is the pioneer; He has gone ahead of us. He accomplished what we never could, lived the sinless life we couldn’t, and died the death we deserved. He walked this earth, experienced its trials, pains, and temptations, and yet fell to none of them. So we fix our eyes on Him because His life gives us the perfect example of trust, obedience, and endurance.
This is why our hope must be grounded in Christ and not in our own ability to change people, fix problems, or hold everything together. God is at work. He was at work before we arrived, and He will still be at work long after we leave. And that reality alone should give us deep, settled hope, even on the days when the fruit seems small or the progress feels invisible.
So we learn to take hope from the small victories, not just the dramatic ones. The child who stays in school for the full year. The neighbour who steps into church for the first time. The quiet shift in a young person’s heart. The mum who finally asks for help. These moments may not make headlines, but they are signs—real, tangible signs—that God is moving.
Hope grows when we recognise that God is at work in ways we often overlook. And as we fix our eyes on Jesus, we find the strength to persevere, the courage to continue, and the confidence that the story He is writing—both in us and in the people we serve—is worth the wait.
Simon Howling is a missionary from the UK and serves as the Director and one of three coaches at our Futsal School. He arrived in Bolivia in 2019 with a heart to serve Jesus and impact the lives of children through soccer. Beyond the game, Simon is passionate about mentoring and discipling his players as if they were his own. He also serves as one of our pastors and elders at the church in Trinidad, faithfully guiding and loving others both on and off the field.