To answer a friend's question

Click on this to make larger so you can actually read it!

There we go!!! In the world of academia, this concept map would be called a model! These are great ways to put really nebulous concepts into more concrete and/or visual terms for those of us that need it. In academese, we'd say that character produces hope when mediated by the degree to which one is conformed to the image of Christ & the degree to which said person understand more of God's character. (Yes, I am a nerd. WOO!)

This is my attempt to answer a dear sister in Christ's question, "How does character produce hope?" based off of Romans 5:4 which states "and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." (ESV)

Character is produced via conforming to Christ's image usually through suffering. OUCH. No DOUBT that I know this. When hope in everything else is stripped away, I am left with only one option: entrusting myself to a faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:19). The degree that I entrust myself to God as my faithful Creator is highly correlated to my knowledge of Him & how much I really want that relationship. This degree of trust is also dependent (or moderated) by how much I really want to seek God. This may be why God chooses to sanctify His children by suffering. If life is good, we might be tempted to not really seek God, thus our trust in Him and knowledge of Him may not grow as fast. Though even in suffering, I've been prone to turn toward other things than God. Yes, here's another nerdy graph to illustrate my point :)

This is why we need God's grace to grow. This is why Paul covered grace by faith & justification before this point, because if we tried to work through this logic model & graph on our own, there would be no forward motion. We wouldn't even get to the mediating factors. It is Christ who is our comforter & all in all & here in the love & power of Christ we stand :) :) Woot to Stuart Townsend who wrote In Christ Alone in 2002 because that song is pretty awesome :) Anyway, Christ makes it possible for character to produce hope because is the Triune God that is the driving force behind conforming us to His image & behind us learning more about the character of God through the Word :)

So in sum, yes character does produce hope - in a very complicated way and all by God's grace!!!!!!! :)