Romans 15:13 is not an instruction to feel hopeful. It is a prayer that hope would be given: "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope." The hope in that sentence is something poured in from outside, by God, into people who are being prayed for. Nobody in the verse is asked to produce it first.
That matters in a hard stretch, whether it is an illness, money, a marriage or a season that has no visible end, because hope is one of the things that does not come when you try to summon it.
The short version
The passage
Romans 15:13, in the World English Bible and the King James, with the verses around it.
What it is
A blessing Paul prays over the church in Rome. The hope is described as God's to give and theirs to receive.
What to do with it
Read it as a prayer somebody is praying for you. You do not have to feel hopeful to read it.
When to get help
The National Institute of Mental Health says to seek professional help when feeling hopeless lasts two weeks or more.
The passage
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13, in the World English Bible. In the King James:
Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.
Look at who does what in the sentence. God is the one who fills. The people are filled. The hope they end up with is said to overflow, "abound", and the power it comes by is the Holy Spirit's. There is no line in it about trying harder, thinking more positively or holding on. It is words said over somebody, with the work left to God.
What to do with it
Take the verse as a prayer someone is praying for you, because that is what it is. Paul wrote it for people he wanted to see filled with hope, and reading it on a bad day puts you where they were: on the receiving end.
If you can pray at all tonight, you can pray it back in the first person: may the God of hope fill me. If you cannot, you can let it stand as it is, said over you by somebody else. Either way the verse does not wait for you to feel anything before it applies.
When Bible Nudge gives this verse, it asks where you most need hope to be given rather than generated. It can be one small, specific place. Romans 15:10-16, which surrounds it, is laid out in full here.
Water given to a plant that cannot fetch its own.
Where Paul says it
Romans is a letter from Paul to "all who are in Rome, beloved of God". By chapter 15 he is asking two groups in that church, Jewish and Gentile believers, to live with each other: "Therefore accept one another, even as Christ also accepted you, to the glory of God."
He then strings together several lines of Scripture about the nations praising God, and the last of them ends on the word hope: "in him the Gentiles will hope." Verse 13 picks that word up and turns it into a blessing. So, the hope in this verse comes at the end of a long argument about people who did not expect to be included, and it is prayed over all of them at once.
Right afterward, Paul tells the same readers he is persuaded they are "full of goodness". The tone around the verse is warm. It is not a rebuke to people who have lost hope, and it does not suggest that lacking hope says something bad about them.
Why this verse, and not two better-known ones
Two well-known verses were considered here, along with a third.
Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you," is a real promise, and it was written to a whole people in exile in Babylon, about a return that would come after seventy years. Read as a personal guarantee that a particular reader's situation will turn out well, it promises more than anybody can promise on God's behalf. The letter it belongs to is set out with the verse.
Romans 8:28, "all things work together for good for those who love God," asks you to see the present difficulty as working toward something good. That may be true, and it is still a claim about your circumstances, which is a great deal to hand somebody while they are in the middle of them. Its surrounding verses are worth reading as well.
A third, Proverbs 13:12, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick," describes the state accurately, and is worth knowing for that. It names the sickness without moving toward anything, which fits waiting better than it fits a search for hope.
Romans 15:13 was chosen because it is phrased as hope given, and that is the version of hope available to somebody who cannot find any of their own.
Sometimes the words that help most are the ones somebody else says over you.
What hope is, according to people who study it
Psychology describes hope differently, and the two descriptions sit side by side without conflict. In an interview for the American Psychological Association, psychologist Jacqueline Mattis separates optimism, "the expectation that things will work out", from hope, which she says "comes with that expectation plus a plan". On a hard day, a plan can feel like as much of an ask as optimism does. That is part of why hope described as given may read differently on a day like that.
People describe the effort in their own words. On Reddit's r/Jesus, one person wrote that "it almost feels like I physically can’t pray hard enough" (r/Jesus, posted April 2024). On r/Christianity, somebody collecting verses after three traumas in a little over a month was clear about what they expected: "I’m obviously not going to magicly feel better but this helps when I have to sit in the pain" (r/Christianity, posted July 2026). That is a good description of what a verse can do and what it cannot.
If you are looking for words for somebody else
Some people come to this search on behalf of somebody else. One person on Reddit's r/Christian wrote, "I’ve tried to give her Bible verses but nothing seems to help her feel better," about a friend who cries herself to sleep (r/Christian, posted August 2022).
Samaritans' advice for that situation is to listen without judgment, which it says "could mean not offering advice, not trying to identify what they’re going through with your own experiences and not trying to solve their problems". A verse can go alongside that. It does less on its own.
When hopelessness needs more than a verse
One threshold from the National Institute of Mental Health is worth knowing. Feeling "sad, tearful, or hopeless" for two weeks or more, along with changes in sleep, appetite or the ability to get through ordinary tasks, is its point to seek professional help. It also says that anybody having thoughts of suicide or urges to hurt themselves should get help immediately.
Where to go next
Hope is the topic page for this verse, with its surrounding chapter and the passages set beside it.
If hope is not quite the word for what you are carrying, a short description of it is enough for Bible Nudge to suggest a different passage. Find a passage.
If hope has run out to the point of not wanting to live, please reach somebody now. In the United States, call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In the UK and the Republic of Ireland, Samaritans can be called on 116 123. Wherever you are, Find A Helpline can point you to a service in your country.
Words that come up here
Tap a term to see what it means.
Benediction. A blessing spoken or written over people, usually at the end of a service or a section of a letter. Romans 15:13 is one.