Our hope is our vision of the possible. However, we need not hope that the sun will rise. We have knowledge that it will. Rather, we have hope in things that are possible, but not yet attained. This future perspective defines hope. There is no hope that the past will change—only the future.
Humankind may have hope in all kinds of future events, but the event most closely related to faith is hope in the promised blessings of the eternities. God has made the promise. This same God who fulfilled his promise to send the Atoning Messiah has promised that, if we obey the commandments and endure to the end, we may enjoy the blessings of heaven. We do not typically enjoy them on earth, and we cannot fully enjoy them on earth (D&C 93:33–34). However, we can look forward to those blessings and know that they are possible. This is where hope and faith become intertwined.
Faith is a mechanism of action. Hope is not. Hope cannot replace faith, for it is entirely possible to hope without taking any action that might accomplish the hope. We might hope to become very wealthy but decline to work toward that end. On the other hand, faith carries within its definition the need to act. Therefore, the two principles work together. We have hope for something in which we can have the faith to believe, act, and attempt to achieve.