Powerless Hope

What's the difference between hopeless and powerless? ~ Question from Sponsee

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, 
the evidence of things not seen. Faith.
Faith is what you have when you find power,
not in yourself but beyond you,
the power that can, the power higher,
high enough, the power that is hope.
What is hopelessness, what is hopeless?
Etymologically, the absence of hope.
But if faith is the matter of things subject to hope,
then can there be an absence of hope
so long as there is a power great enough
to be defined with hope?
We admit to being powerless over food,
over life, over stuff and things
but then we admit the existence
of that power, that higher being,
able to restore us to sanity, able to grant power
over food, over procrastination, over stuff.
We admit hope in power, in the idea that hopelessness
is our own, is just in our own ineptness, our own limits,
that hopelessness stops with our own powerlessness.
Powerlessness doesn't go past our own
does not stretch out of the first step,
on to the second. And hopelessness has no place,
no step to call its own. There is no hopelessness
so long as we know the power that defines hope
as it demonstrates power.