Hope Abounds
Do you ever feel hopeless? Most of us do at times, at least for short time before we regain our spiritual equilibrium. Almost everything we do involves at some point a hopeless ending or an endless hope. We determine which.
When you give your life to Christ as Savior and Lord, you are no longer chained to the chariot wheels of this world. HOPE lives.
He turns people unable to cope into people of hope.
Many people are like the young woman who happened upon a terrible accident. The scene was horrible; bodies were broken, and blood was all over the place. She said, “I have never been more thankful for my first aid training. When I saw the conditions of those people I remembered my training. Immediately I sat down and put my head between my knees so I wouldn’t faint.”
She missed the point. Our Bible training is designed to help us know what to do and how to do it.
Many people today are just hanging on, trying to avoid fainting because of the mess of life that surrounds them. Jesus can change all that. Note the word change. You are not locked in the cellar of despair.
Some college students stole the mascot of a neighboring school, a goat. They made elaborate plans to sneak it into their dorm room. Someone said, “What about the smell?” Came the reply, “The goat will just have to get used to it.” Jesus doesn’t come into your life to help you “get used to it,” but to get you used to what He offers to enable you to live the abundant life.
He is able to give you peace, HOPE, and strength to live. That is true regardless of your condition. Some have a sense of despair. He offers hope.
Richard Sibbes, one of the great old Puritan preachers of Cambridge who died in 1635, wrote a whole book on Psalm 42:5. He was called “the sweet dropper” because of how much confidence and joy his sermons caused. He called his book “The Soul’s Conflict with Itself,” because in Psalm 42:5 that is exactly what you have, the soul arguing with itself, preaching to itself. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God!”
The best sermon you can preach to yourself may be only three words long: “Hope in God!”
Situations often seem hopeless, but He isn’t.
Our English word resulted from the meaning of two Ole English words: desire plus expectation. Expanded that means you desire a certain end and you have belief it will happen.
Develop and frequently replenish your pantry of hope by feasting on God’s word and develop your knowledge of and confidence in God’s ability, not your own.
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10: 22)