Hope

It's a popular word these days.

Hope.

Isn't everyone out there looking for hope in some capacity?

The family with a soldier overseas right now hope the soldier comes home safe....and soon. The expecting mother hopes that her baby will be born healthy...ten fingers and ten toes. The employee walks into the boss' office, hoping to leave without a pink slip. The father hopes the budget will stretch another month for his family to keep their house...their home.

Everyone needs hope. The Bible tells us that some have and that others don't.
"That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world." Ephesians 2:12

According to the verse above, those without Christ are those without hope and according to Colossians 1:4-5 tells us those with Christ, they are the ones with hope. "Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which ye have to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel."

Christ is the source of all hope. "For thou art my hope, O Lord God: thou art my trust from my youth." Psalm 71:5 and "Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: which made heaven, and earth, the sea and all that therein is: which keepeth truth forever." Psalm 146:5-6

I cannot think of a greater source to have hope in than the one who created all!

If you do not have hope, I urge you to turn to the source of pure existence - it is there, in Christ alone, that you will find enough hope to fill and overflow you...enough hope to sustain you no matter the depth of the valley of your trial, His hope is there.

I can with confidence say you can find it there because of 1 Peter 3:15 "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:"

When you find Jesus Christ and instill your trust and dependence upon Him and Him alone, he fills you with hope. This verse tells us that we have this hope IN us.

Do you have this hope?

If so, 1 Peter 3:15 instructs us to not hide this hope but to be ready always to give an answer to it.

As each day passes, I see our current world and country lose something along with the daylight and that is hope. The promise of hope won an election but that hope that was promised, was not hope rooted in Christ and therefore has left the void unfulfilled. But Christ can fill that void, permanently. Christian, do you not see the need to share the hope we have with this lost and hopeless world?

We have hope of seeing Him. Face to face. Redeemed. Our hope lies in the promise of Heaven, streets of gold and perfect peace, no more sin, tears or dying. Let us tell the hopeless the reason of the hope that is in us.