Hope

What is your hope in? What do you hope for? Hope for peace and rest from anxiety? Hope for health for yourself and your family? Hope for money or a promotion or that car you've had your eye on? What dominates your thoughts when it comes to hope? Maybe not just one thing, maybe many. The problem with hoping for all these things, is once you get them, you hope they will stay. You hope you don't get stressed out and anxious, you hope you don't get sick, you hope the stock market doesn't crash, or the recession doesn't cause you to lose your job, and you hope that car doesn't get totalled or keyed or stolen. You are guaranteed to have that hope at some point in some way crushed. Sooner or later you will be stressed, you and your family will get sick, some of them will die as will you, money will always be lost or diminished in one form or another, and that car even if it makes it without major damage will become old and break down and the paint will fade. This world and all that is in it is passing away, as are you. Hope in all of these things is hope in nothing for they will all come to nothing.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:3-5)

God causes those who "believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (Joh 20:31 ESV) to be born again and guaranteed an inheritance in heaven that will never fade and never perish. The reason it is a living hope is because those who believe are being guarded through faith by God's power. God ensures that we obtain that which we hope in. Thats the kind of hope we need. The hope that is guaranteed by God alone - not by our works or our confession of faith or our 'pretty good life'. The hope that we have, the ONLY hope that we have, is to throw ourselves on the mercy of God and be saved by His power alone, apart from ourselves.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God."

(Joh 3:16-18 ESV)

"Believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved."