What’s that thing that will solve your problem? Where could you move, that would make your life more fulfilling? What job will be the final piece to fall in place? What friendship will bring a sense of completion to your life?
All of those are actual things in my life that I have, recently, thought could be the answer to the tension I feel, to the frustration of confused purpose I experience.
So, I want to talk about hope.
It’s been on my mind lately. A dangerous and promising four-letter word…that seems to be powerful because of something outside of itself.
You can misplace it.
You can abandon it.
You can renew it.
And, it can even be fulfilled.
But why is it so volatile?
Paul Tripp says this: “Every human being places his hope in something, and every human being asks that hope to deliver something. Where have you placed your hope?”
Today, my answer is this:
The grace that I’m standing in
And…
The glory of my God
But, yesterday, and tomorrow, when my thoughts are confused and my heart buys into what I see around me that is visible, that promises to deliver on the hope it advertises, I need the truth. I get that truth from the Word of God.
Romans 5:1-5 (ESV) is the perfect place to reset to:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
So, where should you put your hope?