Romans 5:2-5 The Voice
“Jesus leads us into a place of radical grace where we
are able to celebrate the hope of experiencing God’s glory. And that’s not all. We also celebrate in
seasons of suffering because we know that when we suffer we develop
endurance, which shapes our characters.
When our characters are refined, we learn what it means to hope and anticipate
God’s goodness. And hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because
the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love.”
Hope is hard to describe. I think even the biblical authors
struggled to describe it. But I’m going
to try to say at least a few things about it this week. Today I say this: we can’t live without it. People who are fighting disease die when they
lose hope. I believe people who commit
suicide often do so because they lost all hope of something better. When we give up hope, we lose our will to
keep moving forward.
To put this more positively, hope keeps us living a life
that is really life. It helps us endure hard and painful times. It helps us
keep trying when we just can’t seem to get it right. As we keep trying, keep enduring, and keep
holding on the vision of something better, something significant happens. Our character is strengthened. Our faith expands. Our trust increases.
And Jesus leads us into hope. More on that on tomorrow.
Prayer: God who is
the only infallible source of hope, lead us into that “place of radical grace”
that causes our hope to increase. Help
us keep going when “the going” is tough.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for all kinds of people who are losing hope today.
Song: Dennis DeYoung
(Show Me the Way) Dennis is the former
lead singer of 70’s/80’s rock group Styx (one of my favs) and he is 74
now. This is a song he wrote back in the
70’s, but his voice is still captivating.
I hear this song as a prayer for people who have lost hope – a prayer
that God WILL answer. If you like this
one, you should also listen to his recent recording of “The Best of
Times.”
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