the Hope of glory

P 2969 Hope maintenance.

/ DVH

“Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for His miraculous power constantly energises you. Now we offer up to God all the glorious praise that rises from every church in every generation through Jesus Christ—and all that will yet be manifest through time and eternity. Amen!”Ephesians 3:20-21 TPT. Jesus is our steadfast anchor and hope, and the bible is hope’s back-up and proof that what we know is true. Finally, our praise and prayers mirror what we hope for! 

You and I need to take the time to protect our own hope. We can’t always just jump in and start out with faith, because our faith can be weakened by circumstances, emotions and trouble. Christ’s birth, life, and death have established HOPE on the earth, permanently.”To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.“ Colossians 1:27.This is not a transitory thing, it is an eternal thing. It is an established, firm, foundational fact. We cling to His incredible goodness. Faith will spring up in us, as we continually maintain our hope in Who He is and what He did for us.

We need to remind ourselves about what the Bible says, instead of focussing on what is going on around us or inside us. We ask the Holy Spirit to remind us of the incredible things the Lord has already done in our lives that are good, filled with hope, grace and truth. Verses like those two above, are so helpful, they remind us that God has dominion over everything else that is going on, and He doesn’t just want to answer our prayers — He wants to bless us while He is doing it! He has our best interests firmly established in His heart.

Here is another well known verse that show us ‘hope’s purpose.’“May Your unfailing love be with us, LORD, even as we put our hope in You.” Psalm 33:22. Our hope is an investment in God’s greatness, not in our ability to believe! There are times when we hope for things that are bigger than our faith seems to be. However, God is always good, He will get us there, He will turn our hearts toward Him! Just be honest with Him and ask for His help. When we asked Jesus to save us He made our heart His home. We could be bad at living like that is a reality, or good at it, none of that makes any difference at all to HIS goodness.

Things happen all the time in this life, stuff like —- a loved one is desperately sick, or the job we want to be available isn’t. Maybe we need somewhere safe to live. Of course we pray about such desperate things, but our hope needs to be in WHO He is, not just the answer to our prayers. If our hope is in the answer to our prayers then our hopes can be shattered if things don’t turn out the way we think they should. We must start with the known, the reality, the substance of Who Jesus is — His character, and His attitude toward people like me, we are the people He loves. All of that is in the bible.

Sometimes we desperately hope for things that are beyond our immediate scope of belief. Pray and ask Him to walk you through your failing hope and faith, until you are again standing on His goodness. Things like these are a place for us to continue to stretch our faith IN HIM. Here is an example: it is one thing to believe God can get you to work on time when the trains are late — and totally another to believe He can heal someone who is severely depressed! He can! But we can drive ourselves batty struggling and striving to stretch our hope and make our faith into something it isn’t … yet. When you find a weak place, let Him be your strength.

You and I might have a mustard seed size of faith, and still grow a big tree that will shelter others. The important factor in that sentence is time. We never arrive, we are always in transit in this life – that’s part of the adventure. We need to invest our hope in His goodness, like we invest in breathing or having enough water — not in our ability, or inability to pray. Let His goodness be a fixed point. Then hope will not disappoint you. HE never changes. But our ability to hope in Him answering our prayers might easily be swayed or changed with adverse  circumstances. 

That’s why our hope must be in Who He is. Our thoughts aren’t about things like – did He answer my prayer this week, last month, last year? Our prayer needs to be fixed to the only true fixed point – is Jesus God or not? Can God do anything or not? Anything else leaves us open to being knee-capped by the other guy when we get overwhelmed by whatever is going on. God is good. He gives good answers. No matter how things look now, He’s got this. He’s with you in what is going on. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.” Hebrews 11:1. We hang onto our hope in Him, until we hit faith and we return to the certainty of Who He is … now we have substance … we aren’t trying to push faith out, we know that we know Who He is.

Silence from heaven is never final … it means it is faith-stretching time – during that time we need to dig into our hope chest and remind ourselves of Who He is and what He has done for us. Hope maintenance facilitates growing and strengthening OUR faith. We stop using other people’s experiences to push us along, and start developing our own history, our own stories of His grace in action. Then we can’t be stopped. Remember:  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 . I believe that hoping in God’s goodness is the key that breathes life into overwhelmed struggling, sad hearts. Bye. 👋

P 2590 United we stand … divided we fall.

/ DVH

Here is today’s verse, John 17:23 NIV.“I in them and You in Me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me.”This is the Passion Translation: “You live fully in Me and now I live fully in them so that they will experience perfect unity, and the world will be convinced that you have sent Me, for they will see that You love each one of them with the same passionate love that You have for Me.”

First of all, whenever we are reading the bible we need to do our best not to get tangled up in the complexity of the words or thoughts. If that happens, it becomes way too easy to shut the book and think ‘I don’t get it’ and walk away. Here’s my recommendation, instead – stop. Pray. Tell the Holy Spirit you don’t get it, and ask Him to explain it to you. WAIT.

This is why it is not always the best thing to fit God in around everything else we have to do each day. If reading the bible is an add-on, then we are more likely to give up on a complex thought that may give us insight into Who He is. Especially if we are mentally half-way out the door, or getting ready to hop on the bus! If you have to take your bible into the loo to get peace and quiet … then do it. Reading this book is like an adventure, it is well worth the effort to wait for insight. Otherwise you will miss all the excitement of discovery and joy, especially if you treat simply the bible like a chore that must be done.

OK, back to my real point today… The body of Christ is looking for unity the wrong way. Please let me explain… we think unity is about coming into agreement about theology, activities, styles of worship, bible translations, doctrine, dogma, philosophy. So we search and search and kind of try to bend our heads and ideas about stuff around, so we can obey Christ and learn how to agree. But that’s not what Jesus actually said… Feel free to read it again. Be-ca-use God lives fully in Jesus, and now Jesus lives fully in us …  we can use LOVE as our glue … 

Why is that so? Because the Lord Jesus has way more sense than we do. He will not fight with Himself!! The Jesus in me is the same Jesus that lives in you!! It’s the life of Christ IN us that will sort out our differences! As we walk in a life of love, we will recognise each other no matter what church we go to! Ya, might just want to stew on that one for a while …🍲

Jesus loves unity. The psalmists say unity is like oil! Oil flows everywhere, it is not fussy. So, if you and I stop fighting about principles and words … and I sort of kind of, peer at you, and pray, then I can see HIM! In your eyes, in your smile, in the way you treat me, your whole demeanour.  I can also see Him in the way you do this and that… or the way you regard this or that … in other words I need to stop looking to see if our theology matches, and start looking for Christ Himself!

We cannot go outside of ourselves into rules and regulations to come into unity. We need to start unity with – I love Jesus and so do you – that means we are coming from the same place, and everything else is advertising! He lives inside both of us and we know that Christ is not divided. Here’s Paul explaining his version of that – 1 Corinthians 1:13&17 “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptised in the name of Paul? … … For Christ did not send me to baptise, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”

We have become so adept at maintaining our own little insight, or theological POV, we’ve missed the actual big picture. We are all here to preach the Gospel to the world, and tell them that Christ loves them, and saved mankind from their sins and themselves! As long as we keep pushing our own ideologies or holding fast to our own denominational POV we will always be inefficient! Agreement is powerful. If you were satan wouldn’t you keep pointing out what’s wrong with those other guys over there, plus reminding everyone why we can’t be friends??  Our desire to be right is holding us away from our calling of UNITY.  Just imagine what we could do to-ge-th-er?? 🤔

Two true stories – I was once buying apples in the produce section of the supermarket. Another lady was over the other side, carefully selecting her apples too. We looked up at each other and smiled. Then something amazing happened. The Jesus in HER recognised the Jesus in ME.  We had a lovely time having fellowship together in the supermarket, and hugged one another as we parted. I never saw her again. But I know I will!!!!!

A dear little old man used to come to my house monthly, talking about his church and their beliefs. His church was very different than mine. Theologically we had big differences. But the Jesus in me saw the Jesus in him, and loved this man instantly. This dear old man used to kneel down on his tired old knees on my hard tiled floor, and pray for me and my family before he left.

I think it is time to take down the barricades and start look for Christ in others who believe. ‘It is Christ IN us that is everyone’s hope of glory…’ United we stand … let’s not get pushed over by highlighting our differences. What will unify us is His love in us.👋