Ya Gotta Have Hope

I had thought I would have posted more by now but you know how it goes. Glad to see that blakeyblog jumped back on line and that Bill is still shooting the ball (bigthinktank). I am anxiously waiting for godsongmusic to have somethiong more to say and I'm looking forward to heartofezra and dolphinboy54 coming back on board. BTW when you're surfing the net looking for something fresh, you might want to check out monkeytrunkad.com. Surely monkey trunk will become a standard feature on all cars in the near future.

This past Sunday I taught on hope from 1 Peter 1:13. We are to fix our hope on the grace to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. This is a command. Hope is a matter of the will. We have the choice to live in hope or not. Now most Christians seem to live in a state of semi-hopelessness. They know their sins are forgiven and they are going to heaven some day but that seems to have little practical impact on their daily living. They don't seem very hopeful. They are bogged down by their problems (health, work, bills, relationships, etc.). This is becuase they are not making the choice to live in hope nor are they doing the things that promote real hope. Peter says that we fix our hope by girding our minds and by being sober. We have to make a decision to face life from the biblical perspective (gird our minds) and we must stay constantly alert, relating biblical truth to every new situation (be sober). We need to fill our minds with the truth of God's Word and then apply that truth in our daily lives. We have to evaluate our situations by what the Bible says. We must look at circumstances from the perspective of God's revealed character. So often we evaluate God based on what we think of our circumstances. That's why we struggle with hope. We must learn to live in hope by disciplining our mind according to biblical truth. Then we will have our minds set on the Savior and our hearts will be filled with hope.

Hope is necessary, becuase apart from hope we won't do the hard things we must do in living a life that is pleasing to the Lord. More about that in a future post but for now let me encourage to diligently practice biblical thinking which is the only way to hope.