I will hope in the Lord no matter what is going on around me.
19 The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words. 20 I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.
21 Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: 22 The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease. 23 Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning. 24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him!"
Psalm 31:24 Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.
What an awful time to be me, I used to have it going on but now what do I have to look forward to? Maybe you had it good for a while, things were going smooth, but easy street isn't a very long road to travel and before you know it you are on a detour.
Back in the day the Lord was blessing Israel, they were living on some awesome real-estate and all of their enemies had been defeated, what could go wrong? In Israel's situation, they were away from God, that was the reason for their trouble, the fall of Jerusalem to the armies of Babylon in 587 BC was their own fault.
Maybe you knew what peace was for a season and now it has been stripped away, sometimes our suffering can leave us without hope, but for the child of God that isn't a fair assessment of our situation and we should realize that difficult times does are not an indicator of how God feels about us.
Trying times may be for punishment but they may be a tool for growth and could have nothing to do with punishment. Either way we can't allow ourselves to believe that God's love for us has changed. God's love is constant and dependable, it is his love that sends difficulty our way for our own good, that can be hard to see in the heat of the battle but if we are patient we will overcome. (Lamentations 3:22-27)
Our hope is in Jesus
Romans 8:23-24 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved.We have hope, although we may groan now, the child of God is looking forward to better days. A day is coming when those that have been adopted by God will receive our inheritance as his children and move on to glory to spend eternity with him.
This Christmas season we need to remember that one of the great gifts that we have received from our Lord is the gift of hope. There isn't a good reason to despair but sometimes the season of hope turns into the season of nope, we forget about the bright future that we have. We must remind ourselves that the Lord's faithfulness is great and his mercy to us starts fresh every day.
I have a bright future and I should live like I know it so that others will be drawn to the Lord when they see the hope that I have in Christ.
Lord help us to live with excitement that comes from the great hope that you have given to us, help us to live it out each day to the fullest extent so that the world will see the gift of hope that we have been given. I pray for comfort for the people at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut and I pray that they will have hope in you to get these through this tragedy. Amen.
