7-18-2014

Good Morning All, 

           Romans 15:13; “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

     So we brought some of our high school youth to the Black Hills to attend a Christian concert.  We are staying in a cabin that is owned by my cousin and the view is gorgeous.  As we came to the cabin, we followed our GPS signal but missed something somewhere.  It told us to just keep going so we kept going.  If you are familiar with driving in the Black Hills, eventually you make a big circle and we did.  Then we started over again.  We found it the second time.  For a fair part of the journey, there wasn’t much joy, very little peace and not much hope.

    Yet I truly hope that, as we drove, they looked at the incredible beauty around us.  The Hills are green and alive.  For a flatlander like me, they are majestic; you can sense why the Native Americans held them as sacred.  I knew we weren’t lost; we just weren’t where we expected to be.  If you are like me, there are times in my faith life that I feel that way.  I know I am not lost, for I am saved by the blood of Jesus.  Yet at times, I don’t feel that I am not where I expected to be and not sure where or how the path will go.

     I think this is a challenge for most Christians.  We tend to buy into the idea that, as Christians, our lives are supposed to be easy, a walk in the park as it were.  Yet when our life turns out differently than we expect, we feel lost and worry about the journey.  We may even question the path that we are on.  We don’t trust that we live entirely in hope.  We want to see the path and know what is coming.

     Yet God does not promise us this.  We don’t see the path ahead and that may really be a blessing.  Imagine knowing when you are a teenager that you will experience Alzheimer’s as an 80 year old; that would be a life without hope.  You see our hope is beyond this life.  We know that we will have eternal life with Jesus in the restored creation when he returns.  We look for, we long for, the “life after life after death.”  We long for the day when Christ returns and restores all things, us and all of creation, to its whole perfect state.  This is God’s promise and this is our hope.

    So as we live this life, the Holy Spirit gives us the power to hold onto that hope.  God gives us peace and joy because we know we are on the right path and we can truly enjoy the beauty along the way.  We can enjoy the beauty of nature, the joy of friendship, the warmth of a family, the peace that God gives to us because we live in hope.  We live knowing that God has made us a promise, a promise of perfect life in eternity with him; and that God always keeps his promise.  Because of this promise, even when we think we are going a way that we do not understand; God calls us to life in hope and to live by faith; trusting in his mercy for all our needs.

Father, in you we have all hope; in you we have peace and joy.  Give us the strength of faith to trust completely in you.  Be with those who are feeling lost and confused.  Lead them to put their faith in you.  Guide them safely home.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret