3-26-2016

         Good Morning All!!

      Romans 5:5; “and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

        I always like to watch a movie where our heroes face a situation that seems hopeless.  Most westerns have a time when our heroes are short of water and there is no water in sight.  Most war movies have a time when the heroes are running out of bullets.  Most ocean or water movies have a time when the boat or raft is about to sink.  Most romantic movies have a time when the heroes think they will never see each other again.  We watch movies where it looks hopeless but in the end everything works out.  I think most of us do this because we wish real life was like the movies; everything turns out the way we want it to.

    Yet the real world doesn’t always go that way.  The good guy doesn’t always get the girl, the cavalry doesn’t always appear in the nick of time, and sometimes the boat sinks.  That is the real world; we know this because at one point in time we have all experienced this.  We have had loved ones die, relationships break, jobs lost, health broken.  In the movies, the good guys would not die, the relationships are amazingly restored, jobs saved and health returns.  But only in the movies.

    This is what happens in a broken and sinful creation.  Sin introduced chaos to an orderly system and death was the result.  So the devil keeps telling us that there is no hope.  Most of the world agrees with him.  Most of the false religions of the world offer little in the way of hope.  They tend to have a fatalistic and fearful tale to tell.  Yet we don’t.

    God gives us hope.  God pours his love on us through the Holy Spirit because of his love for us.  God poured out his heart for us by having Jesus die for our sins and then rise again as a sign of the acceptance of that death but also to give us hope.  For as Christ rose from the dead so will we.  We have been given the complete victory over death and the devil.  They will never completely win.  We will rise again and we will live with a perfected, transformed body that is perfect.  We have the victory; God guarantees it.

    What a wonderful promise this is!!  All those people whom we have loved and looked so ravaged by disease and death will be perfect and we will live with them in God’s perfect garden.  All things perfect.  God’s mercy gives us this hope.  So as we wait, we do so with the confidence of God’s grace to sustain us, sustaining us until that time comes when Jesus returns and completes his total destruction and ends death’s reign forever.  That is our hope; death will not win.  All believers will live in eternal glory with Jesus in his wondrous kingdom with the perfected and transformed body which will never experience pain or sorrow, death or disease.  We are victors; we have hope.

Father, through your wonderful mercy you sent Jesus to give us hope.  You have given to us the victory that Jesus earned for us.  We ask that you would strengthen all those who feel as though they have no hope.  Keep us mindful of your mercy.  Keep us aware of your undeserved yet undying love.  Guard and protect us.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret