To Encourage You

1 Peter 1:3-5 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

Have you ever thought about the trajectory of your life? Have you thought about where your life is headed or how it will all end up?  If not, don’t you think you should, for it WILL all end someday – and perhaps much sooner than you think? 

One of the things that we all need to function in this world is a word that appears in the verse above. It’s the word “hope.”  The definition of the Greek word from which the word “hope” is translated in this verse is, “to anticipate, usually with pleasure; expectation or confidence” (Strong’s Concordance).  It’s an optimistic look to the future. It’s a positive expectation about where things will one day end up.  So, a question for you if you aren’t a Christian, in what have you placed your hope?  Do you realize that whatever it is, if it’s not rooted in something you’re certain of, it could more appropriately be called “wishful thinking” rather than hope?  For what, exactly, are you certain of?  As they say, in this life NOTHING is certain – except death and taxes, and there’s not much hope in them! 

You see, we live in a temporary world. As Jesus has told us, this world and everything in it will one day pass away (Matthew 24:35). If that’s true, how much hope can we place in anything in this life – and worse, what hope is there for anyone beyond the grave?  In 1 Thessalonians 4:13 Paul talks about the sorrow of death for those in the world “which have no hope.”  And if there’s no hope in death, then the apostle Paul says our attitude might as well be “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32).  Indeed, if we know that “we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world” (1 Timothy 6:7), then what’s the reason for hope? What real hope is there if we will lose it all in the end? What hope if in the end we will lose even our own life?  It’s all so temporary! 

All hopes are sure to fade – at least if that’s all there is to it and if that’s the real trajectory of everyone’s life.  But is it?  Or is what Peter talks about in the passage above the way things really are?  Is there something that is called a “living hope,” something that doesn’t die and pass away in the end?  Is there hope beyond the grave? 

Well, to these questions the Bible gives us a resounding “Yes!”  Not only is there something beyond the things we can see with our eyes that are all passing away, but there are things God has told every believer that he or she will inherit that are “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”  It is these things for which the believer hopes – things that the Bible calls, “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 16:9).   It’s God’s sure promise of where the life of the believer is certain to end up. 

In the book of Job, we have a picture of this.  Here was a man who had lost almost everything in this life – his wealth, his health, and even his children.  At this his wife encouraged him to just give up, to curse God and die.  Life had lost all its meaning for him – at least that’s how it looked in her eyes.  But somehow Job had hope.  Why?  Because his eyes were on the invisible – he trusted in God.  And what was the result? God, “blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12). And while this was referring to Job’s latter days on earth, for the believer these words extend even beyond the grave, for they are true for all eternity. 

So, is that your trajectory in life? Is that where you know you’ll end up?  You see, that’s the certain hope that is available to those who are born again. It’s the living hope of those who believe.