What is the recipe for hope?
Take one all-powerful, loving God who is righteous and cannot stand evil, and because he is righteous cannot lie.
Have God create the heavens and earth.
Have God create man in His own image.
Have man disobey God and become evil.
Have God condemn mankind for disobeying Him.
Add God’s love and His grace so that He does not want to condemn mankind but wants to forgive them.
Have the only Son of God come to earth and die to pay the penalty for man’s sin.
Add the key ingredient of hope, which is faith.
Then, have God put men into His grace by faith.
(Romans 5:1-2) “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
When one is in the grace of God, he comes there through the door of faith. And when one believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, he has access to the grace and stands in it. Here is a reason to rejoice in the grace of God because there is hope in the grace of God.
If we have hope, we will have an earnest expectation that God will glorify us as He has promised before the world began. We should rejoice because the God that cannot lie has promised it.
(Titus 1:2) “In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;”
(Song by Robert Critchley)
“My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand,
Our faith must be like Abraham’s faith (Romans 4:3), “For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.”
(Romans 4:18) “Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.”
The reason Abraham had hope was because of his faith in God.
*Devotional written by Ralph Williams, retired pastor and member of One Hope Mobile.
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