Day 2– Living Hopeful in Your Purpose Helps to Advance the Kingdom of God - Part One

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

In the Bible, Hope is expressed as the confident expectation of what God has promised with its strength being in His faithfulness. Our new birth, our salvation that with the idea of “a living hope.” The Greek term for “hope” in the passage means “an eager, confident expectation.” This hope of the believer is not only “living” but “lively.” One Bible translates the phrase as “a hope that lives on.” Unlike the empty, dead hope of this world, this “living hope” is energizing, alive, and active in the soul of the believer. Believers are to live with great expectation, as the puts it. Our living hope originates from a living, resurrected Savior. Our future is secure because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our hope in His victory over death and His resurrection life. Whatever the persecuted believers would face in this world could not compare to the blessings of the future resurrection and the life to come in eternity. “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” I Corinthians 15:56-57 (NKJV).

Living hope is anchored in the past, Jesus rose from the dead. It continues in the present: Jesus is alive. And it endures throughout the future, Jesus promises eternal, resurrection life. Living hope also enables us to live without despair as we encounter suffering and trials in this present life. you can create hope within yourself through giving yourself motivation for pursuing your goals and believing you can accomplish them. Are you confident that you know and are fulfilling God’s purpose for your life? Because goals are the map that will guide you toward your God-given purpose, without setting them you will also wander in circles without getting where you need to go; hope will help guide you daily. Take time to reflect on the things that have gone well for you in your recent and distant past. It can remind you that things haven’t always been bad and that they can always be good again. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal” 2 Corinthians 4:16–18 (NKJV).

The object of our living hope is “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you”. We have an inheritance that will never be touched by death, stained by evil, or faded with time; it is death-proof, sin-proof, and age-proof. This inheritance is also fail-proof because God guards and preserves it in heaven for us. It is wholly secure. Absolutely nothing can undermine the certainty of our future inheritance. People cannot survive long without hope. Hope keeps us going through painful experiences and fear of what the future may hold. In a fallen world where people face poverty, disease, hunger, injustice, disaster, war, and terrorism, we need a living hope. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 2:12 that those who don’t have Jesus Christ do not have hope. Believers are blessed with real and substantial hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. By the power of God’s Word and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, this living hope quickens our minds and souls. “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” Hebrews 4:12 (NKJV). It changes our thoughts, words, and actions. Once dead in our sins, we now live with the hope of our own resurrection.