Gift Number 6: Hope
The 6th Gift from God I want to look at is Hope. In Webster’s dictionary it says hope means “to expect with confidence”. Well the gift of hope from God is to know with confidence that 1. God is always with you; 2.God loves you, and 3. that there is something more when we die than just death. This hope then is knowing and having confidence in God and his promises. I had a very good friend that found out she had lung cancer and when they told her they said it was the worst kind and that there wasn’t any hope for her to beat the cancer. She was strong in her faith in God and she just laughed and told them I have trusted, obeyed and relied on God this far and I am not going to stop now. She was telling them that she had hope even if she had cancer because her hope was not in things here on earth but hope in God and the knowledge that even if she died she was assured a place in heaven. Jeremiah 17:7 “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is”. The hope I am talking about isn’t in material things. We all have had hope that maybe we would get that job we wanted or maybe a good grade on a test but these things are just material and can’t give us anything that is forever but the hope I am talking about is hope that leads us to living in heaven with God. When we accept Christ as our Saviour then we are assured of a place in heaven when we die. so then we have hope in things to come. Because of the gift of hope from God we have victory over death as it says in I Cor. 15:54-57 54“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. Praise God.
The gift of hope from God gives our lives meaning and the assurance that no matter what we are going through we have someone going through it with us in the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean that nothing will ever go wrong but it means that we have the confidence or hope that God has a perfect plan and that we can get through anything because he loves us and is always with us. Phil. 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”. No longer do we need to feel hopeless because our hope is in the Lord. Trials and Tribulations may come our way but our strength comes in the knowledge and assurance or hope that God has it all in control and while we live we are in Gods loving arms living for him and if we die then we gain living with him in heaven. Phil. 1:21 “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” So our hope is in the Lord and we can live a full happy life because of this hope. When you feel hopeless or know someone who is feeling hopeless remember that when you have Christ in your heart then you have hope as God has promised you. Thanks be to God
Written by
Deb Forbes
Dec 2008
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