No Guesswork

If you could only have one thing to hang onto guiding your future, what would you choose? Here are some possibilities: money, education, friendships, position, fear, goals. These are a few of the choices that drive people. I suggest all are subservient to the most important one we can have. One that is necessary for all the others to work: hope.

Even secular society  pays homage to hope. Consider the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, of those entering Dante’s nine circles of hell; a placard with the inscription: Abandon all hope ye who enter here. So, on top of whatever the penalties await in each of the nine, the future holds only punishment with no chance of relief. And then there’s Pandora’s Box, which, when opened, allowed all of the world’s ills to escape. Only hope was left.

In the real world,

hope provides an incentive for us to persevere, to get out of bed and make something happen. But hope that is not based on truth or reality is just wishful thinking that will disappoint. Those who have lost hope are easily led into self-destructive behavior. There is, however, one thing that promises results. We’re told in Romans 5:5 that “hope does not disappoint.” Of course, this is not generic hope. It’s based on the promises of God who cannot lie (Tit. 1:2).

We’re also told in Heb. 11:1, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hope based on the truth of Scripture gives peace, confidence, direction. Now. Today. Not in some undefined future time. Yes, the object of our hope is in the future in our time-limited world. But God is not bound by time. He declares the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:10). And He has declared us as having obtained [past tense] an inheritance (Eph. 1:11), being sealed [past tense] in the Holy Spirit, given [past tense] as a pledge (promise) of our inheritance.

Thanks to God,

we don’t have to guess about our future. It was written in the blood of Jesus for all time and all people who turn from their sin and believe Jesus paid the ransom for us. Now that’s what I call hope in a sure thing. Thanks for reading. To hear more about what God offers to each to make hope a reality, click here Steps To Salvation.