Hope For The Future

“I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.” – Ephesians 1:18-20.  

How many of you would like to know the future?  Who wouldn’t want to know what the future holds for us, our families, our church, our nation, the world. If you have failing health, you want to know if and when it will improve. If we have a difficult child, we want to know when it will be less difficult. If we lose a job we want to know how long it will take to find a new one. Will there be another hurricane? Will we find ourselves in WW3? We worry about what could happen and what we will do if and when when it does. 

Fortunately, Christians know that hope in an unchanging and eternal Christ is a certain thing. That hope is rooted in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we know that God has won the battle. Sin and death have been defeated. 1 Peter 1:3 says, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation,” Our hope is alive because Jesus is alive.

David wrote, “Though a mighty army surrounds me, my heart will not be afraid. Even if I am attacked, I will remain confident.” (Psalm 27:3). Psalm 27 is a song and a prayer of trusting God in the face of fears. Psalm 27 teaches us that our confidence is based on God’s unending protection. The ultimate fulfillment of this Psalm is found in Christ, the one who conquered our worst fears at the cross. Because of Jesus, we can come into God’s presence with confidence and hope. As Paul wrote in Romans, “What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?  (8:31-32). If God sacrificed His own Son to save us from our sins, He will be with us in the fears we face today.    

Our hope in Christ is an eternal thing, but it’s also a present thing. Maybe you need a fresh start and that fresh start requires changing some things today. God is with us in the present. He will be with us in our new beginning and in the changes we seek to make. We can make a fresh start because we serve a present, living Savior.

As we make a fresh start, my prayer is that we will never stop being in awe of the gospel. When we lose sight of what God has already done for us in Christ is when we begin to think there are hoops for us to jump through to start fresh, we need to remember that Jesus has already cleared all the hoops for us.  

Discussion Questions:

1. Are you confident in the future? Why or why not? 
2. How might we focus more on the future in our spiritual lives?