LIVING IN HOPE

By on Dec 9, 2013 in Devotions

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

The only reason we are living on earth is to help other people. Otherwise, it would be best if God choked us and let us die as soon as we were baptized and began to believe.

But he allows us to live here so that we will bring other people to faith, just as he has done for us. Meanwhile, because we are still on earth, we must live with a confident hope.

Although we know that we possess God’s treasures through faith—for faith gives us the new birth, our standing as children of God, and the inheritance that comes with it—we don’t see them yet.

They are still in the future, like something put off to the side, hidden from our eyes. Peter calls this a living hope (1 Peter 1:3).

We have God’s measures, but they are sill concealed. They can be grasped only with the heart and through faith,

John writes about this in his letter:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears[a]we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

For this life and the future life are separate and cannot coexist with each other. We can’t eat, drink, sleep, wake up, and go through the other activities of this life and also be in heaven at the same time.

We can’t enter eternal life without dying and having this life pass away. So while we are here, and until that day God wants us to see the treasures we possess, we must keep on living in hope. ((Martin Luther, Faith Alone [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], December 8))

Martin Luther

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