Living Hope Series

Living Hope

1st Peter 1:1-12

Read 1st Peter 1:1-3

How many can agree today that our salvation is grounded in God’s Mercy!

Romans 5:8 says;

In that while we were yet sinners CHRIST died for us!

Despite our retched sinning and our vile conditions God showed us compassion!

The word of God stated; “He has begotten us again”…

God has given a life beyond the one that our physical births could give!

God has given us life to live in a different realm, One of the spirit and not of the flesh!

“he has begotten us again to a living hope through and by the resurrection”

God has given us as humans a new confidence in that we have the hope of our salvation through and by the one who died for us on Calvary over 2000 years ago!

Because JESUS died we will be tested and tried…

Read 1st Peter 1:4-9

We rejoice in the death of Jesus Christ because he is not dead but he is risen!

Just as Jesus says earlier in the new testament in St. John 14;

“I go to prepare a place for you and if I go to prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there you may be also”

We are grieved just for a moment in our various trials, but one day we will pass from this life into the next, and if we have been saved and sanctified; and delivered through the remission of our sins…

The casting off of the OLD MAN and the picking up of our New man, being redeemed by the precious atoning blood of Jesus Christ being heirs of God to the inheritance that awaits us just over on the other side of chilly Jordan!

I have to ask someone a question today…

Are you ready to pass over the other side of Jordan?

Are you ready when God calls your name for the last time to meet him there at the judgement seat of Christ?

I’m telling you this hour that the life of a Christian isn’t the easiest life, but it’s far better compared to the sin filled one you are living now and what is awaiting for the sinner man/woman…

It would be far better to be found as a servant tried by fire and to be purified like Gold;

Than to be found Retched, dirty and without purity by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ today!

We as Christians, True Christians, true blood bought heirs to the kingdom of God;

We rejoice in our trials because they will only last for just a little while, as Ecclesiastes says;

“Only but for a season”…

“There is a time and purpose for all things”

I believe more than ever before that the time and purpose for you today was to be here as a lost sinner or a backslider that has lost his/her way… and to be given one more opportunity to come to an alter of prayer!

We as Christians rejoice when our faith is being tried in the fire;

Because we can turn whatever it is that is trying our faith in to a praise (joseph)

We can turn our tried faith in to honor and glory and power!

Don’t let the trials of this life defeat you; but rather let them make you STRONGER through our living hope

J-E-S-U-S!

We as Christians would be a lot better off if we would learn to praise through a trial rather than wine through a trial!........

NONE of the gospel greats that you read about in the Word of God made it out of their trials and their torment through wining!

But rather like Paul and Silas when they were bound in the jail,

Yes they could have cried about it;

Yes they could have complained how tight the shackles where, how heavy the chains were,

Yes they could have cursed at the fact that was right in front of their faces…

We are beaten and we are bruised and now we are thrown into a dingy prison cell LOCKED up!

They could have even wrote a new song and sang out of their torment…

“Woe is me, woe is me, look at my current condition, I feel sorry for me, woe is me”…

BUT rather Church house of God we find that Paul and Silas when beaten and battered, thrown into that prison for proclaiming the Word of God…

Done just like Peter said to do in 1st Peter 1…

TAKE THE TRIAL OF YOUR FAITH AND WHILE IT IS BEING TESTED BY FIRE LIKE GOLD THAT PERISHES,

TURN THAT BLACKEND, BRUISED, WEATHERED, BEATEN FAITH INTO A PRAISE OF HONOR AND GLORY, MERCY; A PRAISE OF HOPE!

DID HE NOT SAY; HE WOULD TURN OUR MORNING INTO DANCING, TURN OUR SORROW INTO JOY!