Joyfully Hoping For God (A Joyful Hope)

Intro:

Many people were touched by God after they met Him. A living testimony is none other than ourselves. We are a living testimony to everybody that after we met Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we have that hope and peace through the power of the Holy Spirit in us. But before knowing and accepting God, we are just like the other people who are hoping for joy to come to them filling and satisfying them. Let us learn again how to be…

Joyfully Hoping for God

Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

ASND “Nawa ang Dios na nagbibigay sa atin ng pag-asa ang siya ring magbigay sa inyo ng buong kagalakan at kapayapaan dahil sa inyong pananampalataya sa kanya, para patuloy na lumago ang inyong pag-asa sa pamamagitan ng Banal na Espiritu.”

It is only God that can be our source of true joy in our lives. And once we found it, this will grow and overflow in us through the power of the Holy Spirit living in us. Once we experience this inexpressible joy, changes in our lives start to happen.

What are the effects of these joy in our lives after we found our hope in God? On this exhortation, we can find 3 major effects of this joyful hope in us. Let us look upon the 3 persons in the Bible that showed joyful hope. There are a lot of Bible characters that showed joy and hope after they met our Lord Jesus. Who are these people and what we can learn something from them in order to have a joyful hope?

1. There is a joyful hope in loving God. – Samaritan woman

Here comes an encounter with a hopeless woman in the person of the Samaritan woman…

John 4:15-18 “The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

Here is an encounter that started in confrontation with Jesus with the Samaritan woman who had 5 husbands and the current partner is not yet her husband. Jesus was pointing to the woman of a kind of thirst for a genuine love that only God can give to her. See how the woman wanted to experience the kind of quench of thirst that only Jesus can give to her. She wanted to have this kind of love so that she will no longer look for any other love aside from God’s love.

As this joyful hope progress, the Samaritan woman went to see her other villagers who were also thirsty like her…

John 4:39-42 “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed two days. And because of His words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

Look at how the Samaritan woman influenced her villagers because of the love they got after meeting Jesus. They have seen Jesus and heard Jesus spoke of this kind of love that brought them joyful hope! However, for Peter, he was there when Jesus went to see them especially Thomas who was doubting Jesus’ resurrection. And so Peter told the early believers to love and to have faith in God as a result of our joyful hope!

1 Peter 1:8-9 “Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

It is the joyful hope that led the people of God to love and have faith in Jesus and as a result, faith and the salvation of their soul. This mean that we can love God and others because of the joyful hope in us.

2. There is a joyful hope in living for God. – the Gadarene demon-possessed.

Another person who had encountered Jesus and experienced joyful hope is the Gadarene demoniac found in Luke 8:26-39. And we know the story of this man who had been demon-possessed for a long time. And when he met Jesus, deliverance happened as Jesus rebuked the demon inside this man and went to the herd of pigs. After the deliverance, suddenly the spirit of joyful hope prompted the man to be on his right mind, dressed and sitting at Jesus’ feet. But look after what happened next.