Abiding Hope

Open up in a word of prayer over this time and the message!

Well, let me quickly start off by saying how blessed and honored I am to be here today and to be a part of this 24 live streaming service with all of you, those who are tuned in and watching and listening. I am reminded of how blessed we are in this time and season of the history of the church of Jesus Christ and of how that even in the midst of this trying time with this viral outbreak and the isolation that it is causing, we are still so very blessed!

You know when the church was first born in the book of Acts, and tribulation and persecution began happening to the believers, and they were dispersed into many different places and lands, they lost contact with many of their family and friends.

They couldn’t pick up their smartphone and call or text or send an email with a kind word.

They couldn’t even write a postal letter and mail it and know that within a few day, the other would receive it!

And they most definitely didn’t have the blessing and the ability as we do in the church today, to sit in the comfort and safety of their homes and simply click a button and instantly see each other and hear one another’s voices and witness the beauty of their smiling faces, as they shared of their love for one another and even more importantly, their love for the Lord!

Which serves to build up one another’s strength and faith as these words of love and exhortation and encouragement that were and are, so very much needed, are exchanged back and forth between believers!

And so, when I say that we are blessed in this day and age as the body of Christ, hopefully you can see what I mean and agree with me, AMEN?!!

Let me ask you all a question right now, as I’m get started with my 8 hour message! (Just kidding, don’t click the end button on the live feed, please!) Hang in there with me for a little bit and hopefully when I am done, we’ll all have a greater sense of appreciation and love for one of the greatest gifts of the believer that the Lord gave to each and every one of us!

So, the question that I want to ask you is this. “What does this coming week look like for you?”

From today, April 3rd, 2020, until next Friday, the 10th, what does your week look like?

I think that many of us, if not most of us probably use some sort of scheduling method to keep up with all of the things that are going on in our daily, sometimes, hectic lifestyles, right?

Some of you may still use the tried and true method of a “day planner”, like the more expensive, but reliable, “Covey day planner” system.

Many of us just keep a pocket planner, or calendar close by and still many more of us, in this day and age especially, like myself, are probably using this little device to keep up with everything! (**take out smartphone and hold it up**)

I use the calendar app on my smartphone for keeping up with everything that is going on in my life: from my personal life and appointments, to my meetings with church members and lunches and the like, I put all of my stuff into this thing and have it remind me of what is happening for each and every day!

Can any of you relate at all to what I am saying?

So, having said that, let me ask you again, “What does this coming week look like for you?”

Now I know that this time of being isolated and kept apart from work and other co-workers and family and friends and your church family, has definitely affected the way that your calendar was supposed to look, right?

But, still, what lies ahead of you for this coming week, as it stands?

What tasks await you to complete?

What obligations do you have to others, or to work?

How many of the things that you know of and have prepared for on your calendar for this coming week, are you really looking forward to?

And even more so, how many of the things that you know of, that are expected to take place over the course of this coming week, are you really dreading?

I mean, let’s be honest. There are always those meetings and those tasks and appointments that are coming up, that we know of and that we dread and loathe, right?!

It’s one thing when that dreaded date is still a long ways off that you or I have to deal with, like another month, or even a year away.

But when you are down to the actual week that it’s to take place, everything changes!

And it’s also completely different when the thing that is now upon you or I, is something that has either the potential of, or the assurance of being detrimental to us and our health and well being; OR EVEN OUR LIVES!!

Like if I have an illness that is definitely terminal and the only thing that can save me is the possibility of a surgical procedure, but the doctors have warned me that the very procedure itself, could take my life, and that I have less than a 30% chance of making it through the procedure

Then, in that case, I would very much be apprehensive and dreading that date, because of the uncertainty of what was taking place!

Does that make sense to everyone?

If I had committed a horrible crime and been sentenced for execution in one year, and I was down to the last week of my life, before the sentence was to be carried out, I would definitely be re-thinking things and dreading the coming days!!

Well, that’s where I want to start speaking with you all today. I want to very briefly take a look back in time, at a particular week in the life of a particular person.

And the purpose for looking back at this particular week and in the life of this particular person, is to show and prove the amazing love that this person had for His family and friends and ultimately for all of us and the amazing gift that we have received from this person!

The day and week that we are looking at, is this very day and this very coming week, almost 2,000 years ago.

And the person’s life that we are talking about, is none other than our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!

If we could go back to this same week, almost 2,000 years ago, and find our Messiah, on this very day, we would find Him having just come to the town of Bethany, where He and His disciples would be staying with His dear friends, Lazarus, Mary and Martha, for the next several days.

That is, until the coming Passover feast that week and then everything would change for them and their lives, as well as for the entire world, that was, or would ever be!!

I just mentioned a minute ago, that He gave an amazing gift to all who know Him as Lord and Savior.

I maybe should restate that phrase, so that it is more fitting for today’s message.

The most obvious gift that Jesus gave to us, was His life as a sacrifice upon the cross of Calvary and His perfect shed blood for the forgiveness of the sin of the world.

And by this, we now have redemption and eternal life with Him and His Father in heaven!

And although redemption and eternal salvation are the true signs of His love and that of His Father for us, there are other gifts that came as part of this relationship with Him.

And it’s one of those gifts that I want to briefly focus upon today!

That last week of the life of Jesus the Christ, is a very important point in time for all of humanity and it sets the stage for the greatest display of love and courage that has ever existed, or will ever exist!

That last week of the life of Jesus the Christ, is a very important point in time for all of humanity and it sets the stage for the greatest display of love and courage that has ever existed, or will ever exist!

In fact, allow me to expand a little bit upon how important that last week of His earthly ministry and its events were.

Of the entire life of Jesus upon this earth, which most of us believe to be around 33 years total, there is really nothing recorded about His life in the Bible, until His earthly ministry started at around 30 years of age.

In other words, other than His birth and a few details that took place after His birth and of course the recorded account of Jesus teaching in the temple when He was 12 years old, as recorded in Luke’s gospel, we have no other Biblical recordings about His life,before He started His earthly ministry at about 30 years of age!

So, think about what I’m saying to you right now. Of the 33 years of His life here on earth, we really only have recordings of 3.5 years of that time frame.

And of the 3.5 years of His life that are recorded within the gospels, let me show you how much emphasis was put upon the last week of His earthly as He was heading to the cross.

Look at each the four gospels and of how much attention they placed upon this one week of the 3.5 years of Jesus’ earthly ministry:

Matthew - 1/3 of his gospel

Mark - 1/3 of his gospel

Luke - 1/4 of his gospel

John - nearly 1/2 of his gospel!

Do you see what I am saying? When the authors of the gospels of the New Testament were inspired by Holy Spirit to write so much detail about this one week in the life of Jesus, I think that we should take note and realize that He was wanting to make a point!

After all what was the point of Jesus’ coming to this earth in the first place?

Was it not to ransom the captive and set the sinners free?

Paul said in , “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

And our being set free from the power of sin and death had to also include victory over the one who had the power over us, which was the devil.

For this reason, tells us another key point to Jesus coming physically to this world, where it tells us, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”

And in defeating the works of the devil Jesus also released us from the grip of the law, which served to remind us of the shackles to sin which we were under and that reminded us of the need for a savior.

Jesus, Himself said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

By paying the ransom price for our sins and defeating the works of the enemy and fulfilling the entire law, Jesus set us free from bondage of sin and the law and gave us the liberty to walk in His Father’s kingdom as free sons and daughters! Hallelujah and amen!!!

And so, as we recognize the purpose and mission that He was on, when He came to this earth, the brevity of that one week is really magnified by the writings of all four gospels!

I heard a teaching one time that quoted some scholars as saying that, “The gospels are essentially passion narratives with extended introductions!”

Now, that may be a bit extreme, but still, it’s undeniable the amount of emphasis that the Word of God has placed upon that one week section of the Christ’s earthly ministry!

I was just asking a few minutes ago about how we would feel about and how we would deal with the coming week in our own lives, if we had the knowledge that something as horrible and tragic as that of the final week of the life of the Christ, was going to happen to us. And as I said, most of us, in the natural, would do everything possible, to escape such a fate and remove such suffering from our path, right?

Well, understand this, Jesus, being fully God and fully man, had all of the insight and knowledge to know what was coming and what was going to happen to Him on that final week.

In fact, Luke tells us in , “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

The Bible tells us that on three different occasions, Jesus told His disciples that He was going to be captured by the Jewish religious leaders, and then handed over to the gentiles.

That He was going to be beaten and crucified and die and that on the 3rd day, He would rise to life again!

In other words, Jesus knew that it was time for Him to head to Jerusalem and become the sacrificial lamb for the sin of the world, as it was closing in on the week of the Passover Feast!

And throughout that week, Jesus fulfilled many prophecies about Himself and His role as the Messiah, as foretold by the ancient prophets!

And it was in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night of His arrest, when Jesus knew that His time of suffering, was literally just hours away, that we find Him praying and pleading with His Father, that if there was any other way than His having to suffer the torture that was coming to Him, that He be spared of it!

And of course, we know that He ultimately resolved to doing the will of His Father and yielding to becoming the propitiation for your sins and my sins, so that we might become the righteousness of God, as Paul says in , “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

As true children of God, we have been made righteous in the eyes of God, (that is, we have been found in moral right standing with God), because Jesus became our sin and took the wrath of God against sin upon Himself on that cross, in the latter part of that week!

Forgiveness and salvation and righteousness, are the first gifts that we receive upon entering the kingdom of God, while we are on this earth.

But there are other gifts, very precious gifts, that are ours to have and to walk in, as children of God while we serve Him here!

The Bible tells us in ,

2 Peter 1:3–4 ESV

3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

As a Christian, God has given us everything that we need to live a godly life. And He has also given us His great and precious promises.

And within these promises, there are other gifts that are ours to walk in.

You see, those who come to know God through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, they are sealed, marked by God as His own, by His Holy Spirit placed within them!

And when the Holy Spirit of God is active and in control of leading and guiding our lives, then we are filled with the gifts of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness, self-control.

These gifts are what the Bible calls the “fruit of the Spirit” and they are available for every Christian to walk in!

I felt it really relevant and necessary to mention the subject of the “last week”, the “Passion Week”, of Jesus this afternoon, because today, we are entering into that same week, that He would have been entering into nearly 2,000 years ago. That week which was physically, spiritually and emotionally painful and costly to our Lord and Savior, is now a week that our nation, as well as the entire world, are entering into and it is one that is filled sickness and fear and uncertainty and doubt by millions of people.

And when I say millions of people, I mean Christians and non-Christians alike!

The news and social media are filled with stories and reports about the severity of the Coronavirus, some of which are accurate and some of which are inflated and made up of stories that have filtered down through the proverbial “grape vine”.

But we’re constantly being told by one report and then another about the direction that we, as a nation, are heading and also having the numbers constantly flashed before our eyes of “increased deaths” and “increased confirmed cases” of the virus!

And in the midst of this, you will see and hear words used and thrown around like, “apocalypse” and “recession” and “pandemic”.

And people begin to feel fearful and unsure as to the direction that this nation is heading and about the security of their jobs and their homes and their families and their very lives!

I just read in a news article yesterday about a current poll that was released that stated that the coronavirus is harming the mental health of tens of millions of people in the United States.

The report said that nearly half the people in the United States feel the coronavirus crisis is harming their mental health.

And 57% of the adults said that they are afraid that they are going to being exposed to the virus because they can’t afford to stay home from work.

The poll made it clear that people in this nation are feeling, scared, anxious, depressed, struggling to sleep through the night, or just on edge all of the time!

And around the world right now, as millions, upon millions of others are being affected the same way, similar studies are being done and are saying that people are “mentally exhausted” from the constant bombardment of news and media.

And then there is the reality of increased usage of alcohol and drugs during this time of isolation and quarantines. It’s already been reported that domestic violence is up, by as much as one third in some places in the world; all due to this disease, this “pestilence” and fear and the uncertainty that it is bringing.

And so, here we are, as a nation and as the world, entering into the week of suffering that our Lord faced, 2,000 years ago. And this week is pointing to other weeks that could potentially be just like this one in the near future for us all!

People are demanding answers from the President and the government. They are pointing fingers and saying that one side is to blame, or the other is to blame! And when people begin to feel isolated and alone and scared and division increases, they become desperate for ONE THING!

That one thing that this nation is desperately looking for right now, was mentioned by our president, in a live broadcast this past Tuesday, where he said, “I want to give people in this country HOPE!”

HOPE, is the the spiritual gift that is imparted to the believer, the moment that they are changed into a new spiritual creation!

HOPE, which is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen, is what people are longing for right now.

And the thing that they are desiring to see happen, is the promise for a better tomorrow and a future for them and their families in the midst of this pestilence!

Once again, I’m going to redirect our thoughts and our attention back to this very week in the life of our Savior, 2,000 years ago, because it was during that week, that Jesus would give all of creation, the entire world, the ONLY true HOPE that has, or will ever exist!

Throughout Old Testament writings and prophecies, the authors were writing of and looking for the “mashiach”, the Messiah, the “anointed one” of God, who would bring the kingdom of God to earth and reign as the sovereign “Prince of Peace”!

The Messiah would become the HOPE of the world.

All the way back to Garden of Eden and the fall of man, we see God saying that He was going to send ONE, who would make everything right again. God said, in , “

Genesis 3:15 NLT

15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

In other words, God said from the beginning, that from the offspring of a woman, He would send ONE who would trample upon the works of the enemy and who would redeem God’s people!

This Messiah was the HOPE that Adam and Eve and every generation after, had been searching for!

The prophet Jeremiah said, while in the midst of persecution and suffering, “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will HOPE in him.”

And throughout the Psalms we read of passages like, “And so, Lord, where do I put my HOPE? My only HOPE is in you.”

“Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my HOPE in you.”

“So each generation should set its HOPE anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands.”

And all of the Old Testament writings were pointing towards THE ONE true Messiah who was the HOPE of the nations and who would bring HOPE to the people.

If we listen to God and follow His commands, then He has a plan for us, as He stated to Israel all the way back in , where He said, “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a HOPE.”

Yeshua HaMashiach, “Jesus the Christ” was and is that HOPE that everyone from the Old Testament forward was and still is, looking for.

Jeremiah 29:11 NLT

11 For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

We are no longer waiting for Him, as He came and fulfilled His Father’s will of redemption and salvation. But many are still LOOKING for Him!

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah said this, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.”

Jesus is that light and He has shone and is still shining in the darkness for all to see!

tells us this of Jesus,

John 1:4–5 NLT

4 The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

As soon as Jesus uttered the words from the cross, “IT IS FINISHED”, the payment was made and accepted by His Father for our sin.

In fact, the phrase, “it is finished”, comes from the Greek word, “tetelestai”. This word is translated as “it is finished”, but in the days of Jesus, this same word was written on legal documents and receipts, meaning, that the bill had been paid in full.

That is what Jesus was saying from the cross, “I HAVE PAID THE BILL IN FULL!”

And because of His paying the bill for our sin and thus appeasing the wrath of God for our sin, we now peace with God and HOPE for an eternal future! AMEN?!!!

People in the world always use the word HOPE as part of their daily lives. “I hope that I get that new job”, “I hope that my team wins the championship”, “I hope that taxes don’t increase” and so on and so forth.

And even more so, right now in this present time that we are in, people are using that word like crazy, “I hope that I can go back to work soon”, “I hope that this time of isolation doesn’t last much longer”, “I hope that I don’t get the coronavirus”!!

And whenever you see the word Hope used in this fashion, it always has uncertainty and doubt linked with it!

There is not much certainty that we can hope for with this world.

Except for maybe what Ben Franklin told, when he said, “The only two things that you can be certain of, are death and taxes!”

This is NOT how a believer in Jesus the Christ sees and uses the word HOPE!

When Jesus said, “IT IS FINISHED” and then 3 days later, walked out of the tomb, He gave us, what the Bible calls, the “BLESSED HOPE”.

In the Old Testament and up until the cross, the people were looking for the HOPE of God to come into the world.

Now, since Jesus has ascended back to His Father, we, as true believers, are awaiting the return of that HOPE, as tells us,

Titus 2:11–13 ESV

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,

Our HOPE is secure and definite in Jesus! On the night of His arrest, while He was in the upper room with His disciples, Jesus made this promise, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

Jesus, Himself, promised us and then went to the cross and paid for our salvation as a gurantee, and in doing so, He guaranteed the “BLESSED HOPE”, which is our eternal guarantee to be with Him forever!

This was the revealing of the great mystery of God for all of mankind.....Jesus was to be within us, through His Holy Spirit.

And with Holy Spirit existing within us, we have the HOPE (the assured and guaranteed), paid for up front, promise of eternal glory with Jesus and His Father in heaven!

says it this way,

Colossians 1:27 ESV

27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

The world needs, now more than ever, to hear of the guaranteed HOPE that is found only within a right relationship with Jesus the Christ! The problem that has always existed with people and the issue of their HOPE and belief and faith in Jesus the Messiah and His Father, almighty God, is that people want absolutes in exchange for their loyalty to anything, or anyone!

In other words, if you share the good news of the gospel with people, they may reject it, unless you can produce absolute, guaranteed, bonafide proof of His existence and of this offer of eternal HOPE!

People try to approach Jesus, like they do financial investments. “I’ll do this, if you can guarantee me a return on my investment!”

The problem is that people think that they should get absolute proof for the existence of God.

Just like the great atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who was once asked what he would say if he found himself standing before God on the judgement day and God asked him, “Why didn’t you believe in Me?” To this Mr. Russell replied, “I would say, ‘Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!”

The thing that we all need to realize, is that there isn’t this physical absolute proof for His existence, that we can offer to people.

Now we can quote to them, that the Bible says that He is the creator of everything and that the skies and the heavens declare the glory of God and of His presence, but that is still not the absolute proof that people expect.

So, to the world and the natural mind, Christ in us, the HOPE of glory, is only attainable through absolute proof!

The problem with this and what people fail to realize, is that you don’t get absolute proof with many things in this natural life. Even in science and mathematics, there lacks absolute proof for what we know.

Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem proves this. It tells us that in basic arithmetic, there exists certain truths that you know to be true, and yet you can’t PROVE them to be true!

If people can understand and accept this to be true, in the natural/physical world, dealing with science and mathematics, (the areas that the world calls true and certain) and that even in these areas, there lacks, absolute proof for what we believe to be true and teach others to be true.

Then, people cannot, nor should they be able to demand absolute proof for the existence of God and the plan of salvation through Jesus the Christ!

Salvation only comes through a measure of FAITH. A person will never truly know Jesus and His Father, through head knowledge only! There must be FAITH involved for salvation to happen and for abiding HOPE of that salvation!

If you don’t truly believe in your heart and know in your heart that Jesus is alive and soon to return for His people, then your salvation and thus the HOPE of glory, is not real within you.

Paul said in that if the resurrection of Jesus is not real, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. And in that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost!

And he said in verse 19 of that chapter, “And if our HOPE in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.”

But Paul, having encountered the Christ personally and having met many others who witnessed the living Christ after His resurrection, said, in the very next verse in that passage, “But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died!”

The facts are as follows. The earth is in existence and the earth and the universe around it moves and holds in place by laws that govern them. Laws that are so exact and so precise, that even one thousandth of a fractional deviation from that law, would instantly cause the collapse of the earth and the universe!

In fact, one professor of quantum theory at Cambridge said this of the creation of the universe and its exactness, “In the earliest picoseconds of the universe, the fine tuning of things had to be so amazingly precise. If you consider just one variable of the many, the expansion-contraction ratio, it had to be so exact, that it would be like taking aim at a one-square-inch target at the other end of the universe, 20 billion light years away, and hitting it bulls-eye. And that is just one of the contingencies that had to be precisely so for the universe to come into existence.”

So you see, even for the proof of God’s existence, the greatest minds in math and science are saying that creation couldn’t have happened by accident; there had to be a controlling force!

But they, like so many people, are unwilling to take that step of faith and believe what creation itself is screaming, “THERE IS A GOD!”

And since there is a GOD, there must be a SAVIOR........JESUS THE CHRIST!

And since there is a SAVIOR, there must be forgiveness for our sins and thus there MUST BE THE ABIDING HOPE of the believer!

Listen to , “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living HOPE through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

The HOPE that is supposed to exist within a believer is abiding and living, according the Word of God!

1 Peter 1:3–5 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

It is living, because the Holy Spirit of almighty God lives within us, which is Christ within us, the HOPE of glory!

And this HOPE is abiding, because it doesn’t waiver or come and go. It is consistent and continual within our heart and mind and spirit and it’s not affected by, or defined and determined by the circumstances that are taking place in the world around us!

This is what Paul said about the Abiding Hope that is within us, in , “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this HOPE we were saved. Now HOPE that is seen is not HOPE. For who HOPES for what he sees? But if we HOPE for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

That is the Abiding Hope of the believer. We are eagerly awaiting the completion of our salvation, which is the glorification of our spirit, which happens when we leave this life and cross over to be with the Lord, forever. AMEN?!

So, if you are a true follower of Jesus the Christ, then I want to encourage you right now, by saying that what is happening right now in the world, was foretold by Jesus, Himself, in , where He said that there would be wars and rumors of wars. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and in various places there will be famines and pestilences and earthquakes. But all of these things are but the beginning of birth pangs.

In other words this virus is a pestilence, nothing more. It is something that Jesus said would happen and when it and all of these other occurrences begin to converge together, we are at beginning of birth pains.

We are there, which means that we are close to return of our Lord and Savior.

And in these last days and hours, as we are looking for our Lord, we MUST be sharing the gospel message.

We must be the light shining in the darkness and sharing with others are faith and the reason for the HOPE that exists within us!

That is what the Bible commands us to do. That whenever someone asks you, “Why do you believe in this Jesus?”, you are to be ready to answer them. says,

1 Peter 3:15 ESV

15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

Do you have the Abiding Hope living within you today?

I pray the same thing over each one of you that the great Apostle Paul said in , where he said,

Romans 15:13 NLT

13 I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.