‘Love… always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.’ (1 Corinthians 13:7-8a)
‘Hope’ can be translated as ‘expect’. ’Trust’ in God, that we looked at yesterday, leads to living with the expectation of transformation and victories.
If we have true hope in God, we will love people over the long haul. No one is perfect. Everyone, if you get close enough to them, is a sinner and can be annoying. Oftentimes, our annoyance and anger says more about our own fallen nature than theirs! If we are not to despair of ourselves and others, we need God’s hope. What is this hope?
Hope, specifically, is in the promises that God has made about working in us in sanctification through to glorification. God, by the Spirit, is continuing to make us more like Christ until, ultimately, we will be perfected at Jesus’ return. We read of this hope:
‘We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.’ (Romans 8:22-25)
Our hope is about the whole of creation being restored from everything that The Fall has imposed upon it. If we are to persevere in loving God against all of the many trials that we face, we must have the eyes of our hearts filled with that future hope. Do we ‘wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship’? Do you have this hope for yourself and for those in the Church? If we are to love people, we must see that God is working in them. He is making them more like Christ. He will complete the work that He has started in them.
RESPONSE
We need the Holy Spirit to fill us with hope. Perhaps you’d like to use this text to guide you in prayer:
‘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.’ (Roman 15:13)
Â
COMMUNITY GROUP NOTES AND STUDY
1. Notices
It might be good to begin with notices. Please share from this week’s Church News.
Â
2. Icebreaker
Do you have any encouragements to share from how God has been speaking to you from His word recently?
Â
Comments