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Real Reasons for Hope This Year
Sometimes we appear to be trudging the treadmill of life. Steady plodding with no real prospect of progress. Other times we feel like we’re a goldfish out of the bowl. We’re flopping around, gasping for air with a feeling we’re headed for disaster. Every desperate attempt to better our circumstances seems to end in failure and leads us closer to destruction. If we look out at the gray skies, it seems like they’re either empty of meaning or filled with thunder clouds threatening something worse. It almost looks sometimes like God is against us …
1. He sends His rain on the just and on the unjust.
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).
2. He maintains the world by His power.
“Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3).
3. He deeply cares and knows in detailed depth about every individual.
“The very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30).
4. He has plans for good and not for evil.
“I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (Jeremiah 29:11).
5. He looks to give, not to get.
“The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
6. He acts with patience because He doesn’t want any to perish.
“The Lord is … long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
7. He came to heal the brokenhearted and to deliver the captive.
Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).
8. He sent His Son to put away sin.
“Now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:26).
9. He came to remove the barriers that cut off access to His presence.
“The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
There’s a certain future.
10. “Thou wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
God has done absolutely everything possible to deliver everyone who has rebelled against Him. He’s given every possible reason to have confident hope for the future. You don’t have to do anything religious to make Him care for you. “Saved” means to be rescued from the just penalty of the sins that you’ve committed against Him. He simply tells you to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31).