Devotions this week based on Sunday’s Message: Hope is the Heart of Christmas! (LISTEN HERE)
What leads you to lose hope?
Perhaps you lose hope when what was promised didn’t happen. You were hoping for a non-rainy day, and the weather report said it wouldn’t rain…but it did. You might lose hope that the weather report will be correct.
Perhaps you have hope that your investments will go up and you will be able to retire when you are 65. When a recession hits shortly before retirement, you lose hope that you will have enough saved to step back from work.
Hope seems to be missing in our world today.
News reports flaunt the darkness of evil and sin in our world. Murders, recession, corruption, theft, and more make up the headlines with barely a mention of any good news. Inflation and cost of living increases and challenges our daily purchasing of what we need to live and survive. Conflicts in relationships at work or in our families make it hard to even want to go through the holiday season. Nations are at war and governments seem willing to create chaos inorder to gain whatever is in their interests.
Where is the hope in these realities?
Perhaps before we answer that question this morning, here’s the bottom line of what leads us to lose hope: sin and living in a sinful world.
Sin is the root of evil, brokenness and more. It leads to disruption in the world, our communities, our families, and yes, in our own hearts.
Sin leaves us without hope because its effects are negative and the future it produces are negative.
Jesus in talking to Nicodemus said, John 3:19 “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
Darkness, evil, sin leave us without hope.
So to have true and lasting hope, we need a solution for sin.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in[a] Christ Jesus our Lord.
We can look to earthly solutions for hope to spiritual problems, but the reality is that every human/earthly solution will fail us. It’s what dashes hope when we put our hope in mankind to solve what really is a spiritual problem.
When we realize what leads us to lose hope is a spiritual problem, we look for a solution that will solve it.
That’s why Jesus came into the world. He didn’t come with the promise that every financial challenge would be overcome or every relationship issue solved or every sickness healed, but he did come with the promise that he would overcome sin and its consequences.
For that reason we have hope.
Psalm 33:22 May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.
Apply: What is causing you to lose hope? What is the spiritual issue connected with that reality? What promise of God can you grasp to again have hope?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for bringing hope when I feel hopeless. AMEN.