As God’s child, you don’t sit and wait for hope. No, grace makes it possible for…

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As God’s child, you don’t sit and wait for hope. No, grace makes it possible for you to get up and live in hope.
Gospel hope is a mouthful. It includes so many wonderful provisions that it’s hard to get it all in one bite. Yes, biblical hope gives you a lot of spiritual nutrients to chew on. Yet many believers seem to live hope-deprived lives. Perhaps one of the dirty secrets of the church is how much we do out of fear and not faith. We permit ourselves to feel small, unable, alone, unprepared, and bereft of resources. We tell ourselves that what we’re facing is too big and requires too much of us. We stand at the bottom of mountains of trouble and give up before we’ve taken the first step of the climb. We wait for hope to come in some noticeable, seeable way, but it never seems to arrive. We pray, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. With each passing day, it seems harder to have hope for our marriages, for our children, for our churches, for our friendships, or just for the ability to survive all the trouble with our faith and sanity intact. We wonder, “Where is hope to be found?”
What we fail to understand is that we don’t have a hope problem; we have a sight problem. Hope has come. “What?” you say. “Where?” Hope isn’t a thing. Hope isn’t a set of circumstances. Hope isn’t first a set of ideas. Hope is a person, and his name is Jesus. He came to earth to face what you face and to defeat what defeats you so that you would have hope. Your salvation means that you are now in a personal relationship with the One who is hope. You have hope because he exists and is your Savior. You don’t have a hope problem; you have been given hope that is both real and constant. The issue is whether you see it…
What is this hope? It is a rich inheritance. Jesus died and left us a rich inheritance of grace to be invested in facing the troubles of the here and now. It is great power that is ours in the moments when we are so weak. Hope came, and he brought with him riches and power that he gave to you. You see, you don’t really have a hope problem; you have a vision problem, and for that there’s enlightening grace.
See: Ephesians 2:11–22 – Paul David Tripp

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