Real Hope
When we look around our world, and even at our own lives sometimes, it can be easy to feel despair.
THE WORLD CAN SEEM HOPELESS
Armed teenagers walk into our schools and murder innocent children. Kids are lured away from their parents and trafficked into horrific situations. Relatives take advantage of the ones who depend on them for care and physically and sexually abuse them.
People yell, scream at, and argue with those who don’t share the same political views as them. Guns are pulled out from glove compartments and used to kill someone out of road rage. Countries invade other countries and slaughter civilians because they don’t like them or because they want to add to their territory.
This world can be a brutal place to live. It’s difficult to find hope in a hopeless world. But when we look at our own lives, sometimes things don’t look much better.
OUR OWN LIVES CAN SEEM HOPELESS
We deal with depression, anxiety, fear, and worry.
Our relationships are broken.
Pornography, alcohol, or drugs enslave us through addiction.
People that we love die and leave us alone.
We are told as Christians that we are supposed to have hope, but when we look at the world and at our own lives, despair is often staring us back in the face and piercing into the depths of our soul.
Is there any hope for us and our world? If so, how do we find it?
The answer: We stop looking at externals and look within.
No, not to our own feelings, our own thoughts, or our own strength, but to the One who lives in us.
In Colossians 1:27, Paul says,
God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY
Jesus Christ is our hope. And where does Jesus reside? In you! And not just in you, like separate from you in some space that isn’t really you. No, He lives in the real you and is united to you.
The One, who is abundant Life is joined to you. The One, who is hope has glued Himself to you. No matter what is going on in your own life or in this world you live in, you have Christ in you, the hope of glory.
You do not fight for victory, you live from a place of victory. His full work on the cross of dying, rising, ascending, and dispensing of the Holy Spirit is finished. There is nothing else for Him to do. The battle has been won.
A few verses before Paul declares Christ in you is the hope of glory, he wrote,
For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. (Col. 1:13)
Note the past tense. You have been rescued from the dominion of darkness. You already live in His Kingdom. You live in the light, and Jesus is expressing His life and light through you in this world that you are an ambassador to (2 Cor. 5:21).
So what do we do when we feel despair?
We are told in 2 Corinthians 4:18 to…
fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
FIX YOUR EYES ON JESUS
If you focus on your external actions and the external world, you can’t help but see and feel despair. But if you fix your eyes on Christ in you and the Kingdom you now dwell in, you will experience assurance and hope.
You’ll fight from a place of victory instead of trying to fight for victory that you already have.
There is real hope. His name is Jesus, and He lives in you.
