“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
(Ephesians 1: 17-19a NIV)
This is our true hope, the “hope that does not disappoint” (Romans 5:8). It is and has been so easy to place our hope on things or people, for our sense of well-being or security. The past few months with all the uncertainty, nationally and globally with the Covid-19 pandemic many have faced hardships financially, or the sorrow of losing loved ones, or loneliness with the enforced social distancing. The many “tribulations” that this world will/and does bring, serve a purpose to make us more into the people God desires us to be. I have been enjoying W. Phillip Keller’s book A Shepherd Looks At Psalm 23 (Zondervan Publisher 2007).
In it he writes “The toughness it takes to face life and the formidable reverses which it brings us, can come only through the discipline of endurance and hardship.” (p. 80-81) Our hope is in the God who created us, and has a plan for us (see Ephesians 2: 10). Our strength cannot lie in ourselves but in His power, “…that power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”
(Ephesians 1: 19b-21 NIV)
He is the One who will hear our cries and responds! (Psalms 116: 1-19 NLT)
Let us cry out to Him, and trust in Him to meet our needs! Let us offer to Him our prayers of praise and thanksgiving! Just as the picture for this entry shows a plant growing out of a bed of hard rock, let us believe that our God can bring beauty out of the hard things we experience in our lives! He alone knows what lies beneath the hard and rocky surfaces of our experiences, and the richness of the “glorious inheritance” we have in Him as believers in Christ, and His children.
TO GOD BE THE GLORY!