Have you ever thought about what hope is? Or what it means to have hope? We call our church family Living Hope, but why?
Hope is a feeling of expectation combined with desire for something to happen. For a Christian, hope is a feeling of expectation and desire that Jesus has done everything that is necessary to reconcile us with God. Christian hope is the anticipation that Jesus will do everything he said and promised, and that his Kingdom is coming.
We refer to our church family as Living Hope for two reasons. First – the source of our hope is not an idea or vague concept; the source of our hope is a living person – Jesus. God chose to become human and die for us and then he came back to life. Jesus is real and he is alive. Because of that, we can have hope in any situation we face. We have a ‘Living Hope’. Second – as we embrace our ‘Living Hope’ we also discover that Jesus wants us to help others discover this ‘Living Hope’ that we have found. Jesus has commissioned us to be his witnesses and make disciples by teaching them everything he has taught us. We are to represent Jesus, to embody ‘Living Hope’ to everyone we meet. We have found our ‘Living Hope’ in Jesus and we are to embody this ‘Living Hope’ to the world. That’s what the church is – the embodiment of Jesus in the world today.
The question is, do you have hope? It is easy to lose hope, to lose sight of Jesus and what he is doing in the frenetic world we live in. If you want to have hope and to embody hope to others, then it means focusing on who Jesus is. Hope is found when we focus on who Jesus is and what he said, and look for his presence and hand in the chaos and uncertainty of the world today.
This weekend we are going to look at the story of a woman who had lost all hope. She was a widow who had lost her only son; in the first century this meant that the rest of her life was going to be filled with grief as well as poverty, hardship, and struggle. Then Jesus enters the picture. The woman encounters ‘Living Hope’ and her life is changed. I hope you’ll join us as we look at Luke 7:11-17 and discover what her encounter with Jesus reveals about Jesus and about us today.
I hope you’ll join us this Sunday.
Pastor Kirk
