This Sunday at Church I want to encourage you to do the following:

Remind someone of our Hope in Christ.

Here’s a passage that stood out to me that led to this application.  Hear 1 Peter 1:3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

In the context this is salutation written by Peter.  The main verb here is “blessed” in which Peter is praising God.  The reason for praising God include “His great mercy” and that great mercy “caused us to be born again to a living hope.”  Did you catch that?  It says “living hope.”  Living…hope!  How do people have this living hope? The last clause of the verse says “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  But we have to trust in Christ.  So if we have placed our trust in Christ, who died and resurrected for saving us from our sins, we have hope!    [See P.S. below]

There’s application for us today.

Do you know anyone who is down in your church?  It is good to remind them of our hope in Christ.  Now we want to be wise in how we share that.  But still it is important we encourage others with this hope.  Start first by listening.  Then when the person is no longer speaking then you share that hope.

But we must also preach that hope to ourselves.  Sometimes that means we need to see if we have a misplaced hope in something else other than Christ.  We must turn back to Christ.  We must be thankful that we have hope in Christ.