Total Pageviews

Friday, February 1, 2013

HOPE in Christ Brings JOY!



          Have you had your Joy Juice today?  It will give you hope by helping you to focus on Jesus, rather than your problems.

            We’ve spent this week talking about the inevitable truth that we all experience grief.  I shared with you some the “unhappy circumstances” that I’ve recently experienced. And I’m sure you could share some with me! It’s often in these difficult  struggles of life that we forget drink our JOY JUICE.  But be encouraged by the truth that Jesus, also, wept and grieved! He understands EXACTLY how we feel.  Through Jesus we have HOPE!

Colossians 1:27 says: (King James Version)

 "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery…; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

          Paul called it a “mystery” to those who don’t know Jesus. They cannot understand how someone can go through a time of grief and still experience JOY and peace.  Paul says it is Christ in you…the hope of glory.    Only when we have Christ in our hearts, can we understand that kind of hope.

           Let me tell you about the hope of John and Betty Stam, a young missionary couple in their late twenties.  They were serving as missionaries to China when they were captured by Communists in 1934. As their captors led them away to execute them for their faith in Jesus, someone asked, “Where are you going?” John answered, “I do not know where they are going, but we are going to heaven.”

What an example of HOPE found in Christ! When we are tossed by the storms of life, we can STILL experience His peace and JOY!

            It is my HOPE and prayer that WE will faithfully drink in the Joy Juice of Jesus.




No comments:

Post a Comment