LEARNING DAILY

 

1 Corinthians 13:13, There are three things that will endure – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love. (NLT)

 

Hope; what is it? When the worldly person expresses hope he or she is wishing or wanting something to happen without expecting it to do so. When Christian expresses hope he or she is expressing a strong and confident expectation that it will occur; there is certainty involved!

 

Romans 8:24-25 gives insight to this, “Now that we are saved, we eagerly look forward to this freedom. For if you already have something, you don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently” (NLT). This refers to the salvation we have through Jesus Christ; we have seen many blessings through our salvation but there are greater blessings to come. As we walk on the narrow way, we do so with great expectations, a confident hope, of heaven. We walk on the narrow way with patience and confidence that what we have been told in God’s Word is true.

 

Romans 5:5, Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given us” (NKJV). I do not want to take this verse out of context; read the verses before and after it.  You and I experience the love of God in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, especially during troubling times (LSSB). When we experience times of difficulty or tribulations, the Holy Spirit reminds us “to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (v. 2). In other words, you and I can rejoice in the things that happen in our lives such as covid or any other variant, things said about us, or any suffering, because they are used for our good in Jesus Christ. Throughout the Holy Spirit continues to flood our hearts with God’s love for us.  He also continues to assure us of our hope for the future.

 

The magi went in search of the “king of the Jews” in hope of seeing Him, to bring gifts to Him, and to worship Him. Their arrival in Jerusalem was not based on any wish but on the certainty that this king had been born. They came from Babylon. They were Gentiles who had taken the Jews captive. One of those Jews was the prophet, Daniel; it was through Daniel’s teaching about a coming king that caused the Magi to go to Jerusalem. I assume the magi had done the calculations about what Daniel had taught and with God’s inspiration (His hope in them!) they set out following a star in search of this king. They teach us an important lesson. God gave them the hope of seeing the “King of the Jews” and Jesus was the fulfilment of that hope. This was not some wish they had; it was a confident expectation.

 

Paul said hope would endure. Hope is the basis for our faith and Christ-like love results from the hope we have. The hope we have produces joy and peace within us and enables us to face the situation and circumstances of each day. As we celebrate the first advent, the birth of the Messiah, the hope of eternal life, my hope only increases in the second advent when the King of kings and Lord of lords returns as the conquering King and sets up His kingdom on earth!

 

From now on DJSB will be used to note information or quotes from the David Jeremiah Study Bible and LSSB will refer to information and quotes from the Life in the Spirit Study Bible.  I have added Jimmy Swaggart’s Expositor’s Study Bible to be referred to from now on as JSESB