Hope

One of the reasons that I'm a Christian is because of hope. The Christian faith offers a hope for mankind....a hope for now, and for the future. A hope of reaching the unreachable. A hope beyond ourselves. Built into us is a "hope engine." We all will reach for the unreachable, try to bridge the unbridgeable....anything we can do to provide us with a hope for life and what's ahead. One man said, "I feel much better since I gave up hope." but that is simply not true. We cannot live without hope. When prisoners of war gave up hope of ever getting out of their prison they would literally die within days. We cannot live without hope.....the hope of reaching the unreachable. I, personally, believe that this hunger for hope is God given and only fulfilled in a relationship with God...the God of the bible.

There are a lot of religions in the world, and most of them are "hope-so" religions. In other words you cannot know for sure that your faith was well founded until you die. But the Christian faith is built on hope. At it's core is the promise of life and a future. It gives us who believe a hope for now and the life ahead. It makes us stretch.....using our hope and faith to reach for the impossible...because we believe in a big God who specializes in the impossible. There is no other religion that offers such assurance as the Christian faith does....a hope for this life, and a promise for the life to come.

Rom 15:4 For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Eph 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

Col 1:3 We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,
Col 1:4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints;
Col 1:5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel
Col 1:6 which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth;