God Gives You Reason To Hope

If you are a sick or suffering follower of Jesus Christ, you can look beyond your present difficulties to a bright future. As God’s child, you are destined to receive a new, glorified body and to live forever in heaven.

The apostle Paul drew comfort from his expectation of resurrection and eternal glory. After reaffirming the fact of Christ’s resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, he pointed out that we too will receive resurrection bodies like the one Christ has (vv.20-58). This truth sustained him in his service for the Lord. In a spirit of joy and optimism, he wrote:

We do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (2 Corinthians 4:16–5:1).

We may not react to these words with much enthusiasm. We want healing in the here and now. But when we let ourselves think this way, we are looking at life from the vantage point of those who have no real hope of heaven. We need to remind ourselves that we will live forever in a wonderful new world! When we really grasp this truth, we can share the victorious attitude expressed by Paul in 2 Corinthians 4. Indeed, we will “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2).