Hope for a Desperate World

One of the characteristics that should distinguish followers of Christ from those who don’t know Him is that we should be people of hope. This reality is at the core of our mission to share Christ with others. We do not merely offer an alternative religion, worldview, or philosophy. We offer hope to a world desperately longing for it.

This…

The Source of Hope

The psalmist recognized that God is the source of our hope. He declared, “And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You” (Psalm 39:7).

To understand how the Lord brings that hope into our lives, let’s again read what Paul wrote to the Romans. “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction,…

The Meaning of Hope

On Christmas morning of 1964, I wanted to find only one gift under the tree—a guitar. That year the Beatles had taken the USA by storm as the vanguard of music’s British invasion. Like scores of other young American boys, I wanted to be the next great guitarist. Early that Christmas morning, I ran down the steps to the living…

Hope for Desperate Times

Fear pounded in the hearts of the Israelites. Ahead of them lay the seemingly uncrossable waters of the Red Sea. Behind them the chariots of the armies of the Pharaoh thundered toward them. Their panicked complaint to Moses came in the form of an accusation: “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away…

Conclusion

First Peter 1:3–5 describes a treasure trove of God’s abundant grace and mercy to believers through our participation in Christ: not only a dramatic rebirth from spiritual death to life, but an inheritance we can enjoy eternally with him.

How do we respond to such grace? The most appropriate response is…

Guarded by God

I wonder if part of why we forget to focus on our eternal inheritance is our own doubt and anxiety, our struggle to truly believe it’s real—for us at least.

When I send a gift to someone in the mail, I sometimes get anxious about whether it will arrive safely, especially if it’s a precious gift. What if it gets…

An Unfading Inheritance

When I turned thirty-five my mother gave me a treasured family heirloom: a gold diamond ring that had belonged to my great-great-grandfather. From the Greek island where he was born, my ancestor had brought it to Australia where I was born decades later. It means a lot to me to wear his ring, a ring that’s now been handed down…

Living Hope through Resurrection

But new birth is just one of three ideas about salvation intricately interconnected in 1 Peter 1:3. The second key concept is that this spiritual rebirth is “into a living hope.”

Again, what does this mean? Hope might seem incredibly abstract; we understand being born into the world, or in a certain city, or into a family. But into hope?

New Birth

In the 1976 presidential race, Jimmy Carter described himself as a born-again Christian. At the time, this was not yet a widely known term, but it resonated with believers everywhere. President Carter was saying that he wasn’t just a “cultural Christian.” He didn’t merely belong to a denomination. Rather, he was claiming to be truly committed to Christ, the sort…

Thinking about Resurrection

When asked, Christians are pretty good at offering explanations of what the death of Jesus means. They might reply that Jesus died for our sins. That he died as a sacrifice. That he died in our place. Believers may know sophisticated theological terms that further explain the meaning of Jesus’s death—words like atonement, substitution, reconciliation, and justification. Sure, not all…

The Transforming Power of the Gospel

If we truly wish to follow Christ, each day we need to fight our impatient, self-gratifying tendencies. And as Peter explains, it’s more than worth it. Let’s explore how Peter describes the incredible inheritance God has given us through Jesus’s resurrection. We’ll consider how Jesus gives believers not only a living hope but also an incredible, life-changing inheritance that will last forever. Most importantly, we’ll consider how this inheritance could change everything about how we live our lives.

The Centurion At The Cross

Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?” that is, “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?”...
And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
And behold, the veil…

Centurions in the New Testament

Several centurions are mentioned in the New Testament. The accounts of the more prominent ones reveal the degree to which Christ’s message and influence were crossing social, ethnic, and political lines and barriers.

The Centurion of Capernaum (Matt. 8:5-13)

Now when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, pleading…

A Centurion’s Life

Our oldest son has been in the Army for several years. Watching him progress through the ranks from recruit to staff sergeant has been an education in what military life is like. Soldiers are committed to putting the mission before comfort, their comrades before self, and obedience to duty above their personal opinions about the orders they are given. It…

The Power Of The Cross

When I wrote the book Windows on Easter, from which this booklet is adapted, my goal was to take a fresh look at the familiar events of the death and resurrection of Christ by seeing them through the eyes of some of the men and women who were there. Those moments that opened eternity for the undeserving at the cost…