INSPIRE NEWSCAST

Welcome to Rob’s Ramblings. I’ve decided to develop a series of blogs entitled Journey to Hope as a way of addressing some of the fears and uncertainty that we are currently facing in our world. I’ll be running them twice a week so I’d encourage you to check it out on a regular basis and let your friends know to read it as well. For those who live in Western Australia, these blogs can also be heard on 98.5 Sonshine Radio.

When things are tough there are many places you can go to find hope. Some find hope in music, poetry or literature, while others find it in a bottle. I reckon the most hopeful place to look is in the Bible. That’s right the Bible, that old book that God botherers seem to go on about all the time.

I’m on a journey at the moment, and I’d like you to join me. I’m looking for hope and I’ve decided to see what the Bible says about hope. Here’s a verse I came across. It says this: Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Some translations put it this way: We confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory. 

If you’re looking for peace, one of the options is to download an app. There’s a bundle of them. Peaceful music to help you go to sleep, deep relaxation and mindfulness apps, happy mind guides, stress relief and heaps more. But the Bible talks about being at peace with God.

What’s that you ask? Peace with God – what do you mean?

Well, we all have built into us, the ability to connect with God in some way. It’s kind of a God meter that many of us don’t even realise is there.  But when this God meter is out of sync all sorts of things can go wrong. We may doubt that God exists, or we may just have the sense that we’re not really connecting with God.

To put it simply we are not at peace with God. In fact, we’re probably arguing with him, resisting him, or simply trying our best to ignore God.

The verse I quoted says that we can have peace with God, and it’s made possible by what Jesus Christ has done for us.  Then it goes on to say that when we have that peace we can also have hope. We can confidently and joyfully look forward to living at peace with God for the rest of our lives … and for that matter, even beyond our death.

You can sit and listen to relaxation music all day, but when the kids start whingeing about the amount of screen time you’ve allocated them and other pressures are crowding in, it seems that peace is a long way off.

So there’s got to be a better way of discovering peace. The thing is, it’s not something that we can achieve by downloading an app, or having another drink, or reading more poetry. Peace with God is achieved through what Jesus Christ has done for us.

What did he do?

1. Well he came to earth and set up camp here with us. He needed to prove that he’s not as distant as you think he is.
2. Then he died to show just how far he was prepared to go to fix up the mess that we’d made.
3. Then he came to life again to show that when he talked about eternal life he really meant what he said.

Being at peace with God doesn’t just help us cope with the here and now, it gives hope for the future … and that helps us cope with the here and now.