Sunday we had a guest pastor since our regular pastor is in Israel learning all sorts of neat things to teach us. Anyway, the pastor spoke on Romans 15:13 and the hope we have in God. He said that the translation for that word HOPE could be correctly explained as “confident expectation”.

I was so blessed by that.
We can have confident expectation in God’s love and promises.

We can have confident expectation that God will watch over us and keep us in His care, even when we are surrounded by the threat of harm. We can have confident expectation that no matter the circumstances that play out before us – God is control.
The world continues in turmoil. There are governments facing destruction and people killing each other over issues of religion, politics, and a hundred other things. Christians speak of end times and others speak of the world ending in 2012 because the Mayans said so. Personally, I think they probably just ran out of paper, but that’s a whole other story.

We have natural disasters and political disasters. We have issues all around us regarding economic meltdowns and unemployment. But ultimately we have hope.

No, not the hope of a politician.

Not hope in the all important, almighty dollar. Not even hope in the good nature of people to come through when the rubber meets the road.

We have confident expectation in God alone!

He can be trusted. He can be counted on. We can believe and expect confidently that God has not forsaken us. I don’t know about you, but that excites me and gives me energy to face tomorrow.

May God bless you in HOPE.