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Living Hope
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade-kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.1 Peter 1:3-5 Our theme for the next several gospel-sanity devos is hope. There simply is no power like the power of gospel-hope, but to be hope-less is to be heartless, hapless and in time, just a big mess. In light of the riches and resources of the gospel, to have hope is to savor the appetizer of the guaranteed full meal of redemption and restoration won for us by Jesus. Indeed, to hope is to learn how to remember our glorious future into the broken present.
In today’s Scripture we see the enthusiasm and joy with which Peter celebrated the hope of the gospel, a hope he calls “living hope“-not spin-hope, empty hope, vain hope, comatose hope, but living hope. It’s living because Jesus is alive! It’s living, because we’re alive through the new birth!
This living hope connects us to a guaranteed inheritance in “heaven” and a faithful protector in Jesus-for God has promised to “shield” us until the day the appetizer gives way to the banquet. Some of us are desperate to have this assurance TODAY. Some of us are flat out tired, discouraged, angry, dry, bored and boring.
Your assignment? First of all, remember the gospel today-you are fully and eternally accepted in Jesus. Nothing can or will separate you from the love God has for you in Jesus. Secondly, get to reading through Revelation 21:1-22:6 and be writing down everything you can identify that makes heaven “heavenly”. What has God actually promised? What might a glimpse of the real “heaven” do for you in the midst of everything that is feeling so hopeless about your life and this world?
Peter obviously though a lot about the guaranteed inheritance of heaven, for his later years were so much more filled with gospel-freedom than the Peter we meet early in the four gospels. And I, most definitely, want to live a life of much more gospel-freedom. How about you?

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