larshaukeland

25 Three treasures

Encouragement for difficult days (25):

THREE TREASURES

“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Romans 15:13

 This was Paul’s prayer for his friends in Rome.  Three words stand out in this passage of Scripture;

hope, joy and peace.

1.       Hope

Paul tells us that our God is the God of hope. God wants us to look ahead with hope and not with despair. Whenever the Old Testament prophets thundered out their predictions of judgment, they always wove into the dark cloud of judgment the silver lining of hope. In fact, some of the greatest promises of hope in the Bible are found in the midst of dark messages of judgment.

We do not need to fear the future. God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. No matter how dark or confusing things are here on earth, God still reigns in heaven, sitting on His throne, calmly guiling the affairs of history.

To abound in hope means much more than believing in the promises of God; it means being motivated by these promises. It means living today in the light of eternity with our lives controlled by the future, not by the past.

2.       Joy

God also gives joy. Christian joy is not the same as happiness, although it can include happiness. Happiness so often depends on happenings. If things are going right with us, we’re happy; if the situation changes, we become unhappy. Joy is much deeper than that .It is inward confidence and well-being that only the Holy Spirit can give. Joy is not created by circumstances on the outside, it is the result of conditions on the inside.

The joyful Christian faces life without fear or complaint. Joy is really a by-product of a life of service to God and others. If you start searching for joy, you’ll never find it. But if you surrender to God and do His will, joy will come to your heart.

Billy Sunday used to say: “If you have no joy in your religion, there’s a leak in your Christianity somewhere.”

3.       Peace

Along with joy is the gift of peace. This is the peace that Jesus meant when He said to His followers, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you….Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” ( John14:27). Here was Jesus facing the terror of the cross, yet He was giving peace to His followers.

The future is always bright because God has the future in His hands. For the Christian, the best is yet to come. Christ always saves the best wine for the last. The unsaved man has his heaven now, because death is coming, and after that the judgment. But the Christian never has to fear the future; his heart is filled with the hope from the God of love.

And the Christian never has to fret about the present, because his heart is filled with joy. No matter how difficult or uncomfortable the present circumstances might be, there is joy in our hearts from Jesus Christ.

And we never have to worry about the past because we have His peace. This is the “peace that passes all understanding…” With God’s peace filling our hearts, we are no longer haunted by past failures, mistakes, injuries, or even past sins. With Christ as our Saviour, the past is gone; God remembers it no more and holds it against us no more.

These are the three wonderful gifts we find in Romans 15:13. Whether we look back, look around, or look ahead, we need never be afraid. The key word to all this is believing. When we believe, God fills us with His Spirit.