August 7 - Courage and Hope

August 7 - Courage and Hope
Hebrews 3:6

“But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”

Sometimes it requires courage to have faith.  We have to withstand attacks from all sides; from those who hate our faith and sometimes even from those who claim that their faith is better than ours.

But, the faith we have is in Christ, not in things of this world.  And one of those things that we can boast about is the hope that comes from having faith in Christ.  This gives a Christian hope where no one else can seem to find it.  In the midst of all that is falling apart around us, knowing that our faith is in something beyond this world is what gives us hope.

It is that knowledge and that hope that send us out into the world as ambassadors.  We have something that the world doesn’t have. But, remember, that hope and faith aren’t necessarily about a life that is perfect in this world. We walk forward in courage because of the house that has been built for us in the next world.

That’s a pretty big concept for many of us to grasp.  We want everything to be perfect here.  We want for there not to be massive climate change, or for there to not be any terrorists, or for financial worries to be gone or for there to be no homelessness.  That just isn’t reality. We live in a world that has fallen, we live in a culture that offers immediate satisfaction whether you live well or live poorly.

But, there is hope. We have to have courage to move beyond the things of this world to the hope of the world to come.

The Cowardly Lion saw terror at every turn.  His world wasn’t easy.  But, he learned that courage is facing those things and having hope.