Day 3 of 31 Days of Hope: Hope

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This December, OMF Literature would like to share with you 31 excerpts from 31 devotionals. In an age where people are desperate to cling to something or someone, we offer a message of encouragement, inspiration, and love from the One who is the eternal source of Hope.

IN WORD

Many religions aim at improving this world. Others aim at escaping it. Christianity does neither. A fallen world enslaved in corruption cannot be “improved”; it needs a re-creation. And a world created “very good” by a God with a strong sense of purpose cannot be abandoned. In between both extremes is the truth: God’s plan is to create new heavens and a new earth. The rebellion’s effects will be burned up and the original purpose will be fulfilled. God makes all things new.

Isn’t that exciting? Every time you find yourself dreading the to-do list of the day or lamenting the futility of the world around you, think about what it will be like to live in new heavens and earth. In this new creation, there will be no frustration, no unsatisfied desires, no aimlessness, no corruption, no personal insults, no tedious tasks no wondering if it’s all worth the trouble. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis described the curse as “always winter and never Christmas.” In the new heavens and new earth, it will always be spring and never Good Friday. Mourning will be a thing of the past, and celebration will be the cultural norm. Life flourishes unthreatened in the new creation.

Somehow, the fact of that celebration needs to translate into our current lives. Our tendency is to put off our joy until the days of hardship are over, but God doesn’t mean for the redeemed to suffer hardship untempered by joy. The promises of the Kingdom aren’t meant to be a surprise gift we can’t wait to open. They are meant to be an unexpected inheritance that can be borrowed against today. The new creation is now.

IN DEED

This truth explains how Jesus can tell His disciples to be encouraged and joyful in the face of tribulation. He knows the end of the story, and He wants us to know it too. Not only does He want us to know it, He wants us to live as though it’s real. Because according to His Word, it’s more real than the world we see today.

This is an excerpt from One Year God With Us by Chris Tiegreen. The devotional is available at OMF Lit Bookshops, our online store shop.omflit.com, PCBS and other bookshops nationwide for only P365.

OUR GOD IS NO DISTANT GOD. In the earliest days of the church, when His presence was unleashed through the power of the Cross, He revealed Himself in an amazing new way. The promise of the prophets and Jesus―that God would live with us―was being fulfilled. Lives were being changed. And, today, God dwells with us still.

In The One Year God with Us Devotional, Chris Tiegreen writes with clarion insight as he calls us to share the first believers’ excitement and wonder at God’s presence in our lives. Through yearlong reflections on Acts, Revelation, and the New Testament letters, we will see God making Himself known to us more fully than ever before. We will experience Him more deeply and completely ourselves.