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Reason for The Hope

           But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, (I Peter 3:15)

          Quickly, if someone is your lord, he has authority over you. The moment you disobey a command or say “No,” to an order, you have rejected him as your lord. You’re a rebel… a traitor.  And we all do this, probably many times per day. That’s because we don’t really view the Father, Jesus Christ, or the Spirit as Lord, or God. Our fallen nature leads us to want to be on equal terms with God – if we are not “more equal.”

          Revering Christ as Lord both isn’t really the focus for today. Instead, let’s look at the part about always being prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. The first prerequisite is that you have hope. You can’t give an answer to someone who asks for your reason for hope that you don’t have.

          Just to get the statement out of the way, I have as much trouble with hope as I do with faith. I think I have faith that Jesus has forgiven my sins and that I’m saved. I don’t think I have hope that such is the case. I’m not going to argue that point. I may have both, but in my mind, I have faith that something is, and I have hope that something will be. So, I have hope that God will lead me in the direction He wants me to go. I also have faith that He is leading me in the direction He wants me to go.

          With that as my example, the passage tells me to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks me to give a reason for the hope that I have. So why do I have hope that God will lead me? An atheist friend of mine once mockingly suggested that I not jump off any buildings because of my faith. My answer was that every time I’ve jumped off this particular building, I have either landed on a fire escape, or on the roof of the next building. There is no reason for me to believe that jumping off the same building at the same place won’t result in  my landing on the fire escape or the roof of the next building. My hope may be in the future, but it’s based on what happened in the past.

          So, I can hope that God will lead and direct me, because He has done so in the past. Another reason I have to hope is that the one in whom I hope doesn’t work the way I would expect a figment of my imagination to work. He doesn’t work the way I want Him to work.

          Let’s move this from me to you. What reasons do you have to hope in anything that you happen to hope in? Comment below.

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