It Feels Like Hope

"We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor for the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf." -Hebrews 6:19 

In everyday life, think about how many circumstantial things we base our hope on. How about time? Say you're playing a soccer game and your team has just gone a goal down. You look up at the clock to realize there are still 20 minutes left...there's hope for a comeback.

Maybe you snooze through your alarm on the morning you have to go to clinical. Once finally on the road, you hit a string of green lights and think to yourself, "there's still hope I'll make it in time, if I keep flowing with traffic this way."

Once at the hospital a patient codes and the response team manages to stabilize him. The doctor tells his family, "there's hope he'll live if we can perform emergency surgery to break up the clot within the next 24 hours." There's hope for her grade if she scores well on the next exam. There's hope for his job if he never again comes late or misses another meeting. There's hope.......IF.......

So much hope in this world is conditional. If something, then a favorable result. Jesus' death and resurrection took the "if" out of our hope statement as believers. Thanks to the UNCONDITIONAL (meaning no if's) love of our heavenly Father, our hope statement is not of this world. Instead of "there is hope if......" we can confidently proclaim: "There is and always will be hope because Jesus died to secure it, he already made a way for a one-on-one relationship with the God of love, and he made eternal salvation available after this world is over!"

Following Jesus feels like real, guaranteed, unconditional hope because the work to preserve it has already been done!