Paul Brown Back writes several articles concerning hope. These articles are base on his religion and his Christian beliefs concerning the things that are happening in the community we are living in. He gets his inspiration from the written Word of God that is the Bible. Through this he is able to communicate to the whole world a hope that is real. This points us back to Jesus Christ who died so that we may have hope that we will live eternally. The following are some of the illustrations given in his blog.
He talks about hope even when things don’t seem to work out. Paul when writing the epistle to the church in Thessalonians was faced with so many difficulties. For any other person it would not have been easy to endure being beaten up by people you are bringing hope to. The greatest reason for this is that they did not know the hope that Paul was talking to them about. Paul knew Jesus and he knew the kind of salvation he would give to the people. This motivated him to endure through it all for Jesus to be glorified.
He also encourages the people to remain hopeful in all the circumstances. It is written that you cannot hope for things that you have already seen. When you are hoping for something you have seen it ceases to be hope. Therefore we are encouraged to remain believing and trust the evidence of things not seen because God our father has promised them to us. This knowledge is the truth that allows us to remain strong when nothing is working out as expected because our hope is on Jesus Christ not on the things of the world.
The Bible urges us to stay focused on three things that is hope faith and love. Love is the greatest commandment that was given by Jesus. The commandment is we should all love the Lord our God with all our heart and also love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of the things that are not seen. This means that for us to hope, we must have faith. The two go hand in hand and cannot be separated. Therefore as Christians we are urged to stay true to the Word of God and hold on to the hope that Jesus Christ is alive.
Hope enables us to stay strong and look up to the things of God. Many are the times we experience strife and battles in the world we are living in. But we know that this world is not our home. We have citizenship in heaven by believing in Jesus and confessing with our mouths that he is Lord. When we do this we have a hope for eternal life. That is life after death. Yet in all things, we should always remember that eternal life is what we are living to do, by knowing God and Jesus Christ. This gives us hope that is real. Whatever we face we are not alone.