If you woke each morning and your heart leapt with hope, knowing that the renewal of all things was just around the corner — might even come today — you would be one happy person. If you knew in every fiber of your being that nothing is lost, that everything will be restored to you and then some, you would be armored against discouragement and despair. If your heart’s imagination were filled with rich expectations of all the goodness coming to you, your confidence would be contagious; you would be unstoppable, revolutionary.

Friends — don’t you let anyone or anything cheat you of this hope; it is your spiritual lifeline. You have barely begun to take hold of it. Do not let anything diminish the beauty, power, and significance of this hope above all hopes. Jesus lived the way he did in this world, for this world, because his hope was set beyond this world; that is the secret of his life. “Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed — that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God” (Hebrews 12:2 The Message).

Oh yes, we need to make this practical. We need to take this hope so seriously we sell everything to buy this field. We must make this utterly real and tangible, so that over time our souls are truly anchored by it. Of all things we could do that would be the most practical, that has the most staggering implications.

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