Hope

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0:00 Okay, so we're talking about the four weeks of Advent and the church has picked out themes for them over the years and the theme for week one of Advent is hope. So we're in Romans chapter five at the beginning of the chapter where it says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith to this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

0:32 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that sufferings produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Today, I've got with me Carol Forrest and Brian Carlson, maybe you heard of him. I've got him here because I like the way they think about the scriptures and I want to know what they think about this verse from Romans chapter five.

1:04 What do you think, guys? Two phrases that stuck out to me standing in grace and rejoicing in suffering, which I feel like standing in grace is kind of magical. Like other people don't like if you don't have the Holy Spirit and you don't have Jesus, the grace part is foreign to you, right?

1:37 Like you don't. There's no hope. Apart from here I am standing in this magical is not the right word, but it feels magical grace that comes from the Spirit that we are familiar yet unfamiliar with. And then rejoicing in suffering is always hard for me to articulate, but it makes sense.

2:10 Like rejoicing because of hope in the suffering. It's hard, but I can hold hard and rejoicing in the hope of Jesus at the same time. Yeah, like I like what you're saying there about standing in grace or even the difficulty of suffering. There's some like assurance. It's not like you're standing in thin air hoping that there's something underneath you.

2:42 You know that there is something. So it's a hope, but it's like this certain hope or this founded hope in the person of Christ. Definable. Not just so. That's cool. Yeah. Good attitude or positive thinking. It's actually real. Yeah, I think two things. Well, a lot. That's Roman. So there's a lot to think about. I think I'd never well thinking about the idea of our hope in the glory of God.

3:18 Just that alone is kind of interesting. Like this characteristic that God is holy that we have hope in this characteristic of his is interesting. If you just kind of break that off and by itself. I tend to think in images. So if you just think of like sitting there and being in the glory of God and how that there's hope in that, it's really comforting when you're going through tough stuff, which then this verse further talks about with hope or what suffering is produced.

3:55 The other thing is more like pragmatic of how I've seen how much God predates psychology, modern psychology and help and saying that hope from the sufferings that you get. It's like a future promise in a way because while we don't ask for sufferings, we can take them on and know that the outcome is something that will produce something beautiful with and for the Lord.

4:28 And ultimately, no matter what it is, can bless us and others. And that's yeah, I had that a friend spoke that to me once when I was going through a rough time and I was just grappling with things and I was going to, you know, I had to think we had our first kid and he said, hey, this is going to really help other people down the line and that gave me, when I was in doubt of how could I be a good father, it was like, hey, these things will greatly benefit them.

5:02 If you allow them to and if you push forward, moving with the Lord. Yeah. And I like, I mean, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And I can, I think can see why the church would pair hope with Advent that this, the story of Jesus coming in Bethlehem testifies to the character or the glory of God, testifies to the reality of Jesus, the hope on which we stand. And so it's a fair time to let Christmas give us hope in the midst of whatever the season

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