By JC Marais, CCCNZ Operations Manager
No matou ka rongo nei ki to koutou whakapono ki a Karaiti Ihu, ki to koutou aroha hoki ki te hunga tapu katoa; Mo te mea e taria atu nei, e takoto mai nei ma koutou i te rangi, ko ta koutou i rongo ai i mua ki te kupu o te pono o te rongopai,
Auā ‘ua ma fa‘alogo i le tala i lo ‘outou fa‘atuatua ‘iā Keriso Iesu, ma lo ‘outou alofa i le au pa‘ia uma; ‘ona o le fa‘amoemoe ‘ua teuina mo ‘outou i le lagi. O le fa‘amoemoe lea na ‘outou fa‘alogo ai anamuā i le ‘upu moni o lo‘o i le Tala Lelei.
We have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel.
Colossians 1:4-5
Our hope is objective and rooted in what Scripture declares. The Scriptures reveal our hope with great clarity, increasing our faith in God’s promises and our love for God’s people.
Hope relates to what will be—a future where we will be with the Lord and see him as he is, a future where we are partakers of his fullness and united with him as the bride of Christ.
But this future hope bears real fruit for us today. Colossians 1:4 describes our hope as a spring that waters God’s gift of faith and our love for people. Walking by faith and loving others might seem onerous at first, but that yoke is eased when we look beyond what is before us—when we look to the objective hope of our glorious inheritance, the ever-present backdrop to our present circumstances.
The more we dwell on our future hope, the easier it is to love people, to be generous with our time and resources, and to work through differences of opinion.
None of this trivialises the very real distress that some of our churches, families, colleagues and friends are currently going through.
Our home group this week studied Acts 16 where Paul and Silas, bruised and bleeding after being beaten by a mob, ended up in the stocks in the inner dungeon. With unwavering hope strengthening their faith, in the middle of the night they looked to the future and sung hymns to God.
In the upheaval that followed, their love for people made them delay their escape to talk with the jailer, resulting in his and his household's salvation.
Like Paul and Silas, let us regularly take time to clarify our hope through the Scriptures, which, like a spring of water, will nourish our faith in Christ Jesus and our love for God’s people.
