BRING HOPE

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BRING HOPE TO YOUR CITY TODAY

by Ray Mossholder

“Revival is the inrush of the Spirit into a body that threatens to become a corpse.”  …Sheri Silk

Christ brings hope.  Our Christian assignment is to bring hope.

God wants a love relationship with you.  It’s not that Papa God just wants you to follow Him and serve Him, but remember the movie “Miss Congeniality”? God wants to kiss you, He wants to hug you, He wants to bless you, He wants to move through your body and bring revival to bodies that otherwise threaten to become a corpse.

God means for you as a Christian to transform your city, one neighbor at a time, one office worker at a time, one family member or friend at a time. 

The positive declarations from God’s Word and from His people bring hope.  People and/or cities don’t come alive to God without first getting hope.  You didn’t.  No one else will.

But doesn’t God’s Word also bring a lot of condemnation, judgment, wrath?  It depends on where you look.  The Old Testament is full of these things, although the grace of God can be found throughout the Old Testament too if you search for it.  The people of the Old Testament were under the Law.  Christ hadn’t come yet and the Holy Spirit hadn’t been released.  Hebrews says the Old Testament Law was a shadow (Hebrews 8:4-5), and that we Christians are “under a better covenant in every way” (Hebrews 8:6).  If you as a Christian spend a lot of time in the Old Testament you’ll tend to end up as judgmental as the Law is., You may talk grace, but it will be heavily mingled with expectant judgment to fall on people, cities, nations, or yourself.  Gloom and doom will most likely accompany a lot of your thinking and speech.

Even the gospels can be confusing if a Christian spends most of the time in them and far less time from Acts throughout the rest of the New Testament.  Why?  Because the gospels were written almost entirely to give the history BEFORE Christ went to the cross.  Christ’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection, changed everything in history.  It changed ALL OF LIFE for God’s followers.  The blood of Christ washed every sinner clean the moment they gave their life to Him.  As Matthew tells us, Christ didn’t come to judge the world, but that the world through Him MIGHT be saved.  Christ’s death and resurrection made salvation possible. It gives us hope for now as well as for eternity.  

Christ’s eagerness in the gospels to die so that the Holy Spirit could come makes total sense from the book of Acts on.  “There is NO CONDEMNATION for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).  The Law of the Old Testament has been once and for all replaced for every Christian by the amazing grace and unconditional love of our Lord.  And that grace and love frees Christians to make God’s grace declarations to bodies that otherwise threaten to become corpses.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.  Everywhere He went He brought hope and healing, never gloom and doom.  Is that true of you?

“But, Ray,” someone says, “get real.  Don’t you know what’s going on in America?  Don’t you know our nation is falling apart. We are bankrupt. Oil is destroying our beaches. Our government isn’t governing. The sky is falling in?”

Anyone can bring fear, faithlessness, foolishness, famine, failure, fright, etc. to anyone else.  The lost world is doing that everywhere now.  But our message from God is that since He is the One who owns the whole world, He is ready to release finances, faith, food, fame, fun, future fabulous families, forever to you and to those who are without hope now.  Speak these truths about the God who can supply ALL their needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19).  Show them how happy YOU are about that.  He IS their only hope, and yours.  Let them wake to that joyful truth.  Don’t mope.  Speak hope.

YOU represent Christ today to every person who thinks of you as a church-goer or a Christian. No one wants a frowning Christ.  No one wants a Christ shaking a finger of condemnation in their face. No one wants a Christ trembling in fear or anger.  Chris isn’t frowning or condemning anyone today.  He’s not one bit afraid or mad.  He’s not looking at conditions in the United States or the world and gasping, “Oh no!  How did THAT happen?!!!” 

”God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to salvation” (II Peter 3:9.)  GOD IS IN A GREAT MOOD TODAY.  ARE YOU?

Go declare the great things of God to a frightened, angry, world.  There’s still time to see the miracles God fully intends to happen through you (Ephesians 2:10).  So, pray and ask God who He wants you to give a great declaration of hope to today.  Then do it.

BRING HOPE