Christmas HOPE - Day 9

Revelation 22:20 - "Behold! I am coming soon!"

Years ago early on in ministry I was asked to preach. Seriously this was the first time ever preaching God's word in front of a group of people at a church nonetheless. Whoa! Scary, right?! But then it hit me hard. The very last thing that Jesus tells us in scripture is all about hope. The way the bible closes is: "I'm coming soon!" "I'm coming back!" "I was here, did my ministry, finished it at the cross, conquered sin and death, ascended into heaven, with this promise: I'll be back here again.

So I prayed and asked God to help me with a sermon. He basically put in my mind a simple acrostic that I'll share with you. I pray that if this helps give you HOPE, you'll write this acrostic out and put it somewhere to remind you to stay hopeful.

HOPE acrostic:

H - Honesty

O - Open Mind

P - Persevere

E - Expect results

1. Honesty. A staple of life in my opinion is a high level of honesty with yourself. For me, years ago I quit drinking. I want to honestly look in the mirror at myself each day and say I didn't drink today. It probably doesn't matter too much to others if I drank or not. But it does to me. It does no good to lie about it to others. I suppose I could tell everyone that I'm a sober guy, but do people really care if I did or didn't drink? Probably not nearly as much as if I'm being honest with myself and them. There's a level of integrity I personally want to carry out for myself and I pray that's an encouragement to you. The same is true with Jesus. I honestly desire my personal relationship to grow every day and for you as well.