The hope which is laid up for you in heaven

That greeting Paul gave to those at Colosse was followed by an amazing letter to them. Here's the beginning, but lets start with the greeting once more--



Colossians
{1:1} Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus our brother,

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By the will of God.

{1:2} To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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To the saints
To the faithful brethren in Christ
Grace
Peace
From God
Our Father
And...
From the Lord Jesus Christ.

{1:3} We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,

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We give thanks to God
The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Praying always for you.

{1:4} Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints,

{1:5} For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;

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The hope which is laid up for you in heaven.
The hope waiting in heaven for those faithful believers.
It didn't say the hope waiting on earth for them, oh no it didn't. The hope is laid up in heaven. We can desire an easy life here and now, no one really desires hardships, no one wants anxiety and upsets, as a rule people want things to go their way and easily so, good things, happiness, fun time, we want good days, and yet our hope shouldn't be wrapped up in how easy our life can be here and now, our hope for a life fufilled and truly happy should be in heaven. If we place our hope in heaven how can our lives here and now disappoint us? Oh I know how it can, but ultimately if our hope is truly in heaven should we let life here and now destroy that hope?

We hear a lot of inspirational stories of people getting through tough times and such, we hear how they live with the hope of rescue, the hope of a future, they looked beyond their circumstances and some of those circumstances have been beyond grim.

Daily we need to look beyond our circumstances. Yes, we have to live in the *world* but we don't have to be *of* the world. Our hope does not need to rest on anything that happens or doesn't happen to us today or tomorrow, or next week. As much as we'd like things to go smoothly without bumps in the road, those bumps are going to come whether we want them or not and it's how we choose to climb over that bump that matters. Do we scale it with despair and anger? We can. We can hate the bumps, some are very nasty and look more like mountains covered in glass spikes than grass covered hills with many a foothold. Yes, we can hate the bumps and we can let them consume us, fill us with anger and all sorts of emotions that keep us focused on the bump, that's what our anger does you know, it keeps us all focused and caught up in the bumps. How strange it would be to come face to face with a huge, ugly bump in what we want to be our smooth easy road of life and not let it consume us with anger or despair. We're so used to letting life's irritations take all our focus. I say this meaning me too, I'm not exempt at all. I just think it would be so wonderful if we could retrain ourselves by the Grace of God through the help of the Holy Spirit to come face to face with these bumps, ugly, irritating to downright infuriating bumps and be able to look up to heaven and somehow manage to focus on our hope there. No, we can't ignore the bumps we still have to get over them, but how amazing it would be to do so placing our hope in the world to come, to the life to come, the life promised to be bump-free. How marvelous to climb that bump without it totally consuming all our energy all our emotions.

'For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel'

The hope.

the hope.

We need hope more and more and more as life and all it's problems try to steal hope from us.

The hope which is laid up for us in heaven-

The hope we've heard from Jesus Himself, the Word of Truth, the gospel.

Yes, our hope lies with Jesus, in the Word of Truth of the gospel.

May the Holy Spirit fill us all, our hope of glory in Christ.

Hope.

More tomorrow on this letter, I know I didn't get very far today, but such is life. Hope is so important, so incredibly important but it has to be a hope that is laid up in heaven, truly it does. If we place our hopes here and now on earth we will only face disappointment after disappointment with enough happiness thrown in to keep us ensnared thinking we don't have to have our hope in heaven, our hope in the Word of Truth of the Gospel, our hope in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.