Lockdown Day 26: 8,810 REASONS TO HOPE
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The authentic mark of a transformed believer is a newfound, inexplicable hope even when confronted with intense darkness. Listen to people talk and you will soon discover whether their words are that of a crawling caterpillar or a transformed butterfly. The reason is quite simple. When darkness sets in, only those who have died to themselves and know that their future is secured and satisfied by God alone will be vessels of hope and able to survive.
Today, 21 April 2020, nearly 2,5 million people have been infected with the Coronavirus with more than 170,00 people who have already died. BUT, what is not conveyed in the main-stream media, is that more than 630,000 previously infected people have already recovered and as many as 1,5 million of the current 1,6 million infected patients only have a mild condition of the virus. Only 3% are serious or critical ill. This does not detract from the seriousness of the situation but adds light to a mostly dark picture. There is more hope than the media would like us to believe. If we allow ourselves to be swept with the stream of negativity then we cannot expect a different outcome than the current one. The world needs the message of hope like never before.
Yet the world doesn’t need a false sense of optimism. Romans 15:13 refers to the GOD OF HOPE as the SOURCE of hope. He is both the object of our hope and the author of it. As Christians we find our hope in the knowledge that God is greater than our circumstances. The God of the Bible not only promised salvation and eternity but already fulfilled it on the cross.
When you think about it, the Bible is a book of promises:
Everet R. Storms, a Canadian schoolteacher who read the Bible 27 times, decided to do a count of how many promises there are in the Bible. It took him a year and a half to compile his lists. He divided the promises of…:
- God to man (7,487 promises)
- one man to another (991 promises)
- God the Father to God the Son (2 promises)
- man to God (290 promises) and even
- God to Satan (9 promises)
In all, Storms tallied 8810 promises in the Bible.
Other scholars came up with different numbers: Herbert Lockyer wrote a book called All the promises of the Bible and he claimed that there were 8000 promises in the Bible. Clint Byars, a Biblical scholar, says there are 3000 promises from God in the Bible. The point is this. The Bible is so full of God’s promises, that it is not possible to count them all. Regardless of the exact number of promises there are, the point is that through Christ they are all fulfilled.
We have hope. Hold on to it! And remember the promise written in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans to give you hope and a future.”