{"id":23155,"date":"2014-12-04T00:20:41","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T05:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/?p=23155"},"modified":"2014-12-03T21:56:56","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T02:56:56","slug":"living-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/2014\/12\/04\/living-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Living Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SHhopeadvent\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. <\/span>
\nAccording to His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope <\/span>
\nthrough the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.<\/span>
\n1 Peter 1:3 HCSB<\/span><\/p>\n

Easton’s Bible Dictionary defines hope<\/strong> <\/span>as<\/p>\n

“one of the three main elements of Christian character (1 Corinthians 13:13). It is joined to faith and love, and is opposed to seeing or possessing. Christ is the actual object of the believer’s hope<\/strong><\/span>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hope<\/span> is when we eagerly look forward to something.<\/h4>\n

Rebecca VanNoord states “We don\u2019t often realize where we put our hope<\/span><\/strong>. We can seek sustenance, energy, or relief in the most transient, innocuous things\u2014from our morning coffee to a vacation we\u2019ve been anticipating for months. These things are not bad in themselves, but if they constantly serve as minor fixes in our daily lives, they can shift our focus. We can end up trading God\u2019s help for caffeine and a few days in the sun.” \u00a0\u00a0(Go here<\/a> to read the rest of this article.)<\/p>\n

Ouch! \u00a0(Especially the coffee\/caffeine part.) \u00a0“Shift our focus.” I don’t know about you, but my focus is easily shifted. How is it then that we are to place our hope<\/strong><\/span> in an infant born in a stable and keep our focus on something we have never seen or experienced? Especially in the world today where Christmas has been commercialized and Christ is being taken out of Christmas.<\/p>\n

Look at it this way:<\/p>\n