We do not have to look too far in our culture today to find people struggling with an absence of hope. All we need to do is open a newspaper, watch the news, look at internet news feeds or speak to family and friends to see that hope is in short supply. In fact, we might even say that we live in a hopeless age. The reason is because when hope is placed in anything apart from God, it will constantly let us down, leading to hopelessness. We are seeing the consequences of a society who have abandoned God’s eternal righteous truth that leads to hope to create their own perversion of truth based on what they think will bring them hope. This is evident by where we as a society place our hope, in education, finances, government, relationships, freedom, gender identity, sexual orientation and the millions of other ways that we attempt to control and manipulate our situations and people around us to give us the hope we are looking for.
However, as Christians we have a hope that goes beyond this life. We have a “Living Hope” in Jesus Christ and our life serves as a testimony in the transforming power that comes from knowing Him as our savior. In this message we will continue the sermon series through Acts as we look at the truths of God’s word in Acts 3 and the miraculous healing of the crippled beggar. This beggar did not do anything to deserve being healed. However, his life was used as a testimony of the power of God to transform any life. In many ways we are like this beggar. We do not deserve God’s grace and mercy that he pours out on us. However, the Holy Spirit transforms us into the image of Christ giving us a hope beyond this life and it is a hope we get to share with others in this hopeless age.
-Pastor Nelson
