I want to begin my blog for this month by wishing all of you a very wonderful and blessed 2013!!! Wow, just saying that it is now 2013 sounds so strange to me. You see when I was a young man, though I still think I am young, by the time we got to the year 2000, much less 2013, we would be driving or should I say flying cars in the sky. By now, with just the push of a button you would be able to do just about anything, remember the TV cartoon the Jetsons?

In the short time I have lived we have made tremendous strides in technology and we have been able to add a few years to our life span; yet our world or better yet our life is still plagued with disease, murder, war and sadness.  You only need to walk the streets of downtown Las Vegas or just about any city to see we still have a great number of homeless people living on the streets in this great nation we call America. You only need to read the newspaper or watch the news to see that our great nation is in very dire economical straits at this time. So many people today are out of work and losing their homes and all that they worked for. More people are committing suicide today; more marriages are falling apart and fewer people have the time to go church or even feel it is the right thing to do. Today, though we are able to put a Rover on Mars, are we any more hopeful because of it???

I truly believe that 2013 will be a wonderful glorious year but I also know that 2013 will come with its own set of troubles; its own pain. The answer I believe to seeing 2013 as a wonderful glorious year is found in what we have placed our hope in. Many of us place our hope in our saving accounts, our jobs, our position in life, the home we live in, the care we drive, even the church we belong to. Though all of those can be seen as wonderful, and they are, our hope as Christians must solely be based on the Lord.

Hebrews 10:23 “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” NKJV “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” Hebrews 3:6 “But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house, and we are His house, if we hold on to the courage and the hope of which we boast.”

I found myself on New Years Eve and New Years Day, flipping the channels on the TV every so often to the news to see if our nation was going over the ‘fiscal cliff’ There was so much politics and games that was played out in all of that, but that wasn’t my issue. Like so many, I found myself feeling a sense on insecurity in the thought that if we went over the fiscal cliff what that would mean to me and my family, to our city and to our nation.

As I did that the Holy Spirit quietly asked me what hope was I boasting in, the government or the Lord. Yes, I am a Pastor but I am also human and believe it or not Pastors also have fears and concerns. Pastors preach many wonderful truths and it is good for the body to listen and learn from what their pastor is speaking about but also know that pastors are also the first ones who will be challenged in whatever they are teaching on. Please never put your pastor on a pedestal or think they are without fault but instead pray for them and support them in every way you can for they are people with huge responsibilities.

Yet in saying all of that, though you may not be a pastor, as a Christian you too have the responsibility of placing your hope in the Lord. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 12:12 “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Jesus says in John 16:33 “In this world (or in this life)  you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Paul said we were to be joyful in hope. If we were to take our eyes off the Lord for even a moment, we would surely be overcome by all the sorrow, pain and troubles of this world, of this life. Jesus said we were take heart for He had overcome the world! Only as our hope and trust is placed in the Lord will we be able to finish our race, as Paul says.

Against all human hope, all human understanding, we read that Abraham, in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him. What is the Lord asking of you in 2013 to be hopeful of; to believe in? What are you boasting of today, in what you see or to Whom you belong to? Have a blessed year in the Lord my friend and be hopeful for the Lord is still on the throne!!!