Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13, NASB)
One of our Links Players recently lost his beloved wife of many years. Ben is 79 years old and was a wonderful caregiver for his wife during her last days here. Our Links Fellowship was praying for full recovery, but God needed Barbara at Home.
I called Ben and asked how Barbara was doing a few weeks before her death. His response is worth sharing with you: “Well, we’ve got a large tree between us and the green right now. She got a two-stroke penalty (misdiagnosis) before she teed off, but we remain confident that she can birdie the first two holes if she can ever get her tee in the ground.”
Ben is a unique fellow with a great golf heritage. He is now developing a great Christian heritage and his hope and promise from God is that Barbara cannot come to him, but that he can go to her.
We went to a restaurant for lunch recently. It was a restaurant that he frequents and everyone in there knows him. He always gives gum to the waitresses and, for the record, anyone else that comes by his table. When we were leaving, this waitress remarked to Ben, “Mr. Ben, everyday is a holiday in your heart.”
Why are followers of Christ filled with this joy and hope? Why do we have a holiday in our heart?
Today’s scripture explains that our God is a God of hope, who is more than able to fill you with joy and peace as a by-product of believing in Him. The reason the Holy Spirit does this is so that His light and joy will be evident to others and will be our witness to them that our future is secure and our faith is in God who made this promise. We follow a Savior who lives today. Someone once said that if you follow a savior who is dead, you will end up dead too. But our Savior lives today, so we have hope for tomorrow!
2013 could be very challenging on many fronts, but we do not lose hope even if adversity and affliction come out way. In the midst of their difficulty and his, the apostle Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians: “Great is my confidence in you; great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort; I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 7:4). See what happens when our faith is based on the God who made us a promise of tomorrow!
I have always loved the passage from Luke that sheds some insight on Mary and why she experienced a holiday in her heart. The shepherds and wise men were amazed and stood in awe of her baby Jesus. Mary knew God’s promise, and in Luke 2:19 we read that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”
I’ve been pondering, and here’s what I’ve come up with: There is nothing I can do to make God love me any more or any less than he already does. So I resolve to work hard this year, not so he will love me but because he already does.
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Randy Wolff
December 24, 2012
Copyright 2012 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.