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Mary Jones
Hope and love are two ingredients that are a part of salvation in Christ Jesus. The bible tells us that “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) (English Standard Version, ESV) The greatest of these three is love, or as the King James Version (KJV) has it – charity.
Let’s look at why the greatest of these three is love. The most powerful display of God’s love is found in John 3:16 - “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” (KJV) Some might say it was the physical creation of the world or even the creation of man. But the love of the Father was in motion well before creation. It is written that we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. Read Ephesians 1:4. We were in the heart, the mind, and in the vision of God before the world was created; before He laid the foundation. It was already predestined or predetermined that Christ would come and redeem the people well before God the Father and His Word spoke the life of it into existence. This love is so great that the Father saw the vision of His Son slain before the foundation of the world. His love was so toward His people that He would create them and call them His; preparing them for a relationship with Him.
We cannot have hope if there is no love. Love must abide somewhere, even if it is the love of self. Hope in a thing or person requires a certain amount of faith in that very person or thing. That amount of faith can be as small as a mustard seed, which is very little. (Matthew 17:20) This is all you need when your hope is in God. But the end results of that small mustard seed faith is greater than we could ever imagined.
Hope will nourish your faith and protect it as it grows. Hope will ignite the seed of faith in you giving way to the Holy Spirit to minister to you through your faith. That is why “without faith it is impossible to please Him (God).” (Hebrews 11:6) The Holy Spirit must have something to work with and it must come from within you. That something must be faith, for God has ordained it so. So let the hope of God’s miraculous work ignite your faith so that the love of the Savior, Jesus the Christ; change your life, giving you the abundance through His coming.
… I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. St. John 10:10b
Reverend Mary A. Jones
www.facebook.com/MAJones.writer
MAJones777@gmail.com
