You Can't See With Your Eyes Shut - Part One

**adapted from a sermon by Chad Whitmore (minister of Franklin Avenue Christian Church, Des Moines, Iowa).

Motivating scripture: Ephesians 1:18-19 NIV
"I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the workin gof his mighty strength,"

Introduction

As Christians our actions in our relationship with God are often done out of "habituation." This means that we get caught up in the motions of things and want them to be the same as they have always been. We want to go to the same kind of church service, we listen to the same type of sermons, we pray the same prayer at the same time every day and not many other times, just to name a few. We usually have no problem with accepting that God is all powerful but do we think enough about how God feels about us? For me, this was one of those slight changes in thinking that was really profound to me because I realized I didn't often think of how God truly feels about me and what gifts I have from him that make me special.


Today I want you to think about the HOPE that we get from God.

This HOPE is that we, as Christians, have the promise of a life beyond this life which means that this is not all there is. A major part of our Christian beliefs is that heaven awaits those who truly believe that Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice for your sins. We should then live our lives with that on our heart. We have a hard time believing that we are important enough for an innocent man to die for our sins but that is exactly the wrong way to think. If we were important enough to God why can we not be important to ourselves? We need to take ownership of this hope as if it is our home or our car with our name on the title.

Titus 3:4-7 says that through Jesus we have the hope of eternal life.

1 Timothy 4:10 tells us that the we should labor and strive for full acceptance of the message and for hope. The word labor is included because it is hard work to make this a cornerstone in our lives.

Titus 1:1-2 tells us that this hope has been around since the beginning of time. God planned for this to be an asset to us.

1 Peter 1:3-4 reminds us that we are given a living hope through Jesus Christ. One that gets stronger and never dies.

Put up sticky notes on your mirror, front door, or office computer if you have to but please lets try to make a conscious effort to think of this wonderful gift of hope that was given to us by God through belief in his one and only son who He sacrificed to save us.

Go with God and remember how important you are to HIM!!!