When you think of Christian hope, there are a few things that likely come to mind. What happens after we die? Does that matter for here and now? What is heaven? What will it be like? Where is heaven? What is salvation? What is the church? What is the resurrection? What does any of this have to do with today?
When I bring up what happens when we die, I often get the response that it doesn’t matter too much because we will find out when we get there. In one since there is truth in that because we have no idea what things will fully be like (as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13:8-12). On the other hand, what we believe about what happens when we die shapes what we believe God is doing in the world today and how we should live our lives.
There are two types of hope found in scripture. First, hope is what lies ahead and is promised by a God who loves to bring hope to each of us. Second, hope is about how the Kingdom of God is breaking into our present-day realities where hope then spills out into the world today. We’ve tended to lean into the first aspect of hope while ignoring the second. What we believe about what happens in the world determines what we believe God is doing and what we are called to do in the world. We will be looking at a lot of scriptures in the coming weeks to establish a biblical foundation for hope but here are a few to investigate for this week: Isaiah 11, Revelation 21-22, and 1 Corinthians 15.
Over the next seven weeks we are going to cover these topics of hope following the video series by NT Wright, “Surprised by Hope.” You can watch the videos here. If you do not have Right Now Media, you can access it here. You can purchase a participants guide here. Use this for your personal studies or as a small group study (now or in the near future). I recommend you watch these videos each week and study what the Bible says about the hope we have. I’ll continue to provide my blog and podcast to help prepare for Sunday’s lesson. Let’s dig deep and reconnect with the foundations of the Christian faith and the hope we have to offer the world.
June 19 – Hope for the World
June 26 – The Hope of the Resurrection
July 3 – The Hope of Heaven
July 10 – The Hope of Jesus’s Second Coming
July 17 – The Hope of Salvation
July 24 – The Hope of the Church
July 31 – Reclaiming Hope in the Church
