REKINDLE- GETTING FIRED UP FOR A NEW YEAR: HOPE

This week is the end of the sermon series Rekindle-Getting Fired Up for a New Year.  The series ends with what we will need to find energy, strength, and commitment as we continue into 2021. This simple, yet vital, reality is the title of the last sermon: Hope.  Without hope we are led to doubt, despair, darkness, and destruction.  When we have hope, we are able to find a sense of goodness and wholeness in every circumstance.  We return to Romans 5:3-11.  Paul connects for us peace, hope, and love in our relationship with God; but he also shares with us the path to find a hope that will see us through the darkness of despair!  May you find a vital, dynamic hope as you read Romans 5:3-11: 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (NIV)