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Today we are going to take a posture of peace by fully embracing hope.

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Posture is a short audible fist bump to remind you God is with you in everything.

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Together we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture of perfect peace.

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So I'm reading today from Romans chapter 8, one of my favorite chapters in the Bible.

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I'm reading from verses 24 and 25 today. It says,

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For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope.

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For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see,

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we wait for it with patience.

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So I want to tackle what, I don't even know if this is a real term,

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but what I'm calling hope fatigue because I'm seeing it a lot right now,

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especially after a year like 2020, people are carrying this suspicion

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in them about what's to come instead of an eager expectation for what's to come.

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And I was encouraging a friend the other day and I found myself saying to her,

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the best is yet to come. Now that's a popular saying. So with popular sayings,

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sometimes it becomes a generic platitude that we just say and don't really mean.

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So when I walked away from that conversation,

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I really found myself reflecting and questioning myself and saying,

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do I really believe that to be true? The best is yet to come.

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Or did I just say that to make her feel better? And I sensed the Holy Spirit

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interrupt the conversation I was having with myself.

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And he said, Lindsay, it's only a platitude if you don't believe it's a prophetic promise.

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Now all through scripture, we have prophetic promise about a hope-filled future.

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One of those scriptures is a popular one, Jeremiah 29, 11.

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The Lord confidently declares, I know the plans I have for you,

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plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

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Now you live differently when you have hope. You live differently when you

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carry an eager expectation of goodness in your future.

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And as a child of God, you have been empowered to live with that hope because it's a promise from

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him that we can rest in. And I think we need to no longer confuse kingdom hope with worldly

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optimism. That's happening a lot right now. Do not let the world or what's happening in the world,

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redefine this truth in your heart. There's two main definitions,

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two different kinds of understandings of hope that are floating around.

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The first is the worldly understanding, which says that hope is wishful thinking.

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It's you wishing for something that you're not sure will happen.

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But kingdom hope is different. Kingdom hope is an anchoring in trust and expectation

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of what has been promised. And as the people of God, we have been promised a lot.

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This word is filled with promises that we can rest in.

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I want to read from Hebrews chapter six. It's a chunk of scripture. It's absolute treasure.

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And I want, as I read this for you to soak in this definition of hope. Okay.

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So Hebrews chapter six, verses 13, I'm going to read through 20.

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It says for when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear,

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he swore by himself saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you.

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And that, and thus Abraham having patiently waited, obtained the promise

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for people swear by something greater than themselves.

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And in all of their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation.

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Okay. Listen to this. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise,

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the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath so that by two

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unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. We who have fled for refuge

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might have a strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

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We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place

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behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high

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priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Okay. Back to Romans eight, when you and I,

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when we hope for God to show us more convincingly to the heirs of the promise,

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for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

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We don't wait for God to show up, show off, bring revival, perform the rapture, no.

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We wait with God.

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We have his presence now, living inside of us.

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We have his nature.

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We have his promises.

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We have his peace.

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So perhaps it feels as though God is bringing severe judgment to the world right now because

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we, his people, his image bearers, have severely judged the world.

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Perhaps it feels like the mercy of God has finally run dry because actually it's we,

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his people, who have decided to stop the flow of his mercy in us and through us.

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Perhaps it feels as though there will never be peace again because we, the people of God,

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have withheld our peace from the world.

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Now there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, so don't be condemned

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by this.

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There's only holy conviction that is inviting us right now to live so radically empowered

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by the presence and the promises of God that we actually change the world.

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Our reality as kingdom people is not dictated by the faithlessness of the world.

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Our reality has been set in the faithfulness of God.

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So don't buy the lie that you are susceptible to anything less than what God has promised.

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I believe the best is yet to come because the sons and daughters of God are waking up

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to the truth that they have hope.

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I believe the best is yet to come because the sons and daughters of God are waking up

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