Today's Verse: Romans 15:13

Hope, joy, and peace sound terrific. The problem for us as mere mortals is that we live on a flawed planet with flawed people and tendencies to go to war with each other. How are we going to find hope, joy, and peace? We for sure won't find them in the sloganeering, the sappy marketing version of hope, joy, and peace we hear from people with simplistic solutions that don't work in the real world. We need answers from someone who has lived with the grit of the real world, experienced the highs and lows that mortality brings, and yet still managed to live with hope, joy, and peace. Oh yeah, that someone is Jesus, who loved deeply, gathered people to himself openly, blessed powerfully, and could calm raging seas or endure the worst kind of torture with grace and forgiveness! Two moves are vital for us to find this kind of hope, joy, and peace:

• First, we must trust our Father in heaven to meet us in our mortal struggles and get us where we need to be when we need to be there - like Jesus who lived on his Father's time (Galatians 4:4-6; James 4:13-17; John 2:4, 7:6-8, 12:20-26).
• Second, we must expect the power of the Holy Spirit to bless, guide, and empower us to be like Jesus, who lived with hope, joy, and peace (2 Corinthians 3:18; Galatians 5:22-23).

As we draw near to Jesus, the Holy Spirit will lead, guide, and fill us to overflowing with the hope, joy, and peace of God!