There is a kind of joy present when you understand your salvation. It changes the way you look at trials; you begin to see that those trials are important to your faith. And when you have joy in your salvation, and you experience those trials that are important to your faith, you get to remember these deep promises that come with salvation - that you have been made new, that you have a new birth, and that you have a hope that exists and is alive. You have an inheritance that is a reward, kept for you in eternity.

Our creator knows our tendencies to doubt what we cannot see and to give up when the going gets tough. So he’s given us this gift called living hope.

What is hope? It is an active, robust experience of believing that there is more for us in the future than we can see in the present. This can reframe our trials, our grief, everything that feels frustrating or stuck. That’s why I believe that living hope is a miracle.

As a reminder, here are the three questions we ask each show:
1. What does the passage say?
2. What’s the backstory, what’s the context?
3. What does it mean? What are the principles of this passage?

Today’s Scripture:
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

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Check out Nicole’s latest Bible study and video series, The Miracle Moment: a six-week study on transforming conflict into connection: https://nicoleunice.com/miraclemoment/

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Episode Image Credit: Getty/Ponomariova_Maria