Hope In God’s Blessings - The One Year Salt and Light Devotional

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! (2 Corinthians 4:17)

BY NOW, YOU ARE PROBABLY WELL acquainted with the weight of this world. You know how it pulls you into a narrow focus—the excruciating details of a painful moment or the long seasons of discontentment that still cause us to guard our hearts from heartache. Distorted minds—which we all have to some degree—magnify the negative. When we get into a difficult situation, it begins to look permanent. We project the present into the future and assume, “It’s always going to be this way,” even when we know it isn’t. Our hearts are far too easily resigned to disappointment.

When we speak the language of hope, trials are short and blessings are long. Paul spoke this language and was able to assure his readers that his imprisonment was working out for good, that vicious rivalries were actually advancing the gospel, and that whether he lived or died, the outcome would be a blessing (Philippians 1:12-24). He managed to put a positive spin on the most negative situations—not because that “spin” was a false narrative but because he knew that God always turns distressing problems and the weapons of the enemy into blessings and glory. Paul wrote that everything works out “for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” (Romans 8:28). Even more specifically, he insisted that “what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later” (Romans 8:18), and that “our present troubles are small and won’t last very long” (2 Corinthians 4:17). In other words, the glory always outweighs the suffering for a believer in Christ. Always.

Whatever trials you go through, they are a blip on the screen of eternity. The same is true for the people around you. Your language can magnify that blip into alarming proportions, or it can tell the truth. In God’s Kingdom, hope is reality. Speak it always.

{Lord, my mind tells me my trials are long and your blessings are fleeting. Your Word says otherwise. Teach me that foreign tongue so that it becomes my first language—for my good, others’ benefit, and your glory. Amen.