If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he . . . will also give life to your mortal bodies. (Rom. 8:11)
A DISCOURAGED WOMAN, FEELING HOPELESS, passed a building and saw a banner with big letters that spelled HOPE. Intrigued, she turned her car around, drove back to the building, and went inside. She told the receptionist, “I saw your sign for hope and I wondered what kind of place this is.”
The receptionist told her it was a place where they try to help people rediscover hope by providing them with jobs, housing, social services. She said she had been working there a few months and loved it.
“So,” asked the inquiring woman, “is this where you found hope?”
“Oh, no,” the receptionist answered, “This is where I found a job. I found hope when I invited Jesus into my life.”
That’s true for every believer. Knowing Jesus provides us with hope. Paul thought about the power it took to raise Jesus from the dead. He realized that same power is available to us. So he wrote, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he . . . will also give life to your mortal bodies.”
Death is what William Barclay calls “an inevitable interlude that has to be passed through on the way” from this life to the next.* Because of the Spirit of Jesus in you, we have hope of eternal life with Him on the other side.
Rejoice that the Spirit will give life to our mortal bodies beyond death.
Ron McClung lives in Fishers, Indiana, with his wife Carol. He has written his weekly column, Positive Perspective, for more than twenty-nine years.
© 2018 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission.
*William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series: The Letter to the Romans (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), 105.
