Whatever storms of life might come our way, we are like steady ships with “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf” (Heb 6:19–20). So, hope in Jesus Christ and His salvation. Steady yourself by placing your anchor with Him in heaven. Protect yourself from the enemy and wrath to come by wearing the helmet of salvation. Have hope in a hopeless world by trusting only in Him.

Something I read from 1988 reminded me of the hopelessness that many face today:
Present hurts and uncertainty over what the future holds create the constant need for hope. Worldwide poverty, hunger, disease, and human potential to generate terror and destruction create a longing for something better. Historically people have looked to the future with a mixture of longing and fear. Many have concluded that there is no reasonable basis for hope and therefore to hope is to live with an illusion.1
What is hope? And why are so many hopeless today? Maybe it’s because people are putting their hope in all the wrong things.
The Bible warns us against false hope.2
The Bible warns us against putting our hope in people (Jer 17:5–8; Mic 7:3–5; Ps 118:9; 143:3–7). Whether princes, great men, neighbors, friends, spouses, children, or parents—people can dash our hopes in them.
The Bible warns us against putting our hope in riches (Job 31:24–28; Ps 52:1–7; Prov 11:28). They will perish with us in the end (Job 1:21; Ecc 5:15; Luke 12:13–21; 1 Tim 6:7).
The Bible warns us against putting our hope in whatever saves our physical lives (Ps 33:10–11, 16–17; Isa 30:15–16; 31:1–3; Hos 10:13). Personal strength, an army to bid, our resources and greatest plans—none of these will deliver us from death and take us into heaven.
The Bible warns us against putting our hope in false gods (Ps 115:4–8; Hab 2:18–19). They are made and make nothing themselves. They give no profit to those who worship them but bring woe from God instead.
If our hope is in any of these things, we have “hope in this life only” and “are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). We will “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13). We may even show that we are “separated from Christ… having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). Our hope would thus be eternally deferred, and our heart forever sick (Prov 13:12). “Hope that is seen”—people, riches, resources, or gods made by men—“is not hope” (Rom 8:24).
True hope does exist. Let’s remind ourselves of that eternal hope today.
The Bible tells us what true hope really is.
There is only “the one hope” (Eph 4:4) which comes from “the God of hope” (Rom 15:13), which is in “Christ Jesus our hope” (1 Tim 1:1). More specifically, it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27). Here’s the story of that hope.
First, there was once a day when hope was unknown and unnecessary to man on earth. God created all things, man included, and walked and talked with him (cf. Gen 3:8). Everything was perfect. Faith was sight and hope unknown, and man knew only love (cf. 1 Thess 1:3; 5:8; 1 Cor 13:13; Gal 5:5–6; Heb 6:10–12; 1 Pet 1:21–22).
But then, man sinned, and the human race sinned in him (Rom 5:12).
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In mercy, God vents his just wrath on Christ as our substitute and does not give us what our sins deserve saying, “‘whosoever believes in Him shall not perish,’ for Christ perished in your place!” Though mercy is a gospel all by itself, worthy of the endless praises of men and angels, in Christ, God gives more grace saying, “whosever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life!” You see, if mercy is not receiving what is deserved, then grace is receiving that which is undeserved. 

One day, during my senior year of high school, I noticed someone in the gym I’d never seen before. He was a juggernaut of a man I assumed to be a trainer, brought in to work with the football team. Turns out, he was brought in to work with the team but as the new quarterback. It was a 16-year-old named Timmy Tebow. Nobody knew him then, but we all know him now! We know him for championships, broken records, Heisman trophies, NFL highlight reels, and bestselling books.
But I think his greatest feat took place on January 8th, 2009, when he led the Gators to a championship victory with “John 3:16” written in silver sharpie on his eye blacks. He later told reporters that he chose John 3:16 because it was “the essence of our Christianity and the essence of our hope.” Astonishingly, 94 million people Googled “John 3:16” during the game and read the good news for themselves: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Luther agreed, hailing John 3:16 as “the Gospel in miniature,” and Spurgeon called it “the North Star of Scripture.” It’s one of the first verses we teach our children at the start of life and one to which we cling at life’s end. We see it everywhere from billboards to bumper-stickered tailgates and tattooed forearms. But frequent handling causes callouses. Perhaps, John 3:16 has become to you like the patinaed engagement ring with a dusty diamond, worn everyday but scarcely looked at. How beneficial then, to shine the gem and remind our forgetful hearts that God gave his Son for us because he loved us.
The God of Love “For God so loved the world…”
This good news wasn’t trumpeted by Jesus during a mountain-top sermon but late one night after Jerusalem’s Passover crowds had ceased, to a pharisee named Nicodemus. To Pharisees, God was chiefly a master who commands, an inspector who scans, a judge who renders a verdict, an executioner who punishes, not a Father who loves. But the love of God and the God of love was first and foremost in the heart of Jesus.
There are four Greek words translated as “love”: philia, the love of friends; storge, the love of family; and eros, the romantic love of a spouse. But here, Jesus chose the greatest, agape love to express God’s divine motivation in the salvation of sinners. The Bible says God’s agape love is: a sovereign love in which, “God predestined us for adoption to himself” before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:5); an unbreakable love which “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” can sever (Romans 8:38-39); a great love by which he “made us alive together with” Christ when we were dead in sin and trespasses (Ephesians 2:4); an infinite love whose breadth, length, height and depth surpass all knowledge (Ephesians 3:19); and an unconditional love shown in that “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10).
There are two tragic mistakes we make regarding God’s love. First, we misprioritize God’s love and see it as one grape in the cluster of his attributes, forgetting that “God is love” (1 John 4:8 & 16). Harry Ironside said, “[Love] is his very nature. We can say that God is gracious, but we cannot say that God is grace. We can say that God is compassionate but we cannot say that God is compassion. God is kind, but God is not kindness. But we can say, God is love.” Can you say that? Or have you exchanged the Bible’s God of love for the cold, grey deity of the pharisee? Yes, we must press on to know God’s eternal power, holiness, and justice but we must remember that it is only by God’s love that he is these things for us! God’s love is the bridge by which he comes to us to rescue us from our sins for himself.
We also misplace the love of God, putting love at the end of the salvation equation as a product; believing that Jesus bled and died for our sins to make God love us. But Christ puts God’s love at the beginning of the equation as the chief factor, saying, “For God so loved the world he sent his only begotten son.” That means the cross of Christ is not the place God started loving his people, but the ultimate sign of his love for them which had been burning in his breast for all eternity. “Love,” wrote Thomas Watson, “made Christ suffer for us, love was the chain that fastened him to the cross.” This love Spurgeon said, “flows from its own secret source in the eternal Deity, and it owes nothing to any earth-born rain or rivulet; it springs from beneath the everlasting throne, and fills itself full from the springs of the infinite. God loved because he would love.”
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Profanity in the secular worldview is nothing more than a social construct that has no basis in objective truth. A worldview that is unable to define cursing has also lost the ability to bless. When you lose one, you lose the other, which is a significant step backward for mankind made in the image of God. For Christians, who are called to communicate the good news of the gospel, the greatest blessing of all, it seems absurd to be constantly cursing. 

Profanity is becoming more and more mainstream, but its constant use defiles us more than most people realize. Cursing only has one practical use. The act of being boorish has a way of waking people up when they have stopped paying attention. Using a swear word does have the effect of making people snap out of it and take notice. The problem is that it only works for a short time. If cursing becomes common, that utility is no longer viable, for the cursing itself will be tuned out. This truth is why much of today’s profanity is meaningless.
As Christians, how we communicate is of the utmost importance, and using the Lord’s name in vain is always off-limits. However, when it comes to slang, the rules are not as hard and fast. Outside of using the Lord’s name in vain, profanity involves various modes. One is taking something vulgar and applying it to things that are not. Scatological terms come to mind here. This could also include the slang used to describe a promiscuous woman or an overbearing man. Another form is taking something that is not necessarily crude, like the term used for a female dog or donkey and applying it to something more dignified like a human. Both are attempts to degrade or shock. A third use usually involves using obscenities as an expression of fear, wonder, or other emotion.
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