A Prayer for Setting Our Hope and Present and Future Grace

From Gospel Translations

Therefore, prepare your minds for action, and being sober-minded; set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Pet. 1:13

Dear heavenly Father, as this Scripture underscores, you won’t let us get away from thinking about your grace, in any season of life—past, present or future. And I understand why. For the peace, joy, and hope, for which we long, cannot be found anywhere else.

I praise you for the day you finally convinced the legalist and leper in me that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. I praise you for the ongoing schooling in the sufficiency of your grace, for all the broken things in my life: broken relationships, broken health, broken promises, broken church, broken me.

And now I praise you for commanding me to set my hope on yet-to-be-received grace—the unleashed fullness, unfettered wonder, undiminished glory of your contra-conditional love for us in Jesus. There is no God like you—there is no God so immeasurably generous with such ill-deserving people like us.

Help me to remember that this hope-setting command is just as much a command to be obeyed as “Do not lie, do not steal, and do not covet.” You are serious about where we set our hope, for to whom and what we look for hope determines the course of our lives.

Indeed, this one verse is pregnant with your wisdom and compassion; for you know if we don’t set our hope on your present and future grace, we’ll go looking for it somewhere else—on saviors that can’t save, on people who aren’t God, on gospels that aren’t the gospel, and on idols that will ultimately fail us.

Lord Jesus, I’ve never so looked forward to the Day when you will be fully revealed—when the first-fruits of grace will give way to the full harvest of grace; and your gathered bride will enter your renewed world.

Until that Day, keep us engaged in your story of redemption and restoration; as we work for justice, love your mercy, walk humbly with our God. So very Amen we pray, in your trustworthy and triumphant name.