The Hope of Eternal Life

So, I'm doing a distance-course from college so that I can finallyyyy achieve my A.A. in Social Science. This course is called "General Epistles", which is pretty much a Bible study on the books of: Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1 & 2 & 3 John, and Jude. I JUST completed the course notes on 1 Peter and it pointed out something absolutely spectacular to me! When we accept that God is the creator of all things and that He sent His son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for all the world's sins because He loves us so, we are promised amazing things! And because of this we are are told to "be truly glad; there is wonderful joy ahead..." (1 Peter 1:6).

I would just like to quote 1 Peter 1:3-5 to you:

"All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is by His GREAT mercy that WE have been BORN AGAIN, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. 

Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance--an inheritance that is kept in Heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.

And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see."

Are you reading what I'm reading? First of all, we have been BORN AGAIN. How incredible is that? We are made new! Our slates are totally wiped clean. We are white as snow--our sins and old mistakes have been completely forgotten. The world will always remember our stupid mistakes, the words we said, and the horrible things we did, but God FORGIVES us and remembers not our trespasses!

Secondly, now we live with GREAT expectation. I don't know about you, but I'm very good at living with looooow expectations. I tend to see the downside of things and am prone to zero-in on worst-case-scenarios when they're totally irrelevant/impossible. I'm talented at making myself feel sad and am horrible at getting up in the morning because "sighhhh, it's another day....sigh....". This is only because I'm not focusing on the things above...I'm not focusing on God and His beautiful promises...I'm not living with the GREAT expectation that I'm meant to live with!

Adding on, we have a PRICELESS INHERITANCE! This inheritance is kept in Heaven and it lasts forever! I love thinking about Heaven...about it's perfection and how wonderful it will be. I try to wrap my head around the concept of ETERNAL and FOREVER...but I just can't! I can't imagine a moment, a time, or a place lasting forever and never ever coming to an end! Forever is wonderful if we're talking about Heaven, but it's not so wonderful if we're talking about Hell... :\

Anyway, lastly, through our faith, God is PROTECTING us by His power until we receive our salvation. He is protecting us, always watching us...He's holding us in His hand because He loves us. Protecting doesn't mean He will keep us from suffering (because suffering is inevitable when living in a Sinful world), protecting means that He's provided us with faith so that we will be able to endure suffering until the end!

So incredible. Reading this just makes all my worldly problems seem so little and silly! How can I go to bed upset when I have so much to look forward to? :)