Hope that Endures: How Puritan Wisdom Challenges the Moderns Soul
This post was written by Emily Lucas, the author of one of our upcoming releases, Hope That Endures. If you enjoy what you read, you can get your copy here:
This post was written by Emily Lucas, the author of one of our upcoming releases, Hope That Endures. If you enjoy what you read, you can get your copy here:
Order 'Hope that Endures' here!
‘Never judge a book by its cover’
Well, that’s all very well, isn’t it? Yet, something has to pique our interest, stir our curiosity enough to take it down from the shelf.
Images and words are a natural lead in all of our choices. Maybe something in the title of this blog caught your eye, maybe annoyed you, gripped your attention as you scrolled through the listings or flicked through pages.
Hope. The promise of something better. The suggestion of change and possibility for something different, something more. We all need hope in life. Sparks of light to break into what can sometimes feel foggy, bleak, dark or mundane.
Endures. Do you long for a relief from the impermanence and fleetingness in life? Do you find yourself wishing away time, then desperately longing to cling on to it? Google photo memories that crop up either leaving us thankful the past is done, or reflecting and wanting our old selves, our ‘old’ lives, our old figure, younger age, earlier stage of family life?
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What about wisdom and challenge? Do they invoke caution in you, or appeal to your risk-taking nature? Maybe they add on a sense of fatigue and burden to your already weary heart. Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a nudge deep within that wherever you are in life, however your Christian faith and relationship with Jesus looks, that you yearn for more depth, more assurance, more courage and even more challenge in your life as a Christian. Maybe these words offer a hope towards the fullness of life that can free you from that sense of mundanity, that feeling of being adrift at sea in your life with God.
Where do these words sit in our lives? In our hearts? In our minds? Hope. Endurance. Wisdom. Challenge. As Christians, how do we consider them? How do we live in the reality of all the gospel gifts us in its life-giving message of hope, endurance, wisdom, and challenge?
The challenges, trials, sufferings we face in life are unavoidable. We know how acute the pain of living in this imperfect and ever-fading world can be. The fractures in relationships, the arguments, the fading of beauty, the mini-deaths in nature, in body, in seasons of life that we all experience. And all too often we desperately search around and apply poor substitutes of temporary relief. We look to ourselves, others or the messages in the world to apply healing balm to our wounded hearts.
This is where we need the true and only hope that endures. The eternal wisdom, the eternal light, encouragement, comfort and challenge of the gospel. This is where we need the light of Jesus to flood and fill our hearts to face our own challenges and live in the fullness of life that He alone can give.
If you like what you’ve read so far, you can pre-order your copy of Emily Lucas’ Hope that Endures ahead of Tuesday’s release date (19 May 2026), at this link:
This is where we need each other. Not only do we have our faithful wise Christian friends in our lives, but God has also surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses, and He has poured His gospel truth throughout history and kept safe for us writings of wise preaching to feed our hungry hearts and satisfy our thirsting souls.
Hope that Endures seeks to introduce you to such faithful friends in history. Possibly you’ve heard of the Puritans, or read some of their writings before. Maybe you haven’t.
As you face your particular challenges, know you are surrounded by clouds of witnesses throughout the ages.
My own introduction to the Puritans began over ten years ago when I was facing a time of real temptation and self-imposed spiritual pressure. I’d lost sight of the goal of life with God: to enjoy Him and live in loving response to His love for me.
The gospel promise and hope preached to me through various Puritans anchored my heart once again on Jesus and lifted me to the fullness of life that He alone provides. I keep coming back to their writing over and over to ground and centre my wondering (and desperately-in-need-of-continual-wisdom) heart!
My prayer is that this book is a little way to fill and refresh your heart as well as keep you hopeful that life with and for God is the real life, the best life, the eternal life.
There are five short, accessible chapters. Each chapter looks at a different challenge that we face as Christians today and five different faithful Puritan preachers whose writing can speak gospel hope into our souls and situations. We will meet Puritan brothers in Jesus who while they lived four hundred years ago, battled remarkably similar battles and challenges in the world and in themselves to our own.
I’m excited to share with you precious nuggets of gospel gold from Jeremiah Burroughs, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Watson, William Gurnall and John Bunyan. I pray they will graciously comfort and challenge our hearts as we face the challenge of comfort and contentment; the challenge to cover up; the challenges of conformity; of contribution; of choice.
You can read the chapters in a calm ten minutes of your day, or alongside a friend or in a small group. Each chapter follows the same format as we meet the challenge through anecdotes, familiar famous stories; meet the Puritan himself and his life; meet gospel hope in our life situations, then pause to reflect as we end with a Puritan prayer, moments of Bible reflection and questions for reflection or discussion.
Whatever words grip you, whatever battles threaten to overwhelm, I pray you know the grace of God for you, and pray this book can be part of God’s means of grace towards you. As you face your particular challenges, know you are surrounded by clouds of witnesses throughout the ages.
May you know God’s enduring and secure love for you, and may His everlasting words of hope, wisdom, comfort and challenge lead you to experience ever more deeply the depth and fullness of life that Jesus came to gift us.