Hope
There’s something you may not know about me. I read the news – A LOT. I don’t watch the cable news stations, but I read several reputable sources online every day. If you’re like me and stay well-informed about what’s going on in the world, you may come to the same conclusion many people have reached lately: the world is going to hell in a handbasket!
War in Ukraine continues. Chaos from the coup in Niger persists. Unrest in Sudan has caused 400,000 migrants to leave the country in just a couple of months. The Morocco earthquake killed thousands. Floods in Libya killed thousands. North Korean leader Kim Jung Un is partnering with Russia. China wants to take back Taiwan. South America is in turmoil, and many people are trying to get into the United States.
America’s “Breadbasket” is so dry we can’t produce much wheat. Bees are dying. The oceans are warming. Our water tables are dropping. All this is happening while prices skyrocket, the opioid epidemic continues to kill thousands each year, and our kids are failing math and reading.
Oh – and COVID is back with a new strain.
With all that as the constant drumbeat in the news, no wonder so many people take medication for depression and anxiety.
All this paints a picture of a world lacking HOPE.
When you look at everything going on in the news, it’s easy to feel unsure about how the future will unfold. That’s why so many people are afraid of the future.
Many of you with depression or anxiety might not be thinking about global issues at all, but about your own personal trials. Even the personal trials seem to be on the rise as people are less kind and more demanding to one another. Your schedules lack any downtime. Your finances lack any margin. Social media shows you that everybody else is doing life better than you are.
Again, all these things make you feel like your life is hopeless. You think you will never have money or relationships like other people have, so why try? You might as well give up and stay in bed all day. These feelings crowd in on you when you’re depressed.
Or, you might not feel like giving up, but instead feel the crushing pressure to measure up. You look for ways to accomplish more, earn more, and have more fulfilling relationships. You worry in the dead of night about how you will make it all happen. Whether the despair is in the news or in your personal life, any Hope for a brighter future seems to be vanishing all around.
Most sadly, all this is starting to become a pretty common picture by which many Christians see the world. This is sad because we, as Christians, are to be defined by a different set of virtues.
Remember – our current series of messages is called “Virtue Signals,” and we are looking at six values we Christians should be signaling to the world. We need to demonstrate that we live differently from the world’s patterns – that we root our lives not in the common values of our culture but in Christ, our Savior and our Master.
We Christians can hold onto hope, even in the midst of all the negativity around us because we trust that God is in control.
- No ruler has been put in power for whom God didn’t have a say.
- No natural disaster has caught God by surprise.
- COVID wasn’t unexpected, and all the results it brought were within God’s plan.
- God DOES have a plan that He will work right up until the day the trumpet sounds and time runs out for this earth.
- If all this is true, then we need to be people of Hope – Hope for a future that is leading us right to where God has promised us: a New Heaven and a New Earth and an Eternity spent with our God.
Two Types of Hope
Obviously, today’s message is about the virtue called Hope, and we all need to understand that there are two ways to look at Hope: the world’s version, and the Christian Hope described in the Bible.
Worldly Hope is putting your faith in something or somebody to provide your preferred outcome. It’s like a wish or crossing your fingers. You want something to go your way and think perhaps it will. A week ago, when a New York Jets fan said, “I hope we win the Super Bowl this year,” they would have been putting their hope in Aaron Rogers and his 39-year-old body. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out very well for them. That’s true of most worldly hope. It lets you down.
It’s interesting to note that the majority of secular thinkers in the ancient world did not regard Hope as a virtue, but merely a temporary illusion. They didn’t value Hope because they saw it for what it is. It’s not rooted in anything firm that can assure a preferred future outcome, but in imperfect people or limited resources, either of which can come up short and let you down.
Because this kind of Hope has no guarantee, it is easy to give up your Hope if a lot of time goes by without the desired outcome. This type of Hope is described in Proverbs 13:12: Hope deferred makes the heart sick.
I’m not saying this kind of Hope is always wrong or evil; I’m simply showing that the “Hope” the Bible talks about is not this kind of Hope. It’s not a virtue to take a test at school that you didn’t study for and still Hope to get an A. That’s foolishness.
Christian Hope is putting your Hope in God, and you can’t have hope in God unless you have faith in Him. This is why the Apostle Paul placed “Hope” after “Faith” when listing the three virtues that remain: Faith, Hope and Love.
Hope in God is more than just putting faith in His existence. It’s looking forward to the time when He will fulfill all He has promised to do. Christian hope is deeper than worldly hope because it is rooted in Someone who can actually affect the outcome of the game – God Himself. Even though Christian hope has a firm foundation at its core (unlike worldly hope) it is also much more specific since it applies only to those things God has promised will come true.
We see this clearly in Hebrews 10:23:
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
The hope that is professed in this passage is the hope to draw near to God with hearts and bodies made clean and pure through the blood of Jesus. It’s a very specific hope for an incredible eternal future with God. This hope is in alignment with our faith in what God has told us He will do for those who believe in Him.
So how does this work out in practical terms?
Christian hope is NOT like rubbing a magic genie’s bottle and making three wishes. While many people regularly that life goes smoothly and they never face any challenges or experience pain or be dragged down by struggles in life, Scripture tells us another story. The Bible does not tell us that Hope will protect us from suffering, but that it will carry us through it.
1 Thessalonians 1:3 – We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here Paul is congratulating them on their faith, hope, and love. He is pointing out how their hope in Jesus is what has inspired them to endure their difficulties. Their hope didn’t protect them from difficulties, but allowed them to endure.
We see that same theme in Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Romans 5:3-4 – Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Let’s be clear. Paul isn’t a masochist who wants everyone to glory in their pain for pain’s sake. No, he sees a wonderful ladder of how suffering leads to virtue. Again, the fact that Christians are going to face times of suffering is assumed in this passage. We can’t hope suffering away.
However, when we face suffering, we are given the opportunity to practice perseverance. We may not like to persevere under pressure; but like carbon put under pressure turns to diamonds, it takes that pressure to form our character into the character God desires for us.
Persevering through the suffering gives us grit – the ability to endure with grace, peace and joy. Through all of this we have hope that God is using the suffering to shape us into His image so that one day, when all suffering and pain are removed from the earth, we will finally receive our full reward: Eternity with God in Heaven.
Ultimately, hope as a Christian virtue really isn’t about your life being easy or comfortable. It has nothing to do with world events being shaped by peace or a shift in politics toward your preferred direction. No matter what the news tells you about the state of the world, no matter how hard your life is, no matter how badly you want to give up, and no matter how anxious your situation makes you, if you have hope in God, then you have an anchor to keep you steady through all the waves of life.
Hebrews 6:18-19 (NLT) – Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.
Take a moment to think about that imagery.
- Your hope in God is an anchor for your soul.
- Your trust that He is in control can keep you calm when chaos is all around.
- Your belief that Heaven awaits can keep you moving forward even when you see what looks like hell on earth.
- When the world tries to rock you with shocking news and overwhelming story lines, your soul can stay tied to the truth that God is moving all of creation along His timeline and toward His planned completion.
How to Live Out Hope in God
After describing what the virtue of HOPE looks like and doesn’t look like, I want to help you live out hope in God in a new way.
No Hope
Some of you have feelings of hopelessness that overtake you.
- You look at the mean kids who make your life miserable not only at school but all night long on social media.
- You look at the endless list of all the things you need to be doing – all the ways you are letting people down – all the things that still could go wrong.
- You look at your fixed income check each month and compare it to all your bills that keep piling up.
- You look at all the ways you have crashed your life and made messes for other people to clean up.
- And you just feel like it’s not worth it. You don’t see a future; you don’t expect it to get better; and you don’t know what else to do; so you hide from the world.
Wrong Hope
Others of you might be putting your hope in the wrong place. Rather than trusting in God, it’s common to trust in others.
- Perhaps you are putting your hope in your children to take care of you and fulfill all your needs, and you are angry they are letting you down.
- Maybe you put your hope in retirement to provide you with happiness and satisfaction but are finding that a change in scenery during your days hasn’t given you the freedom and joy you hoped for.
- Some people put all their trust in their bank accounts and are happy as long as the accounts are up. Maybe you have misplaced your hope in something you can count – money, livestock, acres or markets. The problem is that all these things go up and then go back down. They might provide big one day, but let you down the next.
- Still others put all their hope in one political party or candidate. When they win, they feel great! But when they lose, they feel like the world is coming to an end.
Hope in God
If you have no hope or a wrong hope, then I challenge you to recognize that you have lost your hope or you have misplaced your hope and you need to make a change.
- Stop being so afraid of what’s going on in the world or in your life and see that God is bigger than it all. God controls the world’s affairs. God has a hope and a future that extend beyond this world. There is nothing anyone can do to you to extinguish your hope for God to one day make all things right, to restore all that has been lost, to set you free from all your addictions, to give you a new body in a new home surrounded by God’s perfect glory.
- If you want to survive the chaos of this world, this is where you must put your hope. This is the only anchor for your soul.
Share Hope
Those of you who have never wavered from recognizing God as the only firm place to put your hope – the only solid ground this world offers – have an incredible opportunity in front of you.
Right now this world is short on hope, and as Christians we have it. We know where to find it. We need to keep our ears open for people who are speaking in terms that show they have lost or misplaced their hope. We need to courageously offer the hope we have in Jesus –hope that extends beyond our circumstances and allows us to experience peace and joy regardless of the news cycle or our health diagnoses.
Conclusion
I won’t argue that we live in some strange times, and every day we are one day closer to Jesus coming back. For that reason, we should always live with the hope of His return and our resurrection to new life.
We can’t allow these strange times to put us into a funk of despair or worry. We have to accept that at some level we will all suffer in some way before our last day on this earth. It’s inevitable. We can’t hope it away. Trials, troubles and challenges are assured. However, you can choose how you endure those struggles. Will you give up hope and become a Debbie Downer who is always complaining about how bad the world has become? Or will you keep your eyes set on Jesus, who is preparing to make things new? Will you let hope carry you through the challenges this world throws at you?
Hebrews 12:1 – And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.
We don’t get to set the course of our lives. God has already marked out that race for us. We do get to choose how we will run the race. Will we give up? Will we anxiously worry? Or will we persevere with hope because our eyes are not staring at all the problems but are fixed on our Savior, Jesus Christ?
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