Help When Life's Direction is Fuzzy - Part Three

Hope Unswervingly in God

I Cor 13:12-13 the Message
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God [Faith], hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And best of the three is love.

We toss around words like faith/trust and love all the time. Most of us feel we can describe both. But what is hope?

What in the world is it? And is it really that essential?

I Cor 13:12-13 says, Trust steadily in God [Faith], hope unswervingly, love extravagantly.

We don't see clearly sometimes in life. In those difficult in between periods of life.

Mark this, trust/faith is how we navigate the fog.
Hope is how we survive it!

It is because we are in a fog that we need hope. We don't see clearly and that is exactly why we need hope. Without hope we would give up and live and love for nothing.

Hope is found 141 times from Genesis to Revelation and is often present as a main theme even when the exact word is not found. Such as the book of revelation ... the word is not once used.

Webster defines hope, "to desire with expectation of fulfillment."

To hope is to aniticipate.

It more than dreaming however. I remember as a young boy always hoping for a gift that I really wanted for Christmas. My hints must have been sufficient, because the right gift always appeared by Christmas morning.

Biblical HOPE is not like that. We do not hint to God what our wants are. We come to Him through Christ and first secure our safety. It is in the realm of this Safety that Bible HOPE springs to life.

It is not a HOPE for some special gift that we want. It is the HOPE that all of God's will be done in our lives and on the earth. Kind of like, ". . .Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Biblical hope is living with an expectation that God's promises will be fulfilled.

It will become a reality. Hope always looks to the future, it is always on tiptoes. Hope keeps us going. It makes a dismal day bearable, because God's promises - pledge a brighter tomorrow. Without hope something inside us dies.

(Chuck Swindoll) We can live several weeks without food, days without water, and only minutes without oxygen, but without hope forget it.

A striking Christmas card was once published with the title "If Christ Had Not Come". It was founded upon our Savior's words "If I had not come." The card represented a pastor's falling into a short sleep in his study on Christmas morning and dreaming of a world into which Jesus had never come. In his dream he found himself looking through his home, but there were no little stockings in the chimney corner, no Christmas bells or wreaths of holly, and no Christ to comfort, gladden and save. He walked out to the street, but there was no church with its spire pointing to Heaven. He came back and sat down in his library, but every book about the Savior had disappeared. The doorbell rang and a messenger asked the preacher to visit his poor, dying mother. He hastened with the weeping child, and as he reached the home he sat down and said, "I have something here that will comfort you." He opened his Bible to look for a familiar promise, but it ended with Malachi. There was no Gospel and no promise of hope and salvation, and he could only bow his head and weep with her in bitter despair. Two days later he stood beside her coffin and conducted the funeral service.

There was no message of consolation, no hope of heaven. Take from a man his wealth, and you hinder him; take from him his purpose, and you slow him down. But take from man his hope and you stop him. He can go on without wealth, and even without purpose, for a while. But he will not go on without hope.

Good News Bible Proverbs 13:12 When hope is crushed, the heart is crushed, But a wish come true fills you with joy.

NAS Prov 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life. A loss of hope sickens the heart.

The Hebrew word CHA-LAH - suggests the idea of being "diseased." When the noun sickness I used in reference to a nation, it presents the ida of calamity, grief, or aflition. The term is often used in severe cases, hence the word picture of the heart being "crushed" is an good description.

LB Job 7:1 "How mankind must struggle. A man's life is long and hard, like that of a slave. Job 7:2 How he longs for the day to end. How he grinds on to the end of the week and his wages. Job 7:3 And so to me also have been allotted months of frustration, these long and weary nights. Job 7:4 When I go to bed I think, 'Oh, that it were morning,' and then I toss till dawn. Job 7:5 "My skin is filled with worms and blackness. My flesh breaks open, full of pus. Job 7:6 My life drags by--day after hopeless day. Job 7:7 My life is but a breath, and nothing good is left. Job 7:8 You see me now, but not for long. Soon you'll look upon me dead. Job 7:9 As a cloud disperses and vanishes, so those who die shall go away forever-- Job 7:10 gone forever from their family and their home--never to be seen again. Job 7:11 Ah, let me express my anguish. Let me be free to speak out of the bitterness of my soul. Job 7:12 "O God, am I some monster that you never let me alone? Job 7:13 Even when I try to forget my misery in sleep, you terrify with nightmares. Job 7:14 Job 7:15 I would rather die of strangulation than go on and on like this. Job 7:16 I hate my life. The same man six chapters later. Job 13:15 "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him.

That is what Swindoll calls "hope on its toes." That is surviving in the fog. That is not dreaming, I wish something would happen - but commitment to the will of God in our lives.

Hope is not optional. We have to have it.

Some time ago in York magazine, Douglas Colligan wrote the the "Broken Heart" study. This study researched the mortality rate of 4,500 widowers withing six mongs of their wives' deaths. The findings of the study shoed that the widowers had a mortality rate 40% higher than other men the same age.

Where do we find Hope?
Biblical hope is the anticipation of a favorable outcome under God guidance.

We fail two ways
1. Not recognizing though we are fogged in, it doesn't mean God is not at work. Bad time for decisions.
2. Step out of His guidance.

We hope that all those who come to church faithfully week after week may find at least as much to feed their spirits there as they would find staying at home with a good book or getting out into the fresh air for some exercise.

At the heart of hope is Jesus

-- the hope that he really is what for years we have been saying he is.

--that he really conquered sin and death.

--that in him and through him we also stand a chance of conquering them.

"If Christ has not raised from the dead, your faith is futile and you are still in sins," Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians. "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

Something else, we need to do to be authentic as we talk about hope, lets talk as honestly as Saint Paul did about hopelessness.

Let's acknowledge the darkness and pitiableness of the human condition, including own condition, into which hope brings still a glimmer of light.

The trouble with many sermons is not so much that the preachers are out of touch with what is going on in the world or in books or in theology but that they are out of touch with what is going on their own lives.

Novelist Ayn Rand had mesmerized a student audience at Yale University with her prickly ideas. Afterward a reporter from Time magazine asked her, "Miss Rand, what's wrong with the modern world?" Without hesitation she replied, "Never before has the world been so frantically committed to the idea that no answers are possible. "To paraphrase the bible," she continued, "The modern attitude is, 'father, forgive us, for we know not what we are doing -- and please don't tell us!'"

Jesus said, John 1:5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. John 1:6 There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. John 1:7 He came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. John 1:8 He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the light. John 1:9 There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. John 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. John 1:11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God.

The year 1809 was a very bad year. Napoleon Bonaparte was leading his invincible army across Europe, altering the face of the map. However that year was the year Abraham Lincoln, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Alford L. Tennyson, William Gladstone and Felix Mendelssohn were born. It was a dark night in many ways when God hung a star in the eastern sky to announce the advent of His Son. It was a dark night politically, economically, morally, and spiritually. But it was the darkness before the dawn.

Jesus came and there is Hope for all who believe.

In 1865 Philips Brooks visited Manger Square, Bethlehem, and worshiped Christmas Eve at the Church of the Nativity, originally built by Emperor Constantine in 326. He wrote this carole. Oh Little Town of Bethlehem. Yet in the darkness shines.... When life's direction seems fuzzy hope unswervingly in God.