Unprecedented Hope

“Hope Springs Eternal”

Watch on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOGUiZSDaSI

As we end our series on “Unprecedented Hope,” I’d like to share something that has been on my heart about the issue of hope, because we’re living in a world of lost hope, where hope seems to be in short supply.

This became personal for me several years ago when my brother put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger.

My brother was a remarkable man. He was smart, funny, loving, caring, and generous. If there was a need, he always wanted to fix it.

So, why couldn’t he fix what was going on inside him? As much as I knew my brother, I really don’t know why, and there’s no way for me to know, or for that matter, for anyone to know. So let me share with you what I do know.

The Bible says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” This is where my brother was, and unfortunately, he never got to the second part of this verse, which says, “but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12 NKJV).

When hope is lost, when our dreams are shattered, left dormant and undeveloped, imprisoned by our character, manipulated or paralyzed by other people’s opinions and actions, broken by heartbreak, or hidden beneath the shattered ruins of past mistakes, we become attacked by the dreaded “D’s,” that is, despair, discouragement, depression, and death.

This was my brother’s story. He had great dreams and wonderful plans for what he wanted to do and become in life, but life got the best of him and got in his way, and he didn’t know what to do or which way to go. And so he turned to what most people turn to during these times, and it’s one of the things that does the greatest damage and exasperates the problem, and that is alcohol. For others, it may be drugs or any other number of addictions that people turn to.

But this doesn’t need to be the end of the story. God has great dreams and plans for our lives, dreams that give everyone a future and a hope. And so, once again, I turn to my go-to verse about the hope God gives.

“‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,’ says the Lord, ‘thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.’” (Jeremiah 29:11 NKJV)

This is what we’re all looking for, especially as we wonder what our future holds. We look for some form of hope to get us through these uncertain times.

As I was thinking about what to write for my brother’s funeral, the pad of paper I pulled out already had these words written at the top, “Hope Springs Eternal.” In other words, there is always hope.

The classic example of someone who would have had no hope for their future would have been Abraham from the Old Testament. Family was central in those days, and in that culture, and having sons and daughters signified prosperity and God’s blessings. But Abraham had no children because not only was his wife, Sarah, barren, but they were well past their ability to have children, with both of them over 90 years old.

But this didn’t stop Abraham from having hope. Look at Abraham’s testimony.

It says, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations” (Romans 4:18)

Looking at his circumstances, Abraham could have easily given up all hope, but contrary to his human instincts, he held onto hope because his hope was in God, not in the circumstances. Instead of turning to wine to numb his pain, he turned to God and remembered His promises, knowing they are always true.

So Abraham’s hope was in God, and he continued to believe in Him, thus living his life to the fullest, giving his frustrations and fears over to the Lord, knowing that God’s thoughts and plans for his life were for peace and not for evil, to give him a future and a hope, that is, not leaving him hopeless.

God created all of us and put a dream inside us. You could say that God created us with a divine design in mind. While it may not be evident to us right now, especially with everything that is going on, it’s there nonetheless. To realize this divine design, we can’t leave the designer, that is, the Lord God, behind. All hope for life comes from Him and Him alone. And it is from Him that hope springs eternal, because He is the Eternal One.

And when we find this out and know this as a certainty for our lives, then hope will no longer be deferred but will be like a tree of life, where true joy overtakes our lives and hope is restored.

There is something that I firmly believe, and that is, “Hope is to our spirits what oxygen is to our body.”

It’s been said that we can go 40 days without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air, but I like to add one more item to that list, and that is, we can’t last a single second without hope.

That’s why I said that hope is to our spirits what oxygen is to our bodies. When we don’t have enough oxygen to breathe, we die. And when we don’t have enough hope, our spirits die. Hope is therefore essential to life, because when hope is gone, life, for all intents and purposes, is gone as well, and we’ll never live this life as God has designed us to live it.

Every one of us has a dream and plans for what we want to become and what we want to do in life. The problem is that life just seems to get in the way, and hope gets lost in the process.

God has great dreams and plans for our lives, dreams that give us a future and a hope, just as He said and promised.

But such hope can never be achieved through what the world calls hope. In the world, hope is more like wishful thinking. We say, “I hope so,” or “I hope it is true.” Further, the world defines hope rather pessimistically, as one person put it, “It’s wishing for something that you know you ain’t never gonna get.”

So worldly hope is nothing more than an abstract concept with no substance to support it. But hope, as defined in the Bible, isn’t wishful thinking; rather, it’s a confident expectation and certainty.

Why the Difference? It all comes down to the object on which that hope is placed.

As far as the world is concerned, it places its hope in the human race evolving and getting better. But as we have seen over countless centuries of recorded human history, humanity isn’t getting better; quite the opposite. Humanity has gotten a whole lot worse.

Yes, there are glimpses of humanity as God intended. I have seen them, and there are also great advances in technology and medicine that allow us to live longer, more productive lives. But the human heart is still the same as it always has been. It remains wicked, and it’s only getting worse. From the very beginning, it was this way, as the Lord saw the wickedness of man and how great it was, and how every intention of the human heart was continually evil (Genesis 6:5).

Frankly, the idea that the world is getting better would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragically false. The crime rate, acts of terror and violence, and environmental disasters, both natural and man-made, are not only up but are also adding up.

Therefore, the world can offer no hope, and that’s because the object of its hope, that is, humanity, is flawed.

One important element of regaining hope is our need to stop devaluing ourselves and to understand that we all have great value.

For about 150 years, most of the scientific community has been devaluing human life through what is known as evolution. And what we need to understand is that evolution is not scientific; rather, it is a faith-based belief system.

In fact, that is why it’s called the theory of evolution, and that’s because it is based upon assumptions unsupported by scientific methodology, which is what a theory is, an unsubstantiated fact based upon observation.

The reason I bring this up is that if evolution is to be believed, life has no meaning or value, which means there is nothing valuable about us, because according to evolution we’re nothing more than elevated pond scum. Life is then devalued under evolution, which is why so many people walk around with lost hope, taking their own lives as well as the lives of others, because life has no value.

An eighth-grade science teacher stated, “All life, including human life, is nothing more than a series of electronic impulses and chemical reactions, and there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a soul.”

When asked about life after death, he said, “Hope in heaven is nothing but wishful thinking for which there is no evidence – it’s pie in the sky, bye and bye.”

What we need, therefore, is to see ourselves as God sees us, which is at the heart of the maxim we repeat every time we gather on Sunday morning, namely that “We are greater in the eyes of God than we are in our own eyes. And while our hearts may condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows what truly lies within.”

So how does God see us? In God’s eyes, we are of great value because He has placed that value in us.

God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness … So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27)

God created us with inherent value because we were created in the image and likeness of the Lord God Himself. Because of this, the Lord now dwells within us as He promised He would.

Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” (Revelation 3:20 NKJV)

And so we need to stop devaluing ourselves, or, as we state in our maxim, stop condemning ourselves, because God is the only one who knows who we truly are. He’s the only one who knows the tremendous value He has placed within us.

This is why the Apostle Paul says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1 NKJV)

What this means is that we are no longer under God’s condemnation as believers in Jesus Christ. The key is understanding that condemnation is a legal, judicial term. When someone stood condemned, the judge would sentence them to some form of punishment.

The Bible says that we are all sinners and that no one is righteous enough for heaven; there never has been and there never will be outside of Jesus. The Bible also explains what that sentence of condemnation is, and that is death.

The Bible says, “For the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23a NKJV)

And so all humanity is under the condemnation of sin, and the judgment that must then be passed down is the death sentence.

But this is where Jesus steps in and where hope comes alive, because when we enter into that relationship with Jesus Christ, we are no longer condemned but justified. That is, we’ve been pronounced not guilty because the penalty for our sin, which is death, was paid by Jesus as He hung on the cross, taking our place and dying the death we all deserve.

Therefore, if God says we’re no longer under the law’s condemnation, which is death, we’ve got to stop placing ourselves under it. Now look at what the Apostle Paul goes on to say.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 NKJV) 

And while we know this is true and real, there’s another reality at play here, and that is that there has still been a loss, an abuse, or a disappointment we’re dealing with. What about that?

Well, there is hope, and that hope understands that not only has Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, but also that the Father has pronounced us not guilty because of it, and that there is also a great and abundant life still to be had and lived here on earth.

It’s what I call having A New Normal.

A New Normal

Now I know this has gotten a lot of airtime since COVID, and so many people, from politicians to psychologists, have been using it to explain the changes that have occurred and spin them into what they want.

But I have used it in my counseling sessions for the past 30-plus years, with those who have experienced some form of loss. It was something I brought out when I was asked to speak to the organization “Families of Murder Victims” about the loss they were dealing with, some for many years.

So, what do I mean by this when I use it?

Let’s say you lost your arm and now have only one. Does that mean you can’t live a full and fulfilled life? The answer is obviously no. Will life ever be the same as it was before you lost your arm? Again, the answer is no, but there can still be an abundant and fulfilled life even with one arm instead of two.

Again, what do I mean?

While nothing will be the same as it was, God has a new normal for each and every one of us. Yes, we’ve had a loss. Yes, we’ve suffered abuse. Yes, we’ve endured one disappointment after another and are depressed and ready to give up, but that doesn’t mean things can’t be made new or that we can’t have a new normal.

The Apostle Paul said it like this: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV)

We can be made new and whole once again, not only emotionally but also spiritually, when we come into that saving relationship with Jesus and become restored and refreshed by the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

And so, hope does spring eternal, and we can have our hope restored by looking to Jesus rather than to the circumstances of life.

This is the message I wanted to share as we end our series. It’s that our lives can be transformed from hopelessness to hopefulness, from feeling little or no value to understanding that we have great value.

What I want to do, and what has always been my desire, is to help all of us walk along this journey of faith, this journey toward true spiritual transformation, and for there to be restoration of our hope.