Last week we had a great time talking about hope. Hope is a theme woven throughout Scripture. It’s hard to miss it. However, hope is also something that we all experience regardless of what we believe spiritually. Most of us probably hope for “something” each day whether it be for pizza, a good day at school, or for God to do something in our lives. That is why we need to have a proper perspective on hope. We need to understand what hope is, what makes it so good, and what our hope is ultimately in.
We started off by talking about how hope can be defined as desire with expectation. The expectation part of hope is what we probably forget about most of the time. If you take that out, then all you have is a wish. You want something to happen, but you also see it as something that most likely won’t happen. With hope, we confidently expect that our desire will be fulfilled. Now, this isn’t an arrogant confidence, but rather it’s a humble confidence that understands God’s plan may not include saying yes to our desire. It seems almost contradictory to be confident, but say it might not happen at the same time, but that is what we need to be. We need to be confident that God CAN bring about what we desire to happen. I shared how I had hope that my fiancé was going to say yes when I proposed to her, and pointed out how this was hope rather than a wish. I expected her to say yes, and I’m really glad she did. I would have been really confused and upset had she said no. This does however lead to another question we talked about last night. Is hope always good?
We watched a clip from the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” last night where Morgan Freeman’s character, Red, was talking with Tim Robbins’ character, Andy, about Andy’s time in “the hole.” Andy had mentioned how the music he had inside his head brought him hope that there was more to life than prison. Red pretty much rained on his parade there telling him that hope was pointless in prison. He had obviously given up hope that he was ever going to leave the prison. Suppose for one second though that Red finally found some hope, and he started hoping he would get out, but never did. In this situation (watch the movie to see if this is what really happens) Red dies an old man in prison. Was his hope of getting out a good one? To answer that I take you to Proverbs 13:12, which says,
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
When our hope doesn’t come to pass, it hurts. We don’t like to be let down or disappointed. Hope CAN be a bad thing. However, when we place our hope in the right thing, it’s like a tree of life. It encourages, replenishes, and refreshes us like a cool glass of water on a hot day.
So, as Christians what do we put our hope in? We talk a lot about it, but if a good hope is one where we confidently expect something, and it comes to pass, what do we hope in? We went through Mark 2:1-12 where Jesus heals a paralytic to see this. Four friends brought their paralyzed friend on a mat to see Jesus only to find out that the house he was in was packed to the brim. There was no room in there. However, that didn’t stop them from getting to Jesus. (We had the students act out this next part, which was really cool to see.) They got on the roof, dug a hole in the ceiling, and lowered their friend in front of Jesus. They had such a hope that if they could just get their friend in front of Jesus, He could heal him. Their faith and hope in Christ drove them to act and ignore the obstacles that could have stopped them. In the midst of this, Jesus declares to be God by healing him, and essentially saying, because you can see that I have the authority to do the visible act (healing this man of paralysis), you can trust that I have the authority to do the invisible act (forgiving him of his sin). Only God could do this, so Jesus made a bold statement by declaring Himself to be God! Now, who knows if the paralytic came there looking for forgiveness of sins, but he at least came looking for physical healing. However, Jesus got to the root issue, and the same root issue that plagued the paralytic (sin) is the same one that plagues all of us. We need to put our faith in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection in order to be healed of this. We all struggle with sin, and we can’t fix it ourselves no matter how hard we try. It is only through putting our faith and hope in Christ that we can be healed.
The cool thing is that in placing our faith in Christ, we also get to enter back into a relationship with God that we could not have had before because of the effects of sin. When sin entered the world, we could no longer have that ongoing, personal relationship with God. That is fixed when we place our faith in Christ. We now have a hope that comes to pass in that we get to enter into an everlasting relationship with our creator. That’s right, everlasting! It doesn’t end when we physically die. It goes on forever and ever and ever… you get the idea. Nothing can separate us from this unending, growing relationship with our creator. However, our hope is even bigger than that. That’s hard to believe when we’ve already talked about having an everlasting relationship with our creator, but it’s true. Our hope in Christ also looks forward to the day when Christ returns, because that will be a day when he finally redeems the world in totality. All of creation is moving towards this day where Christ returns and brings in a perfect world. One of favorite passages in Scripture describes this day in Revelation 21:1-4, where it says,
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."
This really is a glorious hope. We get to spend an eternity worshiping our creator in a perfect place where no more evil exists. That is going to be an amazing day that I hope we all look forward to. Until that day, we need to live with an attitude like the friends of the paralytic had where they didn’t let any obstacle stop them from getting to Jesus. Be encouraged by them and pursue Christ no matter the cost. He is our glorious hope, and He is faithful to do what He says He will and is worth pursuing!
P.s. Below is the song we sang at the end. It’s a great song that calls us to look toward that time where we Christians will get to spend eternity with God in that new heaven and new earth. It really will be a glorious day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8gkDiTvloc
~Kyle
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