Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, Christ Church.
[00:00:02] I'm going to say a prayer and get us started today. Dear Father, you are so incredibly wonderful. Thank you for who you are and what you do. I pray that in you this morning we would find wellness for our souls. I pray that our hope would be in you and you would guide us in all of our ways. Help us. I pray in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:00:25] Have you ever felt discouraged before? Like you're just going along, you're doing life, you're day by day doing the things, and then something out of nowhere takes a turn for the worst and you're like completely thrown off course. You get an unexpected bill and all of a sudden your finances are a mess. Someone gets sick. I don't know about you, but this flu season, I am over it. Anyone else? I feel like I get one person, like healthy in my family and no joke, like the next day somebody else gets sick and it's been months. I'm like, what do we need to do to have a little health and sunshine around here?
[00:01:03] Or sometimes it's a person, somebody you thought that was going to have your back and then they don't. And it's just frustrating and discouraging.
[00:01:12] Or somebody just says something mean and you're like, why? Why?
[00:01:17] So sometimes it's your own self you're discouraged with. Do you ever just get frustrated and discouraged by yourself? Like, how am I not farther along? By now, I have been working at this thing for decades. Feels like should be solved and shouldn't be an issue anymore. See, we all get discouraged, but the question then becomes, what do we do when we get discouraged? Sometimes discouragement happens and we're like, we just want to quit.
[00:01:44] We're like, well, I did my best, gave it all I had. The universe is clearly against me. They win, I quit.
[00:01:53] Or some of us, we like dig in harder. We're like, that's it. I am gonna work harder. I'm gonna do more. I'm gonna do more things. I'm gonna get out of this rut, out of this discouragement. See, I'm a girl who likes to try. Like, give me a self help book. Give me a three steps to happiness. Give me a five steps to well Being. I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna try and I'm gon. And if that one doesn't work, I'll take another list. I'll look them up. Like, tell me something smart. I want to try. Because nobody doesn't like to feel good. But what happens is we keep trying and trying and we think, if I can just do something, everybody else has it figured out. Like, if I could just figure out their special magic sauce and, like, pour it into my life, then I'll figure out this thing and I'll be happy, too. And I won't be frustrated and I won't be discouraged. And so we work harder and we try more and we get more tired and more frustrated and more discouraged because we're doing all of these things and things aren't working the way we think they should. And we turn to God and we're like, God, what's going on here? Can't you see how hard I'm working? God, did you see how many good things I did this week? Like, my spiritual disciplines were on point? Like, did you notice? Or sometimes, like, God, did you just see me? What's going on? I've been reading this book with my life group. It's called Relaxed by Megan Fate Marshman. And the heading is Walking with the One who's Not Worried About a Thing. I'm pretty sure God wrote this book with me in mind. I love what she says. She says, in our culture, independence is a virtue, but it's a hindrance. In the Christian faith, being dependent on the Lord is the root of what it means to follow Him.
[00:03:42] Our cultural norm of you're better if you can do this by yourself isn't going anywhere. If we don't understand it, we'll continue being tempted toward autonomy, the tendency to live our lives, even our faith, in trusting ourselves alone. She said, when you boil it down to its essence, faith is nothing more than dependence. It's acknowledging that God is God and we are not, and that we need him for absolutely everything. She said God is in control, relieving us of the burden of trying to be. And the antidote to anxiety and worry and the burdens we carry is conference in the sovereignty of God. And she has this line in there. I'm not. I've written it down. And I'm going to keep saying it. God is sovereign. Even I can't screw it up.
[00:04:34] God's pretty good at being God. Turns out for all of time in history, he's been God. Turns out, even when I wasn't alive, God was really good at being God, and even I can't mess this up. But she said, there's this gap that exists in our life. The gap from who I want to be to who I am on a daily basis, the gap between who I know I'm supposed to be in following Christ and the things I do every single day. And usually that gap is where we try to fill things up with more of us. Like more of me doing more things or more of my plan or my agenda or working harder. And we keep trying to shove in this gap between who we know or think we're supposed to be in who we actually are. And she said when we do that, our lives might change for a moment, but our hearts never do.
[00:05:31] And what happens is if our hearts don't change, the source of our actions never change.
[00:05:40] And here's what's so incredible. She said, you got to spend time recognizing the one who is going to work the hardest to change your heart. It's not you, it's God.
[00:05:53] And it's God's love, not willpower, that is the primary power for change in the Christian heart.
[00:06:00] It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Like, I hear that and I'm like, man, that's so good. But then the reality of life happens and the day to day living happens, and the frustrations and the stress and the worry and the discouragement and the not working. And when life gets it's hard, when life feels filled with pressure, or we're tired, or we're just discouraged and worn down, we think, I just got to do more. I got to depend more on myself. I know what I can do. I know what I can't do. And even if it didn't work last time, guys, it'll work this time.
[00:06:34] We keep doing it again and again and again. But the more we try doing it by ourself, the more we spin in the same circle of discouragement.
[00:06:46] So the tension then becomes, how do I see more and more who is in control? God. And who is not in control?
[00:06:58] Me.
[00:07:00] And then once I recognize who is in control, how do I stop trying to wrestle that control away from him?
[00:07:08] How do I stop trying to say, God, I got this on my own. And then when it doesn't work, I'm like, God, where were you? Why didn't you do the thing that I thought a good God should do and give him that room and space that he needs to do the work that only he can do?
[00:07:25] One of the things I've been loving so much about the study that we've been doing in Ephesians chapter one is it's really challenging my thinking about God.
[00:07:34] I love this idea. It's not just a list of things that I need to do to try harder. It's not a five step plan. It's not, do this, try this, do more of this. Instead it's this invitation into understanding God better.
[00:07:49] It's this invitation into knowing God more and letting him work. So I want to review where we've been so far, and then I want to add on a new idea today. Here's where we are. Ephesians chapter one, starting at verse three, says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless. Insight his sight in love. He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
[00:08:36] In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth and under Christ. In him we were chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. And then today, verse 12, in order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory.
[00:09:24] So all these weeks we've been building off of this idea that there is a blessed God who blesses. And we read through all of these things that he blesses us with in this section of Ephesians 1. He blesses us with election to be holy and faultless. He predestines us unto Himself. He blesses us with redemption and forgiveness in Jesus Christ. He blesses us with a new way of of thinking. He blesses us with helping us to understand the mystery of his will and how God is at work bringing all things together. He blesses us by choosing us, by giving us an inheritance and sharing what he possesses.
[00:10:06] And then we're going to add one more idea. Look at verse 12. In order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory.
[00:10:17] It's such an awesome idea and easy to skip over if God is blessing us with these things. Paul tells us one of the blessings that God shares with us is hope. God gives us hope. It's this wonderful gift from Him.
[00:10:35] But what's awesome about how Paul teaches us this is hope. Isn't something that I have to generate on my own. It's not something that I have to work to create or work hard to obtain. It's something that the blessed God shares with us.
[00:10:53] And when we read this section, we're talking about before, like, before we knew God, God knew us. God was choosing us and blessing us and calling us and creating this incredible plan in Christ Jesus to give us right standing, standing with him and to share his incredible glory with us.
[00:11:14] But here's what's powerful about this.
[00:11:17] Every verb in this, every action. When you read through, it's God doing the work. It's God who's doing the choosing, God who's doing the blessing. Here's what God has already done. Here's what God is at work doing. The verses aren't here's three things you need to do to be better for God. It's not here's where you need to try harder to earn God's love. Or even when you finally stop messing up, when you finally get your things right and together, then God is going to bless you in this way. Paul is showing us this incredible idea that long before we even thought about God, before we even considered who God is, or we might need some help from Him, God was already thinking about you and I before it even dawned on us that the way we were doing life isn't working. It was actually working against us and making it harder. God already had a blessed plan in place to work on our behalf.
[00:12:23] Here's what's powerful. God is the one taking the actions and friends. We're the recipients.
[00:12:30] God is the active party. We are the passive recipient of the blessings of God. He's the one doing the blessing. We're the ones being blessed. I'm receiving what God has already been doing, and sometimes that's kind of hard. So I'm going to try to give you a visual to help you along. My niece Taylor and I, a couple years ago we went and did a spa day. And it was lovely. It was facials and massages and they treated you well. And you basically just sit back and enjoy the process. They know what they're doing. I had no idea. And we just got to experience it and it was lovely. It was a wonderful, lovely day. Now, I couldn't imagine going to this place and as they were trying to help me do these things, be like, no, no, no, no, no, I want you to do it this way instead. Or like, they're doing the stuff for my facial, like, no, no, no, no, no. I think you should do it this my plan's better.
[00:13:27] Like I never would have done that because I trusted in their expertise that they knew where they were doing.
[00:13:33] But when it comes to God, so often I'm not saying God, you're the expert here. I just want to receive your blessing. I'm trying to say to God, no, no, no, no, God, but this is my plan. No, no, no, God, this is how I think it should be now, God, this is my agenda. I need you to go ahead and bless that and see. We get all these tensions in life because we're praying and we're praying. We're like God's not answering our prayers, but we're praying our agenda. We're not praying for God.
[00:14:02] We get all this frustration because we're doing all of these things that in the end amount to nothing. Because I'm not connecting to the God who's blessing. I'm trying to tell God how I think he should do everything.
[00:14:20] And usually what happens when this starts to fall apart is life doesn't work.
[00:14:25] Something happens, it disrupts our sense of well being. It's a hardship, a discouragement, a sense of suffering, that our reality of how we think life should work doesn't work anymore.
[00:14:38] And we wrestle with this tension of, okay, is this God's failing or is this me missing who God is? Because I promise you, God doesn't mess up.
[00:14:50] God doesn't make mistakes.
[00:14:53] God doesn't get it wrong ever.
[00:14:56] But so often I do.
[00:14:59] I make mistakes all the time. I get it wrong a lot. But still somehow I wrestle with this idea. If God would just do what I want him to do, then it would be right. As if my very small, limited, right now life experience is greater than eternal God's.
[00:15:20] As if my knowledge of how my life works right now is somehow greater than the God who has been God for all of time, in all of history.
[00:15:33] We receive the blessing and we experience life differently when we let God be God and we turn our hearts to following him. This incredible idea of hope is a blessing that God shares with us. And when we receive it, when we live in it, we experience a better reality of life than every one of our attempts that haven't worked. God is at work creating hope and sharing hope with me. So we gotta ask ourselves, what is hope, right? Like, what does it actually mean to have hope? Where do we find it? And then how do we live with it? So let's start with what does hope mean? Because we've heard all kinds of different ideas, definitions. You can look it up, look in the dictionary. Google it. I'm gonna give you some smart people what they say about hope. Lee Strobel said hope is the inextinguishable flicker God ignites in our souls to keep us believing in the prevailing power of his light, even when we are surrounded by utter darkness. He said, hope is the quiet resolve he hardwires into our spirit that claims to the seemingly impossible truth that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him. That's a powerful way to think about Hope, isn't it? Dr. Henry Cloud said, a lot of times we think about hope as like a wish, right? Like I hope this will happen. It's this wishful thinking. Like I wish this would just come true. He said, a wish is something that you desire and want to come true. You can want it with all of your being. The desire for it can be strong, but it's totally subjective and comes totally from you. It's one sided and has no basis in reality. That's fair, right? Like we've wished for things. Like in hindsight we're like, yeah, I'm glad that didn't happen. It was a good idea at the time. Glad it didn't come about. Said but hope on the other hand, is not as subjective. It has objective reasons to believe that good things are going to happen or at least can happen. Hope isn't a fairy tale wish, it's bedrock and you should be able to order your life with it at your side.
[00:17:49] Brene Brown she said hope is a way of thinking, it's not an emotion. She said hope is a cognitive process and it's made up of goals and pathways and agency. But listen to how powerful this is. She said hope is developed through adversity and discomfort. It is not developed during easy times. See, hope is the expectation of something good to come. And when do we want something good to come? When things aren't working?
[00:18:15] When things don't feel good? We're hoping and longing for something better. And she said, hope is learned and taught.
[00:18:24] And then with all of this I want to tie it together. Ray Johnston is a pastor and he wrote an incredible book on hope. He said hope isn't some unreliable sensation. It is a forward facing confidence. He said hope is the expectation of good to come. It's not wishful thinking. It's a confident expectation that God has better days ahead. He said it's not even an unnecessary luxury. The only thing that will keep you from going under is hope. Hope makes you buoyant. And he says the central Invitation of the Bible is to develop a hope giving relationship with God who, if he could get your attention for a few minutes, would say to you these words, get back up. The game's not over yet.
[00:19:11] That's hope. It's a blessing from God. It's based on on God. It's a confident expectation on who God is, what God can do, and what he is yet to accomplish yet.
[00:19:27] And it's the certainty of a promised outcome. Can you hear these words? The game's not over yet. How does discouragement feel? Discouragement feels like this is as good as it's going to get and it's terrible and it's never going to get better. And a lot of us have fallen for that lie and we've lost ourselves there. We said, it's never going to get better than this. And we've lived in the discouragement and the disappointment for so long. We've stopped seeing the possibility of what God could do. We've stopped believing in the outcome that God has better days ahead. There's always more that he can do. He's not finished he yet.
[00:20:10] All right, if that's hope, where do we find that hope? Because if we're not generating it on our own, we're not creating it in ourselves. Where do we find hope?
[00:20:22] This is one of the things about life. Most of the time we're looking for hope in the things that we're connected to, right? Like, I feel hopeful when my relationship is going good. I feel hopeful when the job is right and the money is good. I feel hopeful when everybody's healthy and we're not in the doctor's office every other day. And they're like, hey, we just saw you two days ago.
[00:20:46] Like, yeah, I know. First name basis. It's fine.
[00:20:49] We feel hopeful when things in connection to us are going good. But when things are bad, we feel discouraged. When things aren't going the way that I want them to. I don't feel as hopeful. That's usually where we're searching for hope. And it's real tricky because here's a really hard reality of everything is temporary.
[00:21:11] Everything.
[00:21:13] My beautiful family will not last forever.
[00:21:17] The most perfect job in the world has a timetable to it. The most money that you can earn to afford the most wonderful, wonderful things in life and the homes and the cars and the beautiful accessories, they all are temporary and they do not last forever.
[00:21:38] That's a reality of life. And so often when we feel that temporariness of things, it either ruins us or it makes us reckless. Like Nothing lasts forever. Might as well do what I want to, right? Might as well enjoy the ride while I'm here. And it leaves us feeling hopeless and discouraged, like things aren't how they're supposed to be. And when we feel this way, we can either let it ruin us where we quit, we can let it make us reckless where we don't take anything seriously and we take everything for granted, or it can turn us into the loving arms of our blessed God. See, I need a source of hope outside of myself. Because everything I can generate or think about or create, it's temporary. It all has a shelf life. It all has a timetable that began ticking the moment I took my first breath.
[00:22:35] I can only create temporary things, but God is at work creating eternal things. And so my source of hope has to be found outside of myself. And I find that in God, the only one, without beginning or end. I find that in God who does not change. I find it in God who is constant at all times.
[00:23:05] My sense of hope is found in connection to Jesus Christ.
[00:23:11] Think about this. How do I know that there are better days ahead if right now isn't what I want it to be? How do I know that God isn't finished yet? How do I know that there's more good that God can do? How do I have a confident expectation in him?
[00:23:30] It's all based in Jesus Christ. When we think about the life of Christ, who he is, what he's done, what he's taught us. He came into the world, our broken, messy, frustrated, discouraged, tired world. And he lived the life we should have lived. And on the cross he died the death we should have died.
[00:23:54] And in Christ. It's no longer my record or what I can do or what I have done. But it's all about what Christ has done on our behalf. My relationship to God isn't based on God. Look at all the good things I did this week. My relationship to God is based on the loving, saving grace of Jesus Christ.
[00:24:15] And when I look to Christ, I have a different template for my reality of life. What is too hard for me is never too hard for Christ.
[00:24:26] The one who took on death that defeats all of us, defeated death itself.
[00:24:34] The one who lived in the world and took on every absurd reality and ugliness that the human condition could create. He was not defeated by that.
[00:24:47] The one who loves us to the end, whose love is immeasurable. He's got grace and mercy beyond what I can understand.
[00:24:58] The one who looks at us and calls us friend.
[00:25:03] In Christ we have a Friend who is strong and confident and will not let us down.
[00:25:12] When my plans don't work, it doesn't mean God doesn't have a plan.
[00:25:16] When my way isn't happening, it doesn't mean that God doesn't have a better way. It means I'm just not looking in the right direction. But my eyes have shifted off Christ. On Christ. I have a fixed foundation, a firm understanding of what God is going to do. He's in control. He's never failed. He's never let us down. He's never turned his back on us.
[00:25:44] My confident expectation for the future and for hope is found in Jesus Christ.
[00:25:52] I love. There's another image the author of Hebrews gives us about hope, calls hope an anchor for the soul. Think about how powerful this is for a second. I'm not. I'm not a boat person, but I've been on boats before, so I'm going to give you my little bit of knowledge about boats. What does an anchor do? You put the anchor down when you want to stay in place. Right? When you're out on the water, the anchor's up because it's going to hold you down. The anchor holds you in place. Place so that when you want to stay where you are, you don't drift off course with the water because the water's moving and it will take you where it's going. But the anchor holds you secure in place. When life comes at us and it's pushing us back and forth, when the waves of life are strong and we feel like we're drowning, Jesus Christ is the anchor of our souls. Jesus Christ is our hope. When the whole world seems upside down and backwards, we're like, this does not make sense. Jesus Christ is our anchor. He's our hope that keeps us secure in Him. Look, life can be filled with misery at times, but Jesus Christ is still our hope that shows us the light of what he can do.
[00:27:08] We have moments where we're just exhausted. We've worked ourself until we're so tired there's nothing left. But the hope of Jesus Christ gives us the energy we need to follow him and accomplish more. You guys, there's gonna be moments in life where we're all tempted to quit. Every one of us are gonna face a moment where we're like, it's too hard. It's too much. I can't do anything else. And you know what? You can't. But God can. And every moment we want to quit, our hope in Jesus Christ says he's not done Yet. And if he hasn't quit on us, we can do this one more day.
[00:27:48] When we lose our way, when we're confused, when we're not sure which way to go, Hope takes the edge off the panic that wants to pull us under.
[00:28:01] When disease and illness just swamp us with misery, discourage us with pain and medicine and hospital rooms and tests and tubes and needles and we can't take much more, hope gives us the courage to persevere beyond the pain.
[00:28:24] When we fear the absolute worst, the hope of Jesus Christ reminds us God is in control and his plan is good.
[00:28:36] When bad decisions catch up to us, hope fuels our recovery.
[00:28:43] When we feel like waiting is not working, I've waited and I've waited and I've waited. Hope points us to the trust we have in Jesus Christ, and he has more to do.
[00:29:01] When we say goodbye to someone we love, when we watch them pass from this life into the next, we get to hope in the life beyond life.
[00:29:13] That I might not see everything God has to accomplish in this earthly life, but one day my eternal soul will and God is at work making all of the broken things new.
[00:29:27] Hope isn't just a nice option. It's not a luxury that helps us like temporarily get through this hurdle or that hurdle or the next. It is absolutely essential to the Christian soul to have any sense of well being in a messy world.
[00:29:44] Because left to my own devices, I'm lost in the mess. But when my eyes are fixed on Jesus Christ, I see the goodness of God and I find the hope that I need to keep on living with him one day at a time.
[00:30:02] And I'm not creating this on my own. I'm connecting to the one who already shares it with us abundantly. Christian shares hope with us when we do life with him.
[00:30:15] Hope is this confident expectation that God isn't done yet. The best days are ahead. We find it connected to Christ. In him we know a hope that's not based on our temporary circumstances, but that resides in an eternal God who has always been in control.
[00:30:37] Now how do we live with hope? How does that thinking show up and fill that gap in our life from who I think I'm supposed to be to who I am on a daily basis. We have to give up the belief that we can do this on our own. We can't. Some of you have been trying and trying and trying and nothing is working. Because here's the hard. Can I just tell you the hard thing? If I'm the problem, it can't also be the solution. And I'M the problem, guys. You are the problem. It's not somebody else. They're the problem too. But my mess, my life. I am the core problem. And I need a solution outside of myself that is bigger and greater than I am. I have to give up the attitude that if I just try harder, if I just do more, then good things will happen.
[00:31:31] Some of us have Christianized this. If you just have more faith, this wouldn't happen to you. You've been there before. Something bad's happening, and somebody's like, man, if you just believed more and had more faith in God, the faith isn't how strong or how big my faith is. It's the one we put our faith in, which is Jesus Christ. And some of us have believed to the depths of our soul. And the bad thing didn't stop happening. It's not because we don't have faith. It's because God has a plan and he's at work. And I don't know all the pieces, but I don't stop believing in Him. So it's not try more. It's not do harder things. It's not just believe more. Your faith is in Jesus Christ. And whether yours is the size of a mountain or the size of a tiny seed, it does not change the one you put your faith in. He's the strength. He's the source of our hope and our faith. It does not come from us. It comes from God.
[00:32:31] But here's the thing.
[00:32:34] The more I lean on myself, the more I feel discouragement. I want you to just think about yourself for a second. Think about your life. Think about the hardest problems you're working your way through. Think about the biggest sources of disappointment or discouragement. Discouragement or sadness. Think about the places where you're just. It's not coming together.
[00:32:55] Are you leaning on yourself to fix that or are you leaning on God?
[00:33:01] Because I hate to admit, more often than not, I've leaned on myself for so long, it didn't even dawn on me that I wasn't turning to God for help.
[00:33:10] I know me, I know what I can do. And I think I got this. I just can do it more. And it didn't even dawn on me until it was like, this is so bad. Nothing is good. Like, oh, maybe here's where I'm supposed to ask God for help, right? We do this so much, we don't even catch it in ourselves.
[00:33:29] If I'm going to live with hope, I have to give up the sense of belief that I can do this on my own. I cannot live this life with any sense of hope and well being without connection to God.
[00:33:44] I have to keep my eyes on Christ. I have to spend time with him. I have to look with him because he's the anchor I'm attaching my life to, right? He's where my heart, my soul, my mind go to for well being. It's God's love, not willpower that's going to change my heart.
[00:34:06] And so if I'm going to live with hope, I have to spend time with Christ. I have to say, God, here's where I'm struggling, here's where I'm anxious, here's where life feels the most hopeless to me. I have to admit, God, I've been trying to do this by myself and I don't even know why. I know I can't, only you can.
[00:34:27] I have to admit that God is in control and I'm dependent on him.
[00:34:33] I have to give up the need to try more, to try more perfect, to try, to try more rules. I have to stop trying to cram my days with trying to get all of the things right and becoming more rigid and more detailed and more unbending. Instead, I have to open up my hands to God and say, I'm taking my hands off the death grip I have on this wheel of my life and saying, God, I need you to make it anywhere further and we give control to, to him.
[00:35:06] God, I can't. But you can.
[00:35:09] Only you can. And friends, we cannot grow in this hope apart from God.
[00:35:15] We don't have enough inside of us, but God always does.
[00:35:21] So how do we, how do we live with this one? We pray with hope.
[00:35:25] So much of prayer is just me trying to connect to God but, but so much of it is my agenda that I'm trying to get God to make happen.
[00:35:34] And sometimes it's not bad, but I'm missing God's agenda in the process. So thinking about hope changes the way I pray. I'm practicing this right now. I'm practicing when I pray. I'm saying to God, God, this isn't me demanding anything from you.
[00:35:50] God, this isn't me saying these are my expectations, would you please make them happen, God, Instead I'm just saying my hope is in you. Could you help me to see more of you?
[00:36:03] See our prayer changes with hope because instead of saying, God, I need you to do this, God, you have to change this. God, you have to show up here. I'm praying to God instead. Here's where I'm worried, here's Where I'm overwhelmed, here's where I'm discouraged. God, help me to see more of you here and less of me.
[00:36:22] My prayer is about leaning on God and not leaning on myself.
[00:36:28] Help me to believe in what you can do. God, I need hope here and I can't make it on my own. Would you please give me more hope? God, I know you have a plan that's better than mine. God, I know that you're in control. God, I know that you know what's best. When we pray with hope, we experience God in a different way. We connect to him in a different way. We put our eyes on Christ. What could Christ do here instead of what am I trying to do?
[00:37:00] To live with hope, we got to pray with hope. But friends, some of us just need to rest.
[00:37:05] Some of us have been doing so much for so long. You can't do it on empty anymore. You have run yourself ragged and you're tired and you're worn down and you can't see hope because you just need a nap.
[00:37:21] You need a day off.
[00:37:23] You know what I love about God? He created the Sabbath so that we could take a day off and trust that the world wouldn't come falling apart when we didn't do the work. See, we trust our work so much, we think, well, I can't stop. If I stop, the whole world's gonna come crashing down and all of these pieces won't hold together. If that's how you've established your life, you aren't focusing on God. You're focusing on you. You need to take a rest. You need to take a day off just simply to see God can hold it all together even without you.
[00:37:55] Turns out he's been eternally doing that and he's really good at it. And we can trust him with our life. Maybe you don't need a rest, maybe you don't need a nap. But you just need to do something that feels fills your soul up with good. You need an adventure. You need fun. You need something that encourages life is actually better than I thought that it was.
[00:38:20] We got to pray with hope. We got to rest and trust that God is in control and he can take care of things.
[00:38:27] But then we got to work on the worries and the anxieties of life. Do you know what kills hope?
[00:38:32] Worry?
[00:38:34] Anxiety.
[00:38:35] Because they're steeped in absolute worst case scenario possibilities. What's my anxiety telling me? Everything is bad. Everything is bad. This is gonna happen and this is gonna happen. And then my worry starts taking over and then I'm worried about what's gonna happen. And all of a sudden I'm 15 years into the future, my family's dead, everything's terrible, right? Like we, you guys don't do that. I'm the only one.
[00:39:00] It's 3 o'clock in the morning. I can't do anything about it. But I've convinced myself everybody's dying and I've worried myself even more into exhaustion and there is no hope to be found.
[00:39:12] The worries and anxieties of life rob us of hope.
[00:39:19] This is hard.
[00:39:21] So often when I'm worrying and I'm living in anxiety, I think at least I'm doing something.
[00:39:27] And doing something is better than nothing. And the sense of doing something makes me feel at least a little bit more in control.
[00:39:35] I worry about the things I have no control over. My anxiety is highest in the places that are not mine and I can't actually do anything about it.
[00:39:47] But that's where trusting God's sovereignty changes everything.
[00:39:53] When I'm worried, I can't control it, but God can. And I gotta have a red flag that waves in my mind somewhere that says, stop this. This isn't what God created you for. You can think better thoughts than this. God showed up in the past, why wouldn't he show up today? God has been at work saving souls for thousands of years. Why wouldn't he save their soul? God has been changing lives generation after generation. Why couldn't God change a life today? And I take my worry and anxiety and I turn it into God is in control and I trust him with those areas that want to rob me of hope and well being.
[00:40:38] He who is in me is greater than anything else. Period.
[00:40:44] It's not God and then me plus 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5. It's not the gospel plus this, this and this. It's the goodness, grace and mercy of God. Period.
[00:40:57] And to live with hope, I gotta pray, I gotta rest, I gotta work on the anxieties and worries of life. And I do this all in connection to Christ. When I spend time with Him, I'm resetting my thoughts, I'm resetting my heart, I'm resetting my mind and my soul and my well being on something that is always going to be greater than me. I need more of Christ and less of me. And if I want to live with hope, I need more of Christ's words, His promises, the reminders of the incredible work he's always done. I push back daily on the worries and anxieties of life by spending time With Christ. Guys, this isn't a one time thing. This is a daily walk with Christ. It's not. Well, I prayed one time and I asked God to help me. So now I'm good. Guess what? Worry comes back and then it takes a whole new shape and it's like I didn't even know that was something I needed to be worried about. Well, here I am. New thing. The news always has new things for me to be terrified of, right? Every single day I need time with Jesus Christ because something's going to happen and my anchor for my soul has to be Jesus Christ. In Him I have the resources I need to live with hope. In Him I see why there's so much hope and promise for the future, for this life, but for the life to come.
[00:42:32] God isn't done. When we take our last breath, we go from here to eternity with Him.
[00:42:39] And the soul that I'm preparing to hope in Jesus Christ today is a soul that we take into eternity with him.
[00:42:48] Filled with hope about all the broken things being made new, about God at work, creating a new heaven and a new earth and the deepest fulfillment that our soul is longing for. It is only found in the blessings of God.
[00:43:05] God is a God who blesses and he blesses us with hope. And hope assures us God isn't done yet.
[00:43:16] There are better days ahead.
[00:43:18] Dear Father, I pray that you would help us. I pray where we show up today tired, discouraged, overwhelmed by life. You would give us hope, I pray, Father, where we've just let worry and anxiety rob us of well being. You would overwhelm our fears with your voice and your promises of who you are and what you can do. Father, I pray that you would give us a new sense of hope in connection to you. That our hearts would be fueled, our souls would be fulfilled and our minds would be assured in the awesome, awesome blessings of who you are and what you can do. Help us. I pray in Jesus name, amen.
