The Power of Hope

Tim was going through the announcements with all the sick people. The thing with Lori, I raised just almost to the edge of what he can handle. I mean, here he is trying to deal with his cancer. And they didn't realize until this Thursday after Lori's last surgery that she, at least in the one arm, they're not sure she'll ever get moving back.

They didn't expect that. In other words, the diagnosis keeps changing. Oh, this is amazing the first time they went in. We didn't have to do any surgery on her back. We just did a few things, got her ribs in place. She's going to heal up fine. Put her in a body cast. She gets pneumonia. Now they're saying, no, this isn't healing up right, so just keep learning your prayers.

And of course, Ray is, you know, here he is trying to take care of, what is it, four grandchildren? Six grandchildren? I have six grandchildren. It's the circus coming to town, so I know what it's like. They have six grandchildren. You know, here he is 65 years old trying to take care of his grandchildren.

His wife's in the hospital. They're looking at eight minimum, eight weeks before she could even go home, maybe longer. Once again, unless God intervenes, which He didn't let her die. She should have died the way the car was just, I mean, just destroyed.

But, you know, this is really a heavy burden He's carrying, so any encouragement you could give them, they would appreciate with what they're going through. And talking to Him this week and spending a lot of time with Him and being at the hospital with her this week and others, it made me think about what I want to talk about today. You know, there's many people in our congregations, and it's not just here.

I mean, the whole world is suffering. And, of course, part of the... one of the interesting issues we have in this country is that if you go back 100 years, the average person didn't make it to age 60. Now, the average person is pushing 80. And the result of that is, is that, you know, there's a deterioration that takes place, and there are more health issues that come along with that.

You know, we're glad to live longer, but there are issues that come with that. And there's a lot of personal stress people are going through, whether it's health issues, the loss of loved ones, the loss of jobs, relationship issues, which the world stresses out our relationships between each other, between families, between friends, between husband and wife. There's a stress that's starting to tear people's lives apart.

And Christians aren't immune to that. You know, we just look at the world around us. I mean, just the daily news can wear you out. It can just wear you out. We live in an insane world, and it's through everything in our society.

It's through everything. And of course, there's always the issues of personal sin that we all deal with. Do you think, how many times do you think, well, wow, this point in my life, my Christian life, I finally overcome greed, and guess what happens? You get greedy. I finally overcome envy. You get envious. I finally overcome lust. I finally overcome covetousness. I finally overcome anger and hatred. And what happens?

It comes back. And you have to deal with it all over you. And then there's why, you know, how can I get any better here? And in all this, we can begin to experience a lot of hopelessness. It's interesting, in 1 Corinthians 13, that we're given three key attributes of Christians by the Apostle Paul—faith, hope, and love. Now, we talk a lot about faith. We talk a lot about love—obedience to God, obedience to His laws, His ways, His teachings, trusting Him, trusting the work of Jesus Christ.

We talk about love—how the very character of God has to be developed in us. But what about hope? Why would Paul put hope in the same category as the three great attributes? Faith, hope, and love. Why would he do that?

And, you know, the Greek word that translated there as hope basically has the same meaning as the English word. And it means to have a favorable and confident expectation. I have a confident expectation in something. Now, unfortunately, when we use the word hope, what we mean is we're sort of maybe possibly this good thing could happen. I mean, every year, the Predators, you know, it comes out that they're going to win the National Hockey League, right?

Every year. And what's funny is, is that all over the United States and Canada, all those teams are saying the same thing. This year we have it together, and there is a season where they're starting it preparing, and they're starting to play, and everybody and every team says, this is our year, and all the fans get hopeful. Everybody's hopeful. Everybody's excited. You have an excited expectation that your team's going to win. About a fourth the way through the season, a fourth of the teams realize, and the people realize their team has no hope at all.

And all of a sudden there's no hope left. Halfway through the season, you know, half the teams know there's no hope left. And it gets down to one team wins, right? And everybody else's hope was meaningless. Everybody else's hope really meant nothing. You know, year after year, you get to the place where, and they're never going to win.

So you stop watching. If Mr. Creech was here, I would explain that that's why it is unchristian for him to be a Cincinnati Bengals fan. But he's not here, so I won't say it. Well, I did anyway, so. I miss having them around, you know, because I can always say things like that about him.

Faith and hope are obvious spiritual attributes. But what does hope mean in our Christian life? Does it just mean a feeling, I know things are going to get better, and then they get worse? I mean, we all hoped, we all had an emotional hope that Lori wasn't going to have to go through everything she's going through. We still don't know what's going to happen. We have an expectation. But when do we give up? And of course, I have this conversation with people all the time. When do you feel like just saying, I give up? I don't have any hope left. I don't see where God's doing anything. I mean, if He is doing something, it sure makes no sense to me. Why would He allow this? You know, every time you see a child suffer, what do you think? Why would God allow that? I don't understand. And probably you've gone and said that to Him. I don't understand. Why do you allow this? And what does hope have to do with that? Okay. Let's start here in Romans 5. Romans 5.

Apostle Paul writes a lot about hope as we've been going through the in-home Bible studies of 1 and 2 Corinthians. In 2 Corinthians, it's obvious that he was suffering from a lot of despair too. And in that despair, he keeps taking himself back to someplace. And we see that pattern as he goes through 2 Corinthians and the worry he had and the fact that he almost died and it was devastating to him. The fact that he couldn't find Timothy. He lost him. He didn't know where he was. He worried maybe he had been killed. Or was it Titus? Titus. So you look through what he was going...and there were people attacking him in the Corinthian congregation, trying to tear the congregation apart, claiming that he didn't know what he was talking about. Very hateful things had been said about him and he's trying to deal with those things. And you go through all the things he's going through and yet he keeps going back to a certain viewpoint in his despair. And there's a great lesson in 2 Corinthians. And by the way, we'll talk about this during the Bible study, but we have two different possibilities for our in-home Bible study at the end of the month. So we'll have to decide which place we're going to have the in-home Bible study. Now let's start here in verse 1. Therefore...so this is actually a continuation of chapter 4, but the thought, but he's getting into something very specific here. Therefore, having been justified by faith...oh, faith! So faith, hope, and love, okay? We are justified. We are brought into a relationship with God because we believe He exists and we accept Christ as our Savior and we accept His ways and we accept His commandments. And so therefore, He brings us into a relationship with Him. It's not because we good or we earned it. It's because we simply accept who He is and we're trying to do His way and He brings us in. Now then His Spirit is what changes us. So He says, you were justified because you said, oh yes, God, you know, and this kind of faith also involves repentance and you're brought into this relationship with God. And we realize that that relationship has to produce something, right? That relationship has to produce something or it's not real. This relationship with God is supposed to also produce something called hope. So we have to understand what that means. Faith, hope, and love are tied together. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We're brought into a peaceful relationship with God. We're no longer His enemy. Paul would talk about that in this book. How we are the enemies of God. We have been reconciled to God.

He says, through whom we have access by faith into the grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. He said, because we understand we have this faith in God, we're brought into His presence, which is His grace. It's His favor. He gives us this favor we don't have. And then He says, and we can rejoice in spite of difficulties, right? We can rejoice because of the glory of God. There's a lot in these couple of verses. One of the things He's bringing out is we have hope because of what? Because of the glory of God. The hope comes from being centered on God. Once we lose that focus, we begin down a path of hopelessness because life can be very hopeless. The bottom line is you and I don't have the solutions to problems, and humanity sure doesn't have the solution to their problems. The government of the United States cannot govern itself, let alone the country. It's not possible. They don't have the ability or the knowledge or the wisdom to solve the problems. Everybody has an idea. Everybody has this. This will work, and this will work, and this will work, but nobody can solve it. And that breaks down into every area of life, down into business, your jobs, your family life. You and I can't fix the problems we're faced with. It's the glory of God that's our focus. Or we begin to work and work and strive and strive only to end up in hopelessness. He says, and not only that, but we also – this is a weird story – glory and tribulations. I haven't figured out how to do that yet, so I'm not as far along as Paul here. He says, you find something good in the difficulties that you're going through. Glory and tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. There's a process he's talking about here. Okay. Hope is the product of character. And when he's talking about character here, he means the character – it means godly character. He's not just talking about – a lot of times we use character as just, well, it's a good work ethic or the person's honest. This is beyond that. This character is godly character. Hope is produced by godly character, and godly character is produced by perseverance. And perseverance is a product of trials.

Let's reverse that. What God is doing is trials produce perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. Now, no matter which order you put that in, you end up with hope and you start with problems. You start with difficulties. You start with trials. But it's the same process. In other words, God is doing something, and we have to have faith in what He is doing. Oh, that's hard. Right? When you're alone at night in the middle of the night trying to figure out what God's doing, it's hard to remember. There's a bigger picture here, and I'm just a little piece of it because the only thing you can think of is what you're going through at the time, the suffering you're having at the time, the feeling of hopelessness you're having at that moment is overwhelming. So we can look at that and say, okay, the answer is I just have to work harder and harder at my character, and then I'll have hope. Okay. There's a problem in that. Think about how, okay, I'm going to work harder at my character. So I'm going to make sure I get up at 5 o'clock every morning, do a half hour of prayer, a half hour of Bible study, a half hour of exercise, and you do it one morning, and the next morning you sleep in. Oh, I'm hopeless now. I can have no hope. I have no character. Character is important here, but how do we get it? I get to work at it hard enough. Yes, you and I have to… character involves work on our part. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm giving sermons on it. I'm talking about godly characters. It's something you and I do on our own. It can't be. So this hope isn't something you could produce by just reading another self-help book or getting a good pep talk. Now, that can help us, right? We'll talk about that in a minute. Other people can help us have hope. But the type of hope he's talking about here is part of that faith, hope, and love. It's part of a Christian attribute. Our faith, we know, is developed in us by God. Our love, we know, is developed in us by God. The hope we have is developed in us by God. Now, notice verse 5. Now, hope does not disappoint. Okay? If your hope… and how the predators are doing this year? Last I looked, they weren't that good. Maybe they've got it. But if your hope is in the predators, you're probably not going to… we're probably going to win the National Hockey League this year, okay? Now, if your hope is in the penguins, you might have a better chance, but that's… But understand that hope is based on things beyond our control. It's based on things that we have… you know, that most years out of a 20-year span, you're going to be disappointed 19 years, maybe 20 years. It's not going to come about. This hope that He's talking about here doesn't disappoint us. In other words, this hope is based on something that we know is going to happen. We're not hoping it will happen. We know it's going to happen. So our hope is based on something that's going to happen. That's why faith and hope are connected. You have to believe things are going to happen. And that's what gives you the hope. So this is different than how the word we usually use is hope. Oh, I hope. I hope that gets better. I hope you find a job. We say that all the time, right?

I hope you, you know, work out your relationships with your husband and wife. I hope you do this. I hope you do that. But there's always this feeling it may not work out. This kind of hope cannot disappoint because this kind of hope is focused on something that is going to happen and it's a fact. It's not a maybe. It's not a possibility, right?

He says, now hope does not disappoint because the lava of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Understand, he's saying here, this hope won't disappoint like normal human hope does because this hope is given to you by God through His Spirit. You and I can't make this hope up. We can't work it up anymore that we can work up spiritual character on our own. We have to submit to God and God develops it in us. It's like faith. We submit, we have a little bit of faith, we submit to God and He develops it in us.

It is the work, hope is the work of God.

And every one of us are going to have times of hopelessness. Every one of us are going to have times of hopelessness. But hope is the work of God through His Spirit.

So when you look at hope and the times when there are no answers, when it feels hopeless, there's only one place we can get that hope from, and that's from God. Now, what we just read puts us in a dilemma. Trusting God doesn't mean you're not going to have difficulties. On the contrary, we just read that the difficulties God uses to create perseverance, which He uses to create an us-godly character, and He uses that to create hope.

So in other words, you don't live in a life that's not going to have difficulties. You and I live in a life that's going to be difficult. We don't live. We're not changed. We don't live in God's kingdom. We're physical beings living in Satan's world. He's the God of this age. We all have corrupt human nature. So between our own corruptness and the corruptness of everybody else and the fact that Satan's in charge, nothing's really going to work real well here. Nothing's going to work very well. It's just not going to. And so therefore, we accept that is now part of the process. And in that process of what God is doing, hope is one of the attributes that is created. And this isn't the kind of hope that disappoints. Oh, you know, I was really hoping to get that new job. And I didn't get it, and now I'm not going to get able to buy that, you know, the house I wanted to get, and I have to stay in an apartment. You know, and now you lose hope. This hope doesn't disappoint because of where it comes from. It comes from God's Spirit poured out into our hearts.

So now we have to really understand that hope is very, very important. It's like faith and love as part of the pillars of the attributes of who we are. Go to Romans 15. I'm going to be in Romans here a couple of, a number of places simply because Paul deals with it.

Romans 15. Verse 13. These are one of those little verses that are popped in that, you know, we'll read through a sentence and not even think about it over and over again. And yet, there's something important. There's almost no sentence in any of Paul's writings that the sentence itself isn't important. He doesn't use too many words that don't mean something. You know, he's not just talking, he's not writing to write. He says, now be the God of hope. Understand that. Who produces hope in us? Who produces the hope that will not disappoint? Because any hope that you and I come up with will disappoint us at some point. Every hope we come up with at some point, on a human level, will disappoint us. It is God who produces hope. And may the God of hope fill you, okay, he's doing this, with all joy and peace and believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Realize what that just says. The hope that Paul's talking about at 1 Corinthians 13 is not the normal hope. It is a hope created by the God of hope who brings us peace so that we may abound in hope because His Spirit is in us.

We lack hope. None of us can generate this kind of hope on our own. We lack hope. We need God to develop it in us. We need God to give it to us. And it only can come through His Spirit in us, this kind of hope that He's talking about. And He links it to joy.

In other words, He doesn't link it to not having problems. He links it to even being able to be happy, to not being despondent. Not that you enjoy trials, but you can have… We're not overwhelmed and destroyed by our trials.

I know how many times Kim and I, we sit with someone in a hospital or we sit with someone going through great difficulties and we get in a car and we look at each other and say, how could we survive that? Well, the same way they survive it. God would get us through. That's how you survive it. God will get us through.

And there are times in life that's all there is. There's us and God, and God gets us through. So, look at Romans 8.

Romans 8. I told Kim, every year, every year during the year sometime, I go to Romans 8. So this is my 2020 Romans 8. Verse 18. Here's how Paul is dealing with his suffering. Not only his suffering, if you read chapters 6, 7 and 8, it's not only suffering from people beating him and people hating him and all the other things he went through. He was suffering because of his own human nature. He struggled with, how can I be so carnal? I have God's spirit. And God's done all these miracles in my life, and I still do some pretty carnal things and think some very carnal things. And he was struggling with that. And so in that context of what he's going through in life, what he's dealing with other people going through in life, and his own human nature, this is what he concludes. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory, which shall be revealed in us. Now, that's a nice statement, but the only way you could have hope in that is you must believe in the glory that's going to be revealed in you. Or the statement means nothing. You must believe that God is involved in your life and that God is going to resurrect you or change you when Christ comes back. That's what He's going to do with you. You must believe it.

Because remember, hope is an expectation. You don't hope for something you have. Oh, I hope to hit the lottery. Well, that's a pretty meaningless hope, right? But you say, I hope to get this new job and that you get it. Well, you don't hope for it anymore, do you? You already have it. You don't hope for something that you already have. But as long as you look at that and say, I'm going to keep striving for that. I'm going to make that. I'm going to do that. And it can be little things in your life. Like, I'm going to get up every morning at 6 o'clock. I'm not going to sleep in. I'm going to sleep in and get up at 6 o'clock and go to bed at 10. And you decide to do that and you work at it and you work at it and it takes you six months and pretty soon is a habit, right? But it always had to be to achieve it. There has to be an expectation of that goal. Or you stop. At some point you say, I can't achieve the goal. You stop. You no longer have hope. The only way you can have hope is an expectation of something that's going to happen. Right? You don't hope, oh wow, I really hope I have children. And you're 65 years old. It's past the time of expectation, right? Unless you're Abraham and Sarah. You can only hope for a goal that's there that's attainable. In this sense, this is a goal that we have to believe, while faith and hope are tied together, that God is going to take us there. That His kingdom is real. Christ is coming back and He's going to take us there. And it doesn't matter how bizarre and strange and violent our government and people become, because you know, that's the way all governments and people become throughout history. In fact, what's amazing about the United States is that it's lasted as long as it has. That's what's amazing. Not that it's going to collapse. That's predictable. It's lasted as long as it has. There's been no nation in the history of humanity with 330 million people that stayed together. It's just never happened before. And, you know, eventually it won't.

He goes on, He says, for the earnest expectation, and He's going to talk about this hope. And then He...look how He applies this. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. He says, even the creation, which has no thought process, it is waiting, because God made it to be better than this. God made this different, and it's waiting to be restored by God, but it won't be restored until when? When the sons of God are revealed. His whole focal point is, your expectation is to be one of the children of God who was revealed. That's your expectation. That is your hope. Everything else will basically fail, but that will not, as long as God, as long as we hold onto God, He will take us there. Faith and hope. It motivates us to obey. This is...well, we understand this. It really...we understand our motivation for what we do today. Why we do what we do? Or why do it? If we keep the Sabbath because it's just...no, just something we do. We just have it. We're missing the point, and we're missing the benefits of the Sabbath. He says, for...verse 20...for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope. So God let this...He kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden. He let Satan become the God of this age because of this expectation that He's going to fix it. This hope. It is a real expectation. It may not...as long as nobody on the team gets injured, as long as we have a good coach, I really hope our team wins the National Hockey League. That's not...this hope is created by God. It was all...the whole creation is created with this hope, this movement towards this time.

He says, because the creation itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption and to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. And not only that, but we also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves. We suffer, eagerly waiting for the adoption or the redemption of the body. He says, yeah, this isn't easy for us. Of course, here's your choice. Live this way without God or live this way with God in terms of suffering. Because if you weren't called by God, you'd still be suffering, it'd just be worse. Because you'd have no hope. And this is a hard thing to say. This is a hard realization. We groan. What was it? Dr. Ward gave a sermon here not too long ago, Kim was telling me about it, where he said, we have to stop looking at Christianity as simply a means to obtain physical blessings. That never was the full intent. Now, there are physical blessings that come with being a Christian. I believe that. You believe that. But if that's our purpose, we're missing it because you'll run out of hope after a while because you can't get enough physical blessings or bad things will happen to you. And when bad things happen, well, I guess God didn't fulfill His promise. No. God's promise and our hope is, I get you through this and I get you where I'm going to take you. And that gives you hope and hope gives you happiness.

That gives you hope and hope gives you happiness. He says, "...eagerly awaiting for the adoption of the redemption of our body, for we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen as not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees?" What I just said before. I don't hope anymore to get married. That happened 41 years ago. And I'm really happy it did. I don't hope to have children anymore. I had them. There was a time I hoped to have children.

He says, "...but we hope for what we do not see, and we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." He says, "...we're waiting for this and persevering for this." And you know what happens? When the trials of everyday life and we persevere with the help of God, we build, according to what he said earlier in this letter, we build godly character and we have hope. But it's all based on an absolute firm belief. I know what the goal is, and God's going to get me there. God's going to take me there. God's going to help me overcome my sins. God's going to help me deal with the problems I have, whether it's, you know, relationship problems, whether it's health problems, God's going to get me there. And that is worth it.

So the hope is in something that's absolutely, completely real.

It's something that's going to happen, and we have to have faith in it. Verse 26 says, Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weakness. For we do not know what we should pray as we ought, for the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings that we cannot utter. He says, you know, you can't even... We've all been here. We can't sometimes even know what to pray. God, I don't even want to say. This part of my life is hopeless. It's meaningless. I'm just... That's it. I don't even know what to say. And God's answer isn't how stupid you are. God's answer is, yeah, I get it. Because I know. Here's what the real problems are. Here's what the real issues are. Here's what you have to do. And it gets fixed out here. Because why? Because in this difficulty, you can persevere. You can make this work through God's help. And then you could have godly character from it, which changes who you are. You know, a lot of our problems change when God changes who we are, right? The problem goes away. Oh, I was the problem. God changes as you realize, well, I was the trial. I was the source of my own trial. Or it gives you now the courage or understanding to deal with it differently. And through that, we have what? Hope. We keep going back to Romans 5. So God helps us when we can't even pray ourselves. We can't even voice it. We can't even put it into words. We go to God and, you know, I've had people say, I just go to God and I just cried, and I didn't even know why. Is that okay? Yeah, He knows why. He knows why.

You ever have a child that cries? And sometimes you just look at them and say, you need to take a nap. You know what God's answer is to us every once in a while? You need to take a nap. It's that simple.

So we have to... This is an important verse for us to remember. When those times get to the point where we can't even say it, God knows. We have God's Spirit. God's Spirit is interacting. And if you say, well, I don't have God's Spirit, I'm not baptized yet. God's Spirit is working with you or you would be here. So God's Spirit is working with you. So yes, He understands. He understands everything you're going through.

Look at Titus 2. You know what's interesting about Christian suffering and what we deal with? We not only suffer the world like everybody else. We just suffer from the stresses of the world like everybody else. And I'm amazed that you and I live in the best time they ever live. And look how much stress we're under. There's been no better time than this. Recently, I've been reading a few books written during the Middle Ages that explains what it was like to live in the Middle Ages. I thank God I wasn't born in the Middle Ages.

I mean, it was like the tribulation for a thousand years.

And Charlemagne lived to be in his early 60s, and he was 30 years older than the average person in his kingdom. They didn't live that long. They killed each other. There were wars. There was bubonic plague. There was every kind of disease you could think of. Starvation. It was just... And it went on for a thousand years.

Now, there were some good times, but what they would consider good times, we would consider absolute terrible.

Titus 2. Oh, I was going to finish that thought there. You and I not only suffer like the rest of the world, you and I suffer something else. We suffer the stress of being converted. It's stressful to be converted because I don't want to give up my old human nature. I don't want to give up my pride. How dare you attack my pride, my honor? God says, I get rid of that. But, but no, get rid of it. There's a certain stress in conversion too. It's a good stress as you overcome, but it's stressful. So you have to have hope. You have to know what the goal is. And where He's going to take us. Titus 2.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness, and we're only lust... Okay, so this is a lifestyle. We are, as we are being saved, this is where God leads us. We have to deny ungodliness, we're only lust. We should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age. Okay, so He's looking at how we live right now. You and I must live these kinds of lifestyles now. This is what God's spirit produces in us. This is what Jesus Christ as our mentor leads us to and shows us. He says, looking for the blessed hope. Oh, good. I want to know what the hope is. Looking for the blessed hope that you will all have good jobs and make a million dollars a year. Oops, that's not what it says. Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless need and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. What's the hope? The hope is, I know Christ is coming back. I know He wants me to be there, His son, His daughter, the son or daughter of the Father. He's preparing me to serve Him, and this is the preparation for it. And that is my goal. You have hope in that. You'll plow through life. I mean, sometimes it's just put your head down and keep moving, right? But you'll keep moving. That kind of hope doesn't disappoint because that kind of hope isn't natural. It is developed in us by God through His Spirit. And it's a focal point. It's an absolute focal point of our lives. It's hard to stay this way because we're the rich of the world. We're the rich of the world. We live better than what? 90% of the world, even the poorest among us? We're the rich of the world. And it's easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for the rich of the world to get into the kingdom.

But through God, all things are possible. There's our hope. Through God, all things are possible. And that what He says in Titus there is so important. I'd like to spend some more time there, but I'm going to go on so we don't go too long here and we can take a break and have the Bible study. The simple truth is God doesn't fix everything in His life. He never intended to happen that way. And I don't like saying that any more than you like hearing it. I want God to fix every problem of my life. I thought maybe I'd get over that at 25. I'm 63, and I still want God to fix every problem of my life. And especially if the problem is someone else, I want Him to fix them. Fix that person for me. And that doesn't ever be the answer. The answer is trials bring perseverance, bring godly character, bring hope. That's the answer every time. I want a different answer. I never got a different answer. If you get a different answer from me, let me know. And then it comes down to you got to hope in this. You got to believe in this so much that your faith and hope and love are all tied together. You can't separate them. They're all become one thing in you. Romans 15. Go back to Romans here. Romans 15.

I just... dealing with so much... it sets the feast. There's just been so many trials with people. Has God abandoned them? No.

This is part of life.

Wait a second. I say, why doesn't God heal everybody? Well, I don't know. Abraham's not alive. Paul's not alive. Peter's not alive. Mary, the mother of Jesus, isn't alive. If anybody should have just been healed and healed and healed and healed, it should have been them. There's a point where this life reaches an end.

I don't like that. You don't like that. But that's because this isn't the purpose. This is a journey towards someplace. He's taking us someplace. If we don't have that hope, this journey will wear us out. It will wear us out. Romans 15, verse 4.

For whatever things were written before, speaking of the Scripture, were written for our learning. That we, through the patience and comfort of the Scripture, may have hope. Verse 5. Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God, the Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ. Three things in there. Three things about where hope comes from. First is, He says the Scripture. Hope comes from studying the Scripture. We have to be in that book. It can't be an afterthought. It has to be part of our daily lives that that Scripture is coming in. God's talking to us. We have to be in the book. Hope comes from studying the Scripture.

And if we say we don't have time, then it's going to reach a point where you're going to be hopeful. Because that's where it says. We just read it. Didn't know there was so much in the book of Romans about hope, did you? Then He said that we have to go to God, who is the God of patience and comfort. So patience and comfort and hope come from God. So you're in the Scripture to find hope, but you have to go and pray and ask for it. Give me the hope that I cannot have on my own. Give me the vision that I cannot have on my own. Give me the faith I cannot have on my own. And give me the love I can't have on my own. And God finally says, ah, you're getting it. Finally, you're getting it.

You're realizing, God, we are the clay and He is the potter. How many times have we said that? Do we really get that? Okay, I'm the clay. Work with me. Except in the ways I don't want you to work with me. Or let me work with myself. I really like that. You know, like a little child. Let me do it. Let me do it. And what they make is horrible. You know, and they, oh, isn't that nice? When they're old, when they're young, oh yes, it's nice. When they get a little older, you got to be honest. No, that's not good at all. You could have done a lot better with a little instruction, okay? And grandpa does that with them. Now when they're little, oh yes, that's so cute. We thank you. But you know, you're each a certain age. No, you're better than that. Okay.

You can do better than that.

So we pray for it. We ask God for it. Give me the comfort I cannot have. Give me the patience I cannot have. Give me the hope I cannot have. And then the last one said, the last point here is He says, God may grant you to be like-minded toward one another. Too many times in the church, we spend so much time tearing each other down, putting out each other's faults, that we forget that we are a source of hope to each other. There's been many times in my life where another person has given me hope. Remember what God says. Remember this. I had the same situation in my life and they share it. And you think, yeah, that's right. So we have to study the Scripture for hope. We have to ask God, who is the author of patience and comfort to give us hope. And we are to be like-minded and share hope with each other. If we can't share hope with each other, if we're only judging each other all the time and putting each other down all the time, I mean, it doesn't take much to figure out that we're all sinners. We all have faults and we're all a little bit weird. We're just weird in different ways, right? We're just all quirky. It's just in different ways. Sometimes in marriage counseling, I'll tell people, no, you don't want to know how Kim and I yet affixed this problem. It's a quirky way we do something because it works for us. It probably wouldn't work for you at all. So let's find a way that you can work with your problems, okay? We're all a little weird. We're all a little quirky, but we have to comfort one another. That's not supposed to be an issue between us. The issue between us is, are we helping each other keep focused so God works in each other's lives? That's the focal point. We get focused on each other. Man, what a mess. We keep focused on God. We keep other people focused on God. And pretty soon you know what happens. You sort of start to like the other person's quirkiness. Yeah, it's sort of cold. They're sort of quirky, but it's sort of cold. We accept each other. We also want to help each other in our trials and even in our sins. Let's conclude by going to Hebrews 6. We could talk more here, but I want to just, I think, you know, we wrapped up the concept here.

Hebrews 6. Start in verse 9. Paul is talking about here about…the first part of this chapter is about the basic doctrines of the church, which he goes through. And he wants to talk about how and he does talk about how there's judgment on those who reject God. So he starts in verse 9. He wants to be encouraging. Now he says, But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this matter. He says, oh, you know, I'm going to talk to you about… there's something good for you. I don't know when he's talking about God's judgment on those who reject His way. I want to talk to those who are accepting His way. And in doing so, bring some encouragement, some hope. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward His name, and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. You've served each other. You continue to serve. Now we desire that each of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end. The assurance of hope, not the feeling of, oh boy, I hope that happens, but I know that's going to happen. That's what my hope is in. He says, stay focused on that so that you stay serving each other. You stay in a right mindset. You stay close to God because you have the assurance of hope, the absolute confidence, and I know what God's doing. And we're, you know, we're all headed there. We're all trying to get there and God wants us to do it together. Christianity isn't just an individual sport. It's a group team effort here. Now each individual is judged individually by God, but we're supposed to work together in that direction. He says that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. That's the hope of the promises. For when God made a promise to Abraham, He talks about how God fulfilled His promises to Abraham. Let's skip down to verse 15.

Now let's go down to verse 19. So He says, God fulfilled His promises to Abraham, but He says, remember Abraham did not get those promises right away. Remember the hope Abraham had to have is year after year went by and he didn't have a son. Year after year, he waited an expectation, a hope of God's promise. He says, think of that. Verse 19, this hope we have as an anchor of the soul, an anchor of life itself, this hope both sure and steadfast, which enters the presence behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. He says, keep looking on Christ because He led the way. He's already there. He's already there. He's led the way for us. And this is our hope because we go into the presence of God. You and I are all the time in the presence of God because His Spirit is with us. We're in the presence of God all the time. That's just what we pray. God's in us all the time. He said, and that is our focal point because He's going to fulfill those promises as long as we don't give up on the promises. He'll get us there. God's promise is already given to you. If we have the faith and hope and love to follow it, okay, but where's that faith, open love come from? From Him. You submit to it and He does it. If we don't submit, there's no way to have that faith, open love. You can't. When we submit to Him, He works in us. He takes us where we're going to go. He has fulfilled much in every life of every person in this room, but none of us are complete yet, are we? We're all flawed. He has forgiven us of our sins, yet we all still fight this sinful nature, don't we? The confident expectation is not in the trials of the day, the trials or means at terrible times. Sometimes the lead us to perseverance, to lead us to godly character, to lead us to hope. And what is the hope? Well, we just read what the hope is. The hope is that God is going to send Jesus Christ back and He will have finished His work in us. It's a promise. We have to have hope in it or the promise doesn't happen. We have to have faith and hope in it. He will finish the work He has started in us. And at that point, He will bring many sons and daughters to glory because that's the whole reason anyways. That's the purpose of your life anyways. It's not two houses, three cars, and two boats. That's not the purpose. No, if you have that, that's great, but it's not the purpose of life.

It's not the purpose of life. And when we see there, when we're there, and we believe in that, and we know that that's God's promise, then we can understand what Paul said when he said that this hope is the anchor of our soul.