Hope for the Hopeless

Genesis 12:1-9; Titus 1:1-3

It seems like every few weeks there is a headline in the news about yet another school shooting perpetrated by a young man. On October 22 a twelve year-old opened fire in a Middle School in Nevada. He wounded two students, killed a teacher and then killed himself. In many of the cases it seems like bullying played a role in these tragedies. Bullying is a serious problem these days, and responsible for too many deaths. Another story in the news recently was about another twelve year old, a girl in Florida who took her own life after being bullied mercilessly, both physically and on line. The girls who bullied her showed no remorse and are being prosecuted.

I do not understand all this violence by young people. It so often seems to be fueled by a sense of hopelessness in their lives. If there is one thing that people need these days, it is hope. That is my topic this morning – hope. I am going to first talk about hopelessness and then hope.

I. I am sure there are many aspects of hopelessness, but I see three of them as most important.

1. The first is FEAR. That is probably the most primal emotion behind the desperation that fuels these young people to kill others and/or themselves. As human animals we have a built in instinct to protect ourselves from harm. When we perceive a threat, our bodies and brains respond with fear. You can’t reason yourself out of it. Bullying is threatening to people on all kinds of levels. Actually I think the bullies are also doing it out of fear on some level, but certainly those who are bullied feel threatened physically, emotionally and socially. They respond in fear. And that fear expresses itself often in anger, directed outward or inward in hatred or self-hatred. Too often that is acted out in violence against others or oneself or both.

2. The second is DESPAIR. Despair is often described as the opposite of hope. I see it as the inability to see a future that is worth living. Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Hopelessness is looking into the future and seeing no light at the end of the tunnel. Prophets are people who can see into the future. Some people look into the future and see nothing. They have no hope.

3. Third is POWERLESSNESS. People feel helpless. They feel stuck in a situation which they feel unable to change. They do not see any help coming their way to make things any different. Part of this involves being cut off from other people. Lack of a support system of friends and family is part of this. A person can handle an awful lot if they feel like they have people going through it with them supporting them and helping them. But if they feel like they are all alone in the universe, things appear hopeless.

II. That is my brief assessment of the hopelessness that many people feel. And it is not just about young people. Older folks also experience hopelessness for many of the same reasons. Depression and despair know no age boundaries. People here have felt that way. You may be feeling that way right now. You may be coming to this service and listening to this message looking for hope. The good news is that there is hope for the hopeless. I see the solution to hopelessness coming in three forms.

1. First, hope is LOOKING FORWARD. We often use the expression that we are “looking forward” to something. That means that we are anticipating something good happening. We are feeling optimistic and hopeful about the future. It is important to have something to look forward to in life. Those who have nothing to look forward to can easily fall into depression. But I am not just talking about looking forward to the holidays or a trip or something like that. I am talking about something more fundamental than that.

Last month Jude and I went on a Pastor & Spouse Retreat at Camp Brookwoods in Alton, sponsored by the Leadership Center in Wolfeboro.  (That is a ministry started, by the way, by Dave Morgan, who was the interim pastor here at this church! He started that many years ago, and it is now led by a couple of friends of ours who live in Wolfeboro. It has a very good ministry to clergy and missionary couples who come from around the country and even the world. There was even a couple there this time, which we got to know, who just came back from being missionaries in China.) At the retreat, we studied a book entitled Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun.

 In the book she has a chapter on Waiting. She makes a very insightful distinction between Expectancy and Expectation. Expectancy is good; Expectations can be dangerous. She writes “Unmet expectations are resentments and disappointments waiting to happen.” Basically what she is saying is that expectations can take us on an emotional roller-coaster ride, depending whether or not our expectations for the future are met. Expectancy on the other hand, she says, “requires openness to something good happening beyond our expectations.” If we expect something to happen and it doesn’t, we can be crushed. It can feed depression and despair. But expectancy is open-ended; it trusts that God wills good for us in the future regardless of whether our specific expectations are met.

A few years ago my wife and I went through a very difficult time. Actually I went through a difficult time and my wife shared the burden. I was depressed. I sought medical help, which I always recommend to people suffering from depression. Medication did not work for me but it works for many people. What helped me at the time was spiritual, nor pharmaceutical. There was one verse from the Bible that we held on to. It was Jeremiah 29:11 “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.” Another translation puts it this way: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God engraved those words on our hearts. And I cannot hear them today without feeling very grateful to God.

God gives us a future. The future is in his hands. We do not know what the future holds, but we know that it is good. It is a hopeful future. It is a future for this earthly life. Too often religion can be simply an escape from present reality, a pie in the sky by and by. But that is too long to wait for most people. It is certainly too long for me. God give us hope for now and the immediate future.

But there is also hope for a future of heavenly life. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19 “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” The wonderful thing about the gospel of Jesus Christ is the hope of eternal life after death. Death is a reality. Some people ignore that reality. They go through their lives without thinking about it, living as if they were never going to die. But at some point everyone gets a wakeup call, and we are hit with the fact that we are mortal. Our bodies start breaking down. They start ringing an alarm that says that they will not last forever. Our expiration date is approaching. Every funeral we attend of a family member, friend or neighbor reminds us that one day it will be our funeral.

What happens after our bodies stop? Do we survive in some way or is this all there is? End of story, just our bodies returning to the elements? The Gospel of Christ says that there is a future and a hope beyond the grave. Once you start going into details about what that future is like we are in the realm of mystery, metaphor and symbol. But that is alright for me. I don’t care about the details. I leave that to God. All I care about is the hope.

The apostle Peter wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Peter 1:3)  The apostle Paul wrote, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)  I do not have specific expectations about heaven, but I live in the expectancy that eternal life is more than I can imagine.

2. Second, hope is LOOKING UPWARD. Actually I didn’t know whether to put this first or second on the list. In looking forward you are looking into the future for something to hope for. In looking upward you are looking to someone above. Hope is based on trust and faith in God. Hope is different than optimism. Optimism is an attitude. Some people seem to be naturally optimistic. Their lot may not be any better than anyone else’s when it comes to the circumstances of their lives. And they are not necessarily more religious or more spiritual. I know people who are agnostic or even atheist that are quite happy and optimistic. As far as I can tell even death does not faze them. They just figure it is like going to sleep. We do not dread going to sleep each night, so why be obsessed about death? I think Christians can learn something from atheists. In fact I am even toying with doing a series of sermons entitled “Thank God for Atheists.” To get back to my point, some people are naturally optimistic. But optimism is not based on anything solid. It is just the way some people’s personalities are or sometimes a choice that some people make.

Hope, on the other hand, is choice based on God. We trust God for the future. Romans 8:28 is one of my favorite verses. And the verses (23-27) that come right before it are just as good. The apostle says, “Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” That is hope. We are saved by hope.

That hope is not in a religion or religious teachings about afterlife. It is hope in God. It is looking upward to the one who holds the future and eternity in his hands.

3. Lastly, and briefly, hope is LOOKING INWARD. That passage in Romans 8 speaks about the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. It says we have the firstfruits of the Spirit. Another passage says that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance, a down payment of heaven. Those are financial terms and so this is a good spot to tie this into stewardship. Hope frees us up to give of our monetary resources to God because we are no longer afraid that we might not have enough. A lot of people cannot give as generously as they might like because they are anxious about the future. And money is a way to soothe that anxiety for many people. Godly hope frees us from fear and anxiety. As the scripture says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Hope is not wishful thinking. It is a present reality. It is experiencing eternal security and eternal life now. It is having the joy and peace of heaven now. That is the firstfruits of the Spirit within us. To find hope we need to look inward to the One who indwells us. God has placed his Spirit in us. And to experience hope we need go no further than our own heart, in which God dwells. 

I am talking practical application now. When we are depressed and despairing, worried and anxious, fearful and angry, let us look within. Deeper than the despair, deeper than the worry and the fear. At the very core of our being, in our heart of hearts, the holy of holies of our soul, resides God as Holy Spirit. The God of love and peace. Rest in that center of your existence. Live there and live out of there and you will have an endless supply of hope, which nothing that happens around us can change or diminish. Look forward. Look upward. Look inward. And we will experience the hope of God.