Speaker 1: 0:13

Well, after hearing Sam say those words, I don't know that I need to say anything at all. It's just remarkable courage and openness. I deeply admire the work that you've been doing together in looking at emotional health, which is a huge challenge in our day. Lawrence asked today if we would look at what's almost the opposite of emotional unhealth, and that is what no human being can live without, and that is hope. Got to have hope when our first child, laura, was born. I had an experience I didn't anticipate. Nancy handed me the baby and I'm holding this little, tiny blob of tissue and all of a sudden it was like I could view the entire trajectory of her life. And I said to Nancy it's the most amazing thing to think. This tiny little body that I'm holding is going to grow up and this skin, which is so pink and smooth and perfect right now, is going to get mottled and wrinkly. And this little hair she was born with a little strip of red hair, like a mohawk this hair that's red right now is going to turn gray and then silver and white, and then we're going to grow old and we're going to die, and then she'll be an old lady and then she'll die. This tiny little baby that I'm holding right now. And Nancy said let me hold the baby. You're creeping her out. She is fearfully and wonderfully made and you're losing it.

Speaker 1: 1:35

We all got to have hope. We got to look forward to something besides just getting old and dying. But we also have to acknowledge we are going to grow old and we are going to die. So hope's got to be good, but it's got to be real. So it's not easy.

Speaker 1: 1:49

The apostle Paul started a hope revolution and this is the way he put it, for in this hope we are saved. He put it for in this hope we are saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. So hope is the anticipation of the good. One thinker puts it, but it's good that we don't yet have. If I have it, I wouldn't have to hope for it.

Speaker 1: 2:18

To be a world-class hoper means I have worthwhile and even noble goals and dreams and I don't give up on them easily. I bring a sense of expectation and eagerness into every day. Hopers breathe life into other people. Hope will improve your work, your relationships, your soul, your motivation. One of the great titles of God and there's many of them in the Bible is given by Paul in one of the great prayers of the Bible. This is Romans, chapter 15, verse 13. Paul says Hope, fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope. The overflow is something when you contain so much of it, there's not room for it anymore. It just spills over, overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. So the God of the Bible is the God of hope. God is a hoper and I want to talk for these few moments, together with you, specifically about Christian hope and how it will get you through what optimism alone never will.

Speaker 1: 3:31

Optimism is a good thing. It's the tendency to expect things will turn out well. It's a personality trait. It's the tendency to expect things will turn out well. It's a personality trait. It's usually focused on a situation. Hope is a Christian virtue and it encompasses optimism. But it goes deeper.

Speaker 1: 3:50

During the Cold War in Czechoslovakia, václav Havel, who was a poet and a politician, eventually was a political prisoner, did menial work. But when the wall came down and the Czech Republic was free, he became its first president, and he was asked what kept you going when you were a political prisoner all those years? And he wrote such great words. They are worth reading. This is what he wrote Hope is not the same thing as optimism.

Speaker 1: 4:18

It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it will turn out. In short, I think the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water, urge us to good works, the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from elsewhere. And that elsewhere, jesus says, is from God. We might be optimistic about how something's going to turn out, but the psalmist says to his soul when it's crushed by suffering put your hope in God. He would never say put your optimism in God. Paul does not say may the God of optimism fill you so that you overflow with positivity. Hope transcends circumstances in a way that optimism never can. Hope is something we get, as it were, from elsewhere, from beyond ourselves.

Speaker 1: 5:21

Now, when Paul wrote those words, it's important to understand most people living in the ancient world did not have a high opinion of hope we do in our day. So this is largely not known. Hope is largely celebrated as a virtue in our day, primarily because of Jesus. Ancient writers, like the Stoics said what you got to count on is you, not the world, not the gods, just yourself, and especially reason, your capacity for thinking. Because desiring or wandering or hoping just sets you up for misery, or wandering or hoping just set you up for misery. So hope was actually considered by many, particularly among the Stoics, as a kind of moral weakness, because it meant you were depending on a power outside yourself. Greek historian Thucydides wrote those who hope typically have a bad understanding of the situation, and from a human perspective often that's true. But of course Christianity turned that all upside down.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Paul says there is a God and he is a God of hope, and he's the one that we depend on. He's going to fill you with hope. But now we're not passive in that. We got to own our hope. We got to grow into hopers. So in the time that's left, lawrence asked if I would walk you through what are five of the most practical, actionable ways that I know to cultivate hope. I want to do that now. I'd encourage you. Think in particular of one that you could do and start doing it today. Here we go. Five ways to cultivate hope. Number one actively worship God. We were just doing this.

Speaker 1: 7:00

When you worship, your mind is set on something that produces hope. The psalmist said but I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more. Notice the connection between worship, praise and how it leads to hope. So praise God, celebrate his goodness. You can start doing that right now while I'm talking. Thank him for his gifts, remember his mercy. Actually notice the mystery and majesty of creation, like when you came up on this hilltop and you look at the beta. Anybody notice how gorgeous the scenery here is and you get to go to church here for nothing. That's unbelievable. Meditate well, not for nothing, but you know what I'm saying. Meditate on deep claims like God is love or the Lord is my shepherd. Notice the excellence of a velvety little puppy or a golden sunset or a Cinnabon. Sing, make music in your heart toward God. Remember the alternative to worship is despair. A lot of secularism in our day. Have you ever wondered why atheism or secularism or nihilism does not tend to produce great music?

Speaker 1: 8:15

This is from a philosopher named Bertrand Russell, an atheist thinker of about 100 years ago or so. This is how he viewed existence. Think about what it means if this is true, he wrote purposeless, void of meaning is the world. Man's growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms. No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual beyond the grave. All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. The whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation be safely built.

Speaker 1: 9:20

I'll cheer you up, won't I? No, maybe he's right. He's a real smart guy, way smarter than me. But that's a hard song to sing to your kids when you tuck them in at night. How firm a foundation is total despair. We'll all be dead soon, dear, so why should I care? When you're in the grave, you will not make a peep, so shut up your pie hole and let mommy sleep. No, don't applaud for that one. That is not. That's a Good night, sweetheart, pleasant dreams.

Speaker 1: 10:00

See to worship, to be grateful. I got a life, I got a body, I got friends, I got lungs that breathe and a heart that beats. Worship God when you get up in the morning. Worship God when you go to bed at night. Worship with other people when you come together. Worship alone when you're all by yourself. Worship in your car. Worship when you feel like it. Worship when you don't feel like it. Worship with your whole mind, with a focused thought and your whole self and your whole body and your whole heart. Worship and you're given hope. Don't worship so that you get hope. It's just kind of a byproduct, it's a gift. Worshippers are hopers, so I'll start there.

Speaker 1: 10:41

Number two this is a little counterintuitive. Radically accept suffering, because for hope to be worth anything, it cannot deny suffering, pain, problem. It can't be glib, it can't be saccharine or superficial, it must be compatible with deep suffering and be able to embrace it. Paul wrote these amazing words to Romans, chapter 5. Now the ancient Stoics they would often write what were called hardship lists and focus on when you're going through something difficult, that can cultivate toughness of spirit. And so Now Paul does similar stuff, but with a twist that they would never do.

Speaker 1: 11:16

We also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character. Now, stoics will be saying yes to this. They agree with this. And then the next line is where they get off the bus. Paul says and character hope. Now, in the ancient world, again, hope means you're dependent on something else and you can't count on anything, but you so never do that. Paul says no, no, no, there is a God and he started all things. Creation had a beginning and he will redeem all things. So I'm betting the farm on the God of Jesus and hope does not disappoint, because God has poured his Holy Spirit into our hearts. Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character, hope. And therefore, when suffering comes, we glory in it because we know that we can grow. Not that suffering is a good thing, it's awful. I protest it, I lament it, I hate it, but God can be at work in the midst of it.

Speaker 1: 12:13

When I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, I actually went to get a PhD in clinical psychology. It's part of why I've been really interested in this series you've been doing on emotional health, and I thought I was going to become a psychologist and do therapy. But I started doing therapy and I wasn't very good at it and I didn't like doing it very much. I prized it, but I don't like doing it, and the longer people saw me, the more emotionally unhealthy they got, so that wasn't a good thing. And then I started to preach at a church and I just came alive and I love doing it. So I thought this is what I'm going to do, except I was up preaching one day early on First Baptist Church at Locker Center where I was working, and the sermon didn't go real well.

Speaker 1: 12:53

And then I started to feel kind of dizzy and the next thing I knew I had fainted dead away right in the middle of my own sermon. There was a lot going on Finals week in grad school. I was about to get married. We're going to live in Scotland for a year. So I thought, well, it's just an aberration and I went away. I came back, resumed grad school, went back to work at that church. The very next time I got up to preach I fainted dead away again. And the worst part was it was a Baptist church, not a charismatic church where you get credit if you do that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 13:30

And you know, I thought I think I love to preach, I think I'm called to, but you can't preach if you faint on a regular basis. Makes people kind of nervous and I asked God to take it away and he didn't take that feeling away. I saw a therapist started to have to do all kinds of work on relaxation and meditating and biofeedback got those little stress dots back. In those days when I would preach I would have to sit a chair on the platform and then if I had that feeling coming, I'd just sit and talk from a chair as a sign of my weakness. And here's the weird thing when we embrace our weakness, you know, like God says to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness. When I try to generate strength, if any of you have ever wrestled with panic attacks or fainting, you ever try really, really hard not to faint. When you feel like fainting doesn't work so good. But when we embrace our weakness, learning how to be deeply aware of our minds and our thoughts is the central part of learning hope. I'll say a word about this.

Speaker 1: 14:42

It's important to know the difference between a physical sensation and an emotion. A philosopher named. Robert Roberts, writes about this. Physical sensations have causes. They are caused. If someone asks why are you itchy, it might be well I'm wearing a wool shirt, or I got poison oak, or I have a rash or something I wouldn't criticize you for itching. Emotions are different. Emotions have reasons. This gets to our emotional and spiritual life.

Speaker 1: 15:11

I'm driving, a woman keeps honking at me and I start getting really mad. My wife asks why are you so angry at that woman? And I say I'll tell you why because she's honking at me. It ticks me off and I give her an extended version of my dirtiest look. I'm a pastor, so certain expressions of anger are not available to me. But I'll give her my dirtiest look. And then she pulls up alongside my car and gestures my left rear tire is wobbling and about to come off. She wasn't being rude, she was being kind. See, now I'm not angry, I'm grateful, grateful that she saved my life, grateful that she doesn't go to my church. My anger was based on a false belief, so it was wrong.

Speaker 1: 15:54

Sometimes people, even therapists, may have said to you for years a feeling can't be right or wrong, it's just a feeling. No, no, no, no, no. A feeling can be right or wrong, because emotions have reasons. They're based on reasons. Now, hope, if it's going to be the real thing, needs a reason, and the New Testament writers were convinced that it had one. Jesus' friends Peter said Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is in you. It's not just a sensation, it's not just well. I happen to wake up in an optimistic mood today.

Speaker 1: 16:36

Hope requires at least two elements You've got to want something to hope for it. You got to really desire it and then you got to believe that there's a chance for it, that it will or might come true. Now a painful thing is if I want something very, very much this relationship or whatever it is thing is, if I want something very, very much this relationship or whatever it is child health, something if I want it very much but I believe I'll never get it, then I experience despair. That's what we call despair. Despair is where there's high want but there's no belief that it's ever going to come. That's despair. Now, in the ancient world, where they were not into hope, the way that you deal with despair is you resign yourself to never get what you want by lowering your desire for it. Not that big a deal. I can learn to get along without it. I try to ratchet down my desire.

Speaker 1: 17:29

Low want and no belief is resignation, and that's what folks in the ancient world do. That's okay. For small hopes there's a lot of. Anybody watch the Olympics over the last couple of weeks. I'm probably never going to be in the Olympics. Probably At my age I'll probably never play keyboard for you too, probably never bench press 300 pounds, that's okay. But you need an ultimate hope that your life matters and that your life counts, that nothing can touch. And that is why there was a revolution of hope.

Speaker 1: 18:05

In the New Testament, robert Roberts notes that Paul did not write May the God of resignation fill you with tolerance for your destiny. He is not the God of resignation. To me he is not the God of resignation. He is the God of hope to fill you with all joy and peace so that you over. And that enables me to say whatever the pain and the suffering is, I accept it, I embrace my life, I acknowledge it, I acknowledge my weakness and will find God precisely there.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Third practice never worry alone. Ed Hallowell, another really terrific Christian writer on this topic. Never worry alone. Emotional unhealth always isolates us. We find healing in community. James 5.16,. Confess your sins to one another, pray for one another that you might be healed.

Speaker 1: 18:55

Many years ago I decided I'd like to have a friend before whom I have no secrets, a fully disclosing friend, and I asked my friend Rick I'd known him for about a year, I knew he was trustworthy If he would be willing to hear all my secrets, my failures, my guilt. And he said yeah. And it took several weeks for me to get ready and I wrote down everything I could think of, as honest as I could be, what I was embarrassed about, my relationships, my sexuality as a husband, as a pastor, as a dad, when I had lied, when I had done things that I was shamed of, and I met him. And then I just read through it all. I couldn't even stand to look at him read through it, and it took I don't know an hour and a half, however long it took. And when I was done I finally looked at him and Rick said something to me that I never imagined him saying. He looked me in the eye and he said John, I love you more right now than I have ever loved you before and it felt so good to me I wanted to make up more bad things just to hear him tell me how much he loved me. And what I came to realize in that moment was that we can only be loved to the extent that we're known. To the extent that we're known Because, see, if I have a secret from you, you may tell me that you love me, but inevitably I will think, yeah, but if you knew this about me, you wouldn't say that we can only be loved to the extent that we're known. We can only be fully loved when we are fully known. That's just the human condition and that's why the church is to be a place where we can be fully known and fully loved and then fully healed.

Speaker 1: 20:40

Hope is a team sport. So maybe your next step is find somebody who could be a friend like that to you Now. It'll take time. Don't walk up to a stranger today and say can I tell you my darkest sin? Get to know them. Get to pray. Ask God, could you send somebody like that into my life, but never worry alone. Get to pray. Ask God, could you send somebody like that into my life, but never worry alone. Number four real, practical step. Learn how to take life one day at a time. If you have any involvement in recovery 12 steps you know that you know going to pursue life, going to pursue sobriety. We're only given enough power to live one day at a time and, of course, this comes from Jesus.

Speaker 1: 21:22

Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, about your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food, the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They don't sow or reap or store way in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life. Don't worry, not because worry is unpleasant although it is Not because it's bad for your body although it is but because we live in a God-made, god-soaked, god-breathed, god-bathed, god-fed, god-loved world. Look at the birds.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Years ago, nancy and I were driving it was in the spring in the Midwest and there were two Canada geese, two adults and nine little tiny, yellow, fuzzy baby goslings, and all nine of them are just gobbling up food, and one of the adults is and the other adult is watching over the family. And my wife looked and said isn't it a beautiful thing to watch that mother goose watching over her family while they all feed? And I said how do you know? It's the mother goose that's watching. Maybe it's the father goose? You're not an expert on geese anatomy. And she said no, it's always the same in every species. It's the mother that sacrifices herself and selflessly watches over the family, while the dad just cares about himself and feeds his own face. It's always the same. And right when she said that they switched off and the goose that had been feeding started watching and the goose that had been watching started eating. And I was so grateful to God because I knew it was a Holy Spirit moment. And then both the adults started eating and nobody was watching the kid.

Speaker 1: 23:08

And it kind of blows the whole analogy. But this is Jesus's claim. Just look at birds, look at the lilies of the field, look at the earth. God is continually at play in watching over, delighting in his creation. But then the only place to find him is right here, right now. If you try to look into the future, that's what anxiety does. Anxiety always says what if, what, if, what, if, what about, what about, what about, what about and you start playing that game rumination, the bad boy, mental health. You can spiral for hours. Little analogy US Department of Agriculture says every year the average American will eat about one ton of food 1,996 pounds.

Speaker 1: 23:55

Imagine walking into a room that had all the food that you were going to eat in a whole lifetime. That would be 42,000 pounds of dairy, 14,000 pounds of beef and poultry, 7,000 pounds of butter and fat. If somebody sat me down in a warehouse with that much food and said I had to eat it all, I would be overwhelmed. And yet we will all do it. How do we do it? What's our secret to putting away 80 tons of food?

Speaker 1: 24:27

We do it one day at a time. One day at a time. How will you face all the heartbreak that life will hold for you? How will you deal with all those problems? How will you handle all the disappointment? One day at a time. This is Jesus. Don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has trouble enough of its own. Isn't that good news? Today's got enough trouble. There'll be more trouble tomorrow. But the only place to meet God is today, right in the midst of the trouble. And that leads to the final and ultimate practice for cultivating hope.

Speaker 1: 25:03

Reflect on the resurrection. Now, of course, the resurrection is the foundation of our hope and the reason that Jesus and Paul and so many others said it's not just stoic self-reliance on reasons that enables us to manage our unpleasant emotions. We're betting the farm on hope, paul said. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. For as in Adam all died, so in Christ all will be made alive. Death itself, jesus. You trust me, you will not taste death. You will just go right on. Your body will die, but your mind, your thought, your experience, that will.

Speaker 1: 25:57

Just when we had three real little kids, at one point we were staying in a hotel, nancy was with the baby in the other room and I was with the two kids at the pool. They were like five and three and I warned them don't get squirrely, don't run around or you could fall in the pool. If you do that you'll drown. And apparently I was a little too effective, because at one point the five-year-old was jumping to me and the three-year-old slipped and went right under the water. And of course I reached right down there and pulled her out. But by the time I brought her up to the surface, she was just sobbing and she said oh, daddy, I drowned, I drowned, I drowned, and I said oh no, honey, you didn't drown, I pulled you right up out of the water. You were only in there for half a second. Your daddy was right there. So let's not tell mommy about this, because you were never at risk. Your father was always there. And Jesus says that's your condition Now, that's your situation. The father is right here in death itself.

Speaker 1: 26:58

I'll tell you one more story about hope. This is from a friend of mine named Marty Ensign, who worked for many years in Africa, very vibrant, christian, and she was there, among other things, when genocide that we all know about with the Hutus and the Tutsis was going on. And she told about a young man, ben Yomi. As a young guy he was this vibrant, very alive, loved to sing. Benyomi was a phrase that means little bird in their language, because he always sang it. They made for him a little homemade guitar. He's quite poor, and there was a Dutch evangelist, corrie Ten Boom, you might have heard of when she would go to that part of Africa. She always wanted Ben Yoni to lead the singing. Just because of his spirit, he was able to go to school, he was president of his class, got a job as a teacher and, because it's just kind of the person that he was, he was made headmaster of the school.

Speaker 1: 28:03

But this was when the genocide was going on, and one day a group of soldiers very, very young came to the school and asked to see him and the 11 other young men who taught there, and he knew what this meant and he tried to talk them out of it, said this is not a political place. We're not. They said we have our orders. Again, marty Ensign, who knew Ben Yoni, is the one from whom I heard about this. And the soldiers marched them off and one of the teachers who was there said kill me first. I can't stand to see this, ben Yoni, as real as you and me. His response was no, no, no, no, no. I am the leader. They will kill me first and you will see what a wonderful thing it is to just go into the arms of God. And then he turned to the soldiers and asked them could I pray? And the lieutenant said all right, and so he began to pray.

Speaker 1: 29:05

And his friends had great confidence in Pagnoli's prayers because they'd heard him pray before and they thought he's going to pray us out of this. And he started to pray. But he didn't mostly pray for them, mostly he prayed for the soldiers. He said, god, they're going to do this terrible thing and it will be too much for them to bear. It will crush their souls. So I pray that someday you will send somebody to them who will tell them about Jesus and that there is forgiveness.

Speaker 1: 29:41

And the soldiers walked them to the other side of a hill and they lined them up. And then Ben Yoni had one more request. He said before you do this, could I sing a song? He's a real, ordinary person in our day, like you and me. And the soldier said, all right, you can do that. And he began to sing a song. It's an old hymn. I grew up with it. Probably you will not know it. Out of my bondage, sorrow and night, jesus I come. Jesus, I come into thy freedom, gladness and light, jesus, I come to thee. And then his friends began to sing it.

Speaker 1: 30:30

So, 12 of those young men. The fourth verse is out of the fear and dread of the tomb, jesus I come Jesus, I come Into the joy and pleasure thine own Jesus, I come to thee. And then they were shot, killed and Marty said you might wonder if they were all killed then how is it that we know this story? She said those young soldiers went back to their compound and got as drunk as they could, as fast as they could, except the lieutenant. The lieutenant couldn't stand it and he went to a woman. She was an elderly Quaker missionary there, and he said I must know who is a God that would allow somebody to die like this. She told them the old, old story of Jesus and his death for the forgiveness of our sins on the cross and his resurrection. And that lieutenant became a follower of Jesus and he began to tell everybody the story of what had happened and what Jesus had done and the government killed him eventually. But by that time everybody the story of what had happened and what Jesus had done and the government killed him eventually. But by that time the story had spread and it just wouldn't stop spreading Because that old, old story could not be stopped even by a cross. That's the hope.

Speaker 1: 32:04

Empty tomb, resurrected heart. The hope, the empty tomb, the resurrected Lord. I hope, that hope is yours. I hope that hope is yours. If it hasn't been, it can be. It has been the foundations for a life of unspeakable greatness now, for 2,000 years, and I promise you, I promise you, whatever you're going through, whatever you have suffered, whatever anxiety, depression, loss I promise you, I promise you that hope can be yours. So now is the moment for you to respond to God in worship and in trust. Don't let it slip by. Just respond to him now with your whole heart. Thanks.