Hope

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The Act of HOPE (Acts 10)

It is a joy to preach through the book of Acts!  It is filled with examples and lessons that I need to learn and apply.  As I continue to look at the “Acts of Acts” in this sermon series, it seems like each chapter has the apostles, or early Christians, involved in an act that we have a tendency to try to avoid.  Yet it was these very acts of God in their lives that transformed a fledgling group disciples in disarray into a mighty force that turned the known world upside down with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We live in a time where we need such a transformation in the church and in the lives of the individuals who follow Jesus.

As we arrive in Acts 10 in our sermon series we find Cornelius, a God-fearing man who, as a Gentile, was on the outside looking in when it came to true hope through Jesus.  As he sought God, God opened the eyes of Cornelius and Peter so they experienced the Act of HOPE!  Let’s look at some lessons we can learn from the example of the early church and the conversion of Cornelius and the hope that becomes his.

  • Honor:  What do you do when you find yourself with little, or no, hope?  How does hope grow?  What seed can be planted in a life, yours or that of someone else, that would grow into hope?  I believe the answer to these questions begin with the act of honor.  Cornelius chose to honor God even when his circumstances, or lot in life, might suggest to most that it just isn’t worth it.  It was more than mere words, his life honored God by what he did!  Jesus called out the religious leaders of His day as  hypocrites by stating Isaiah spoke of them when he said, “These people honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me.”  Hope begins to grow when we honor God with our whole being.  It is through our honor of God that we allow our eyes to be open to the true plight of our self and others.  When we honor God, we also recognize that He has the ability to change and/or carry us through circumstances that appear to us as lacking greatly in hope.  When God calls you to grow in the Act of HOPE, recognize that both the foundation and seed of real hope comes from genuine acts of Honor given to our God.
  • Opportunity:  It is through our honor of God that He opens the doors of opportunity in the midst of what human eyes would see as hopeless.  As he prays one afternoon, Cornelius has a vision of an angel of God bringing a message that his prayers have been heard.  So, what was he praying?  We don’t have a text of his prayers but by examining the answer that God gives it would seem that at least part of his prayer was asking for the opportunity to be in a full relationship with God.  The answer to the prayer seems to be very simple, “send for Peter”.  Why?  Because Cornelius and his household needed to hear the good news of Jesus!  They needed a person to share with them the opportunity to have real hope through the blood of Jesus.  It is a message not entrusted to angels, but to the followers of Jesus.  Paul would write in his letter to the Romans about this very need: “How can they hear without someone preaching to them.  And how can they preach unless they are sent” (Romans 10:14-15).  In order to give hope to others, we must step outside of our comfort zone and share the opportunity of knowing Jesus with those we may not even think deserve it.  God had to teach Peter that this opportunity was for all who would call on the name of the Lord.   Learning to accept, and give, the act of Opportunity is a vital part of receiving and sharing the Act of HOPE.
  • Power: There is something about the combination of a genuine honor of God and opportunity to be in relationship with God that ignites an incredible power!  Paul’s prayer for the Romans was that they would “overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit”  (Romans 15:13).  Do you believe God has the power to change a life, period, or just some lives?  Do we fail to honor people with the opportunity to know Jesus because we decide God doesn’t want them or is powerless to reach them?  It took a vision repeated three times and the voice of the Lord to convince Peter that God has the power, and desire, to save Gentiles as well as Jews.  When the honor of God that was expressed by Cornelius and his family experienced the opportunity to hear the message of salvation through Jesus Christ, the power of God’s Spirit was poured out upon them and they were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.      When we are growing in the Act of HOPE, we live with growing amazement that comes from experiencing the act of Power in the lives of all those who believe.
  • Explanation: I wonder if the events of Acts 10 were on Peter’s mind at all when he wrote, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  But do this with gentleness and respect.”  (1 Peter 3:15).  What good is an explanation without someone willing to listen?  As Christians, we are required to walk by faith and not by sight yet there are times when an explanation is not only appropriate, but required.  In Acts 10 Peter explains to Cornelius how God taught him that differentiating between Jew and Gentile was wrong.  Cornelius explains to Peter about his desire to know God and to listen to all that God has commanded.  It is in this atmosphere of explanation that hope springs to life!  There are many people who live without hope because you and I have failed to explain to them with gentleness and respect about the hope that dwells within us.  When we spend time Explaining a relationship with Jesus in gentleness and respect, we give the Act of HOPE to people as they are able to escape from the power of sin and death in life and in eternity.

So, how are you doing in living out and growing in the Act of HOPE?  Do you fully and genuinely Honor God in all that you do and say?  Do you consistently make the most of every Opportunity to both share and grow in faith?  Do you faithfully live in the Power of God’s Spirit?  Do you use gentleness and respect as you Explain the hope you have in Jesus Christ?  I pray that the act of HOPE expressed through your life will boldly show the world that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior!

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HOPE In The Valley

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 
    He makes me lie down in green pastures,
     he leads me beside quiet waters, 
      he restores my soul.
     He guides me in paths of righteousness
     for his name’s sake. 
 Even though I walk
     through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
     for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
     they comfort me. 
 You prepare a table before me
     in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
     my cup overflows. 
 Surely goodness and love will follow me
     all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
     forever.

 Psalm 23 is familiar to many and often looked to for comfort and encouragement in times of grief and great loss.  In preparing to preach recently at Deer Run, God helped me to see a connection between this passage and the statements of Jesus in John 10 where He identifies Himself as the good Shepherd.  As I look at these passages, I see four things that Jesus brings to us so that we can have HOPE in the valley.

I know that often it feels like the time in the valley is so desolate, and you’re so alone, that there can’t possibly be anyone else that is in the valley or could even understand.  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending how you look at it, that is just not true.  We all walk through the valley at times — many times more often than we admit and for most, more often than we like.  Some of our valleys are much easier for others, and ourself, to identify.  In the 23 Psalm, David writes of the “valley of the shadow of death”.  It is one of the reasons this Psalm is used so often to comfort families and loved ones at funeral services as they walk through that valley.  It is a valley that we all walk through from time to time but not the only valley we are likely to experience.  There are the valleys of loneliness, rejection, hurt, anger, illness, poverty, hunger, need, exhaustion, despair, confusion, . . . I hope you get the point, the list goes on and on.  You’ve probably seen yourself in one or more of these valleys as well as others that you have experienced.  The good news is that God can, and wants, to bring HOPE to your valley.

The first quality that God desires to bring to our valley is Healing.  Jesus states that it is not the healthy that need a physician, but the sick.  He came to bring a wellness to the lives of those who realize they are sick — a healing to those who are hurting in the valley.  David describes that in this Psalm as restoring the soul.  As our Shepherd, God wants to bring healing to the innermost part of who we are.  Healing is needed when we walk through our valley.  God’s desire is for us to find and depend on Him as the one who heals.

Secondly, we find Opportunity in the valley.  This can be extremely hard to grasp while we are in the valley but God can use our hardships and heartaches to prepare and refine us for greater things.  It has often been said that an advantage of hitting rock bottom is that there is nowhere to go but up.  While I wouldn’t suggest reaching that point purposefully, as Christians our valleys ought to cause us to evaluate where we are at and to look up.  It is in the valley that we often have the opportunity to learn greater trust and dependence on God.  The life lessons learned in the valley, while often the hardest, are usually not learned anywhere else.  God’s gift of opportunity in the valley is a key component of the hope that we all long for.

Protection in the valley can often seem like a great mystery and contradiction to us — particularly while we are in the valley.  Our mind often thinks that if God were providing protection, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.  As one who had been in the valley numerous times, David realized that even when he walks through the valley of the shadow of death there was no need to fear evil because God was with him.  David spent so much time being tracked down and hunted with Saul trying to kill  him.  He, more than many, understood the protection God could give as he speaks of God preparing a table for him in the presence of his enemies.  I don’t know about you, but for me it takes a great amount of confidence in the One protecting me for me to be able to sit at a table while my enemies are watching.  God’s protecting us from the evil one went all the way to Calvary where the “Good Shepherd” laid down his life for His sheep — you and I.  Holding fast to God as our protector goes a long way in bring hope to our valley.

Additionally, we have Encouragement in the valley.  David realized that the rod and staff of his Shepherd were not meant to harm or frighten him but to bring comfort to his life.  Sometimes it is in our valley that we are quiet and still enough to feel the comfort of God’s rod and staff in our life.  David recognized that God’s presence in  his valley was an encouraging reminder that His goodness and mercy would be with him all the days of his life.  But it didn’t end there.  It was in the valley that he was reminded of the great encouragement that comes with the promise of dwelling in the house of the LORD forever.  Encouragement in the valley provides hope as we recognize the great love and faithfulness of the God we serve.

Do you need HOPE in your valley today?  I pray that you would lean mightily upon God for insight into His Healing, Opportunity, Protection, and Encouragement that He desires for you to have. 

But wait, there’s more!  Whether you are currently in a valley or not, you have a job to do!  Spread the HOPE that God has brought into your life.  Paul writes in 2 Corinthians and instructs us to comfort others with the same comfort we have received through Jesus.  Part of the opportunity of our valley is in the receiving of comfort and hope from our LORD so that we in turn can offer comfort and hope to others.  We learn through scripture that Jesus was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin.  He walked through the same valleys we find ourselves in.  He knows our sorrows and our pain first hand.  It is through His greatest valley that we find the foundation for HOPE in our valley.

Praying that you and I both receive and share HOPE in the valleys of life.

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I Have A Hope!

Knowing that God says I am His child helps me to see things in a proper perspective — God’s perspective.  Particularly when things are not going quite the way we would like —  when we’re not what we want to be — it is comforting to know that as God’s child, I have a hope.

One of the biggest struggles for Junior High students is that they rarely believe that whatever part of their body they don’t like at the time — and there is always something — will ever change.  They fear that they will always be too tall, too short, too awkward, too quiet, too loud, too “pimply”, too something that will cause them to be overlooked or mocked their entire life.  They think that what is has always been and there is no hope for change.

Many times, followers of Jesus end up with the same attitude.  The growth process of a Christian takes time and during those inevitable delays, it is easy for our adolescent faith to begin to feel hopeless.  Every stumble feels permanent.  Every sin drives home a sense of failure.  Doubt begins to grow instead of faith.  It is at these times that we need a reminder of the hope we have as God’s child.

John puts it this way in 1 John 3:1-3:

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are!  The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.   But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”

John says that as God’s child, you will feel like a misfit because that is what you are.  You won’t fit into the world.  The world won’t know or understand you because they don’t know or understand our Father.  As children of God, we are adolescents.  It is not yet known what we will become.  Yet even with the unknown, we are assured that we will be like Jesus — the image of our Father. 

As we struggle with our identity and what we are becoming, we have hope.  This is a confident hope that our sin is dealt with and removed.  We are becoming like Christ — and will be like Him — so our hope is assured that we are purified because He is pure.  We can take courage in being God’s child as our hope puts to death and rejects sin and the work of evil.  God says that our hope in Him purifies us so that we accomplish deeds of righteousness and relationships of love.

As God’s child, I have hope because I know I don’t have to stay the way I was, or even the way I am.  My hope in God purifies and refines me into who I will become — like Jesus.

I pray that as God’s child, you recognize the hope you have.  May that hope compel you to grow up into the image of Jesus.