Let Hope In: Final thoughts

Let Hope in 5:5

Final Thoughts 

LET HOPE IN:

Final Thoughts

As we look back over the past four weeks and the four choices to letting hope in we realize this is a journey we just can’t go on alone. It requires trust.

The trust that drives us to new beginnings and sustained life change is less a matter of faith in the existence of God than it is a practical trust in his loving care regardless of what’s happened in our past.

Will I trust God’s grace?

Will I trust His healing?

Will I trust His presence?

Will I trust him to use it all for my best and his glory?

I think many of us face some difficult question.

What do you do when your past isn’t really your past? What do you do when life doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would? What do you do when God doesn’t show up for you like you thought he would? What do you do when someone hurts you intentionally and you can’t seem to forgive that person?

We all are going to get to that place where life hurts and our hearts are broken.

Christianity cannot always be reduced to a simple answer. Some of you thought when you became a Christian that you would gain all the answers to life’s difficulties. Here is a reality check and hopefully a pressure release for some of you: Just because we are Christians doesn’t mean we know how to respond to everything that comes our way. We don’t have all the answers.

In Brennan Manning’s book Ruthless Trust, he tells the story of the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh who went to work for three months at “the house of the dying” in Calcutta, India. He was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa who asked, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: “Pray that I have clarity.” She said firmly, “No, I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

The reality is, we often have more questions than we do answers. Sometimes we lack the faith that will give us sustained hope. Even though we know God is with us, sometimes we feel utterly and completely alone. The reality is, even though we know, we doubt.

There are two very different types of hope in this world: One is hoping for something, and the other is hoping in someone.

Eventually everything we hope for will disappoint us. Every circumstance, every situation that we’re hoping for is going to wear out, fall apart, melt down, and go away. When that happens, the question then is about your deeper hope, your foundational hope, your fallback hope when all your other hopes have disappointed.

All of Scripture points to one man, one God, not because he gives us everything we’re hoping for but because he is the One we put our hope in.

I know this series will fall short of helping you find life changing transformation if all we do is identify the problems, challenges, and painful moments of your past. Identifying these memories from your past alone doesn’t help you. If all you do is remember the source of your pain, then something has gone horribly wrong. Why drudge up the past if you can’t find healing from the pain?

And for there to be real healing, for your past to really become your past, what needs to happen here is that you discover or discern the lie that your memory contains. This is fundamental to your healing.

It is important to understand that your past is not really the problem. The real problem is the lie you believed when an event happened in your past.

And often the lie that accompanies past events is the lie that you can’t trust God’s goodness.

And it’s only when we trust his loving care that we’re able to really begin to allow the hope of Christ to shine through us.

Recently there’s been a series of prayers that I’ve been praying, which have tremendously helped me to fully trust in God.

PRAYER #1: GIVE ME A GREATER VIEW OF YOU

A couple of weeks ago I was reading John 15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener”

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and even preaching about the fact that Jesus is the “vine,” but I had never thought about the fact that Jesus says that his Father, our God, is the “gardener.”

I’m a self-proclaimed garden expert and have had a garden every year since I was twenty-three. Every year I plant corn, green beans, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, onions, potatoes, and just about any other vegetable you can think of. Right now it’s winter, so I don’t have anything planted. But I’m still gardening. I’m going through seed catalogs, trying to select what will be best to plant in a few months. I’m composting so that I can make my soil rich enough to support what I want to grow. Here’s what I know: A good gardener will do whatever it takes to make the garden thrive.

As the gardener, God wants me to thrive. He wants me to live with hope. He wants me to move beyond my past. So I’m praying, “God, give me a greater view of you. Help me see you for who you really are.” When we see God as the gardener, whether we’re in adversity or joy, tribulation or relief, we can put an unfaltering trust in his love, his care, and his plan.

The single most important thing in our minds is our idea of God.

When we discover that God is good, we find ourselves being able to trust him and taking risks for him we wouldn’t take before. And whether you’re new to the spiritual journey or you’ve been a follower of Jesus for decades, the response God seeks is always the same: trust. And you can trust God—he’s good and trustworthy. He’s the gardener and wants you to thrive.

PRAYER #2: IS THERE ANYTHING IN MY LIFE THAT NEEDS TO BE PRUNED?

Immediately after Jesus’ declaration in John 15 that God is the gardener he says, He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

Asking God to prune or cut out things in your life is not the easiest of prayers. This isn’t the kind of prayer you’re going to see on a T-shirt or church slogan. It’s tough. But remember he’s the gardener. If he’s pruning, it’s for your good. It’s so you can thrive and grow.

In order to fully trust God, you must be willing to invite and welcome the pruning process. You must be willing to go before him with a desire to give him anything and everything.

Several years ago I went through a season where I felt compelled to pray “the pruning prayer” every day for several weeks. Not sure why, it was just one of those prompts and I’m so glad I did. After several weeks of praying “God, is there anything in my life you want or need to prune?” I got a very clear prompt from God.

What I sensed God saying was, Pete, I want you to give up your need for the approval of other people. Few things will wear you down like trying to control your image in the eyes of other people. I don’t know about you, but I have definitely found myself in this trap, caring too much about what people think of me. I was spending so much energy projecting and predicting and wondering what impression I’m making that I had lost track of the really important question: Am I doing what God has called and designed me to do?

In this season I had found myself in a difficult position here at Cross Point. The church was growing fast, and my responsibilities as pastor were shifting. I could no longer personally minister to all the people who called Cross Point home. But I stubbornly kept trying to do all the counseling, all the weddings, all the messages, and all the meetings. This schedule left me so depleted that I had very little time or energy left for my family and friends.

At the time, I thought my attempts to be all things to all people came from a desire to be loving. I now look back and realize the reason God wanted to prune that was that my primary motivation was not to be loving but to be loved. And there is a huge difference between the two, isn’t there?

I discovered that if I really wanted to be loving, I needed to allow the other pastors on our staff to step up and minister. That was a difficult transition for me because for years I had derived so much of my validation from the pats on the back I received from church members. But I’ve gradually learned to treasure what happens when I let myself step back and depend on God for my validation.

More people are served. More people know the joy of using their gifts in ministry. My important relationships—with my wife, my children, my close friends, and my God—have room to grow. I feel energized

Because God is the gardener, I can invite him to prune knowing he has my best interest in mind. And because I’m tapping into the Source of dependable love, I feel more valued and confident.

Because God is the gardener, I can invite him to prune knowing he has my best interest in mind. His cutting out, his chiseling, his pruning is not meant to damage as much as it’s meant to help me flourish. So in this process I can trust him.

PRAYER #3: GIVE ME HEROIC COURAGE

A year or so ago, along with millions of others, I watched an Austrian man named Felix Baumgartner set the world record for skydiving. When he leaped from his capsule, he was literally on the edge of space some 128,000 feet above the earth (twenty-four miles in the air).

Many of us tend to associate courage with extreme and extra- ordinary action, but when God says, “I want you to be strong and courageous,” he’s usually not talking about an extreme sports kind of courage; he’s talking about everyday courage.

-He’s talking about telling the truth because that takes courage.

-He’s talking about a single parent trying to raise a child.

-He’s talking about someone who finally has the guts to ask for help.

-He’s talking about loving someone who everyone else has characterized as unlovable.

-He’s talking about a person who has never tithed before

-Never trusted God with their finances

-Finally trusting God in that area.

-He’s talking about stepping out in faith and trusting God in some area of your life that scares you to death.

The decisions of everyday courage may not be glamorous or noticeable. No one is going to post them on YouTube; but they take courage nonetheless. These are the decisions that have a huge impact on who we’re becoming. This kind of heroic

courage is part of the art of new beginnings.

To fully trust is a rare and precious thing. Few people ever get to this place of heroic courage. When your past is littered with failure, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, or loneliness, it requires heroic courage to trust in the love of God no matter what happens to us.

Believe that he will satisfy every need created by your history. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Jesus will heal the broken places of your heart and make you completely whole. When you allow him access to every area of your life, you will never be the same broken person again.

We are reminded in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

I can have hope in the midst of my crisis. I can have hope when there is no circumstantial reason to have hope, because my hope is not based on what the market does, on what you think of me, on life turning out the way I want life to turn out.

My hope is based on a God who can do and will do the impossible. My hope is based on a God who has defeated death itself. The apostle Paul tells us that we will understand and incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 1:19-20)

When you learn to view your painful life events through the filter of truth instead of the filter of lies, you’ll find that you are producing an entirely different kind of fruit. Instead of denial and shame, you will produce what the Bible calls peace and joy. And instead of being known by shame, you will be known by grace.

When you begin to realize that your past does not necessarily dictate the outcome of your future, you can release the hurt. It is impossible to inhale new air until you exhale the old. I pray that as you continue on your journey, as you continue to work through the four choices we’ve talked about in this series, that God will give you the grace of releasing you from where you have been so you can receive what God has for you now.

Inside all of us is a pull toward regret. Inside all of us is a tug toward fear. But also inside all of us is a desire for hope. Deep within you, nothing is hopeless. You are a child of God, and he has planted hope in you. And Hope changes everything.