I was privileged to teach a lesson at
Celebrate Recovery last Monday June 2nd, 2014 on Hope. I am the Children's Leader at CR and every once in a while they'll let me out of kids tower to speak to the adults.
For those who were unable to make it, here is the lesson for you:
Hope
Introduction:
Tonight we will be tutored on University Frat Houses, Baby Grand
Pianos, and Spiderman, Seriously, although these topics will be discussed, our main
focus tonight is on Hope.
Principle 2: Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He
has the power to help me recover.
“Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be
comforted.”
Matthew 5:4
Step 2: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity.
“For it is God who works in you to will and to act
according to his good purpose.”
Philippians 2:13
So what is hope? Some say that hope is the souls manna that feeds
our future giving sustenance, energy and purpose to life. Other’s say that hope
is the seed that is planted in a desperate soul. It is light and life in a dark
place. It’s that ‘light bulb’ moment in our self-pity parties when we realize
the negative attitude we hold onto is getting us nowhere and that we need to do
something different to get out of the darkness that surrounds us. Hope is the
realization that there is a need.
- When we are trapped in a tunnel of misery, hope points to the
light at the end.
- When we are over worked and exhausted, hope gives us fresh energy.
- When we are discouraged, hope lifts our spirits.
- When we are tempted to quit, hope keeps us going.
- When we lose our way and confusion blurs the destination, hope
dulls the edge of panic.
- When we struggle with a crippling disease or a lingering illness,
hope helps us persevere beyond the pain.
- When we fear the worst, hope brings reminders that God is still in
control
- When we must endure the consequences of bad decisions, hope fuels
our recovery.
- When we find ourselves unemployed, hope tells us we still have a
future.
- When we are forced to sit back and wait, hope gives us the
patience to trust.
- When we feel rejected and abandoned, hope reminds us we’re not
alone… we’ll make it.
- When we say our final farewell to someone we love, hope in the
life beyond gets us through our grief.
From the book “Hope Again” by Charles Swindoll
We don’t look alike. We don’t act alike. We don’t dress alike. We
have different tastes in the food we eat (I love sushi and Greek… you may enjoy
BBQ’s or Curry). We have different tastes in the books we read, the cars we
drive, and the music we enjoy. We have dissimilar backgrounds, goals and
motivations. We all work at different jobs, and we enjoy different hobbies. I
love writing stories and going on adventures, maybe you like knitting, going on
hikes, or riding motorcycles. We ascribe to a variety of philosophies and
differ over politics. We have out own unique convictions on child rearing and
education. Our weights vary, our heights vary and so does the colour of our
skin and hair.
But the one thing we all have in common; we all know what it means
to hurt. Suffering is a universal language and our tears are all the same.
Tonight we are going to take a deeper look into the word Hope,
because if there is one thing we all need to understand is that God’s love is
looking for us, no matter how lost we feel. God’s searching love can find us,
no matter how many times we have fallen. This is our hope and this hope heals.
Let’s take a look at the acrostic for the word Hope:
H - Higher Power
O - Openness to Change
P - Power to Change
E - Expect to Change
H stands for Higher
Power:
Roman’s 11:36
“Everything comes from God
alone. Everything lives by his power.”
All hope, begins with this understanding of who this higher power
is. I know in the past I have struggled with this. I have doubted my higher
power and questioned who this Higher Power really is. Sometimes I have wondered
if I said I believed, because other people said I should. Truthfully, I never really
had a relationship with God. Back then I allowed my doubts to rule the way and
just pretended to know what I was doing… pretended that I had a relationship
with God. Some of you may be in this boat right now, wanting to but, just don’t
know how to get there.
How do we get there? It’s a process. You see the first four words of
the second step are… We came to believe… Belief is a result of consideration,
doubt, reasoning and then finally a conclusion. This process takes time. For
some it happens overnight and for others it takes years.
Without this belief, without this trust in our Higher Power we are
not open to change or understand the Power we can tap into to change and we
also have difficulties expecting change. Then we get stuck in our old patterns
when we don’t trust in this amazing Higher Power.
So, how big is this higher power we are supposed to trust?
Ephesians 3:17-19
“Then Christ will make his home in your
hearts as you trust in him. (You don’t have to do anything but accept/believe).
Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may
you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how
long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of
Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made
complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”
Agape Love is something really hard for
us mere mortals to understand. Let me
try explaining it… a little differently…
Picture a University Frat House. Now,
to get into one of these frat houses there is usually a few initiations you
must go through before you are accepted into that particular house and each
house has it’s own rules. Perhaps you’ve heard the one where the initiate must
down a drink with a live fish in it and then proceed to throw it up… if the
fish survives you may enter the home. Or perhaps you’ve heard about when
students were deprived of sleep for many days, unless they ate a can of cat
food. Maybe, you’ve heard about some students having to suck on oxo bullion
cubes while parading around the neighbourhood with whole raw dead fish stuffed
down their bras and then having to eat those fish afterwards. Nasty… but I only
chose the more tame initiations that I read.
Now, picture a frat house with the
doors wide open. No initiations. All you need to do is believe the doors are
open and that all people are welcome, no matter what. All you need to do is
believe and walk right in. That’s all.
All the other religions of this world
or non-religious groups of this world are asking you to do something in order
to join up. I want to get a Nexus pass for the girls and I because it would be
a lot easier to go visit my sister down in the States with one, than sitting in
the 3 hour border line-up at certain times. Paperwork filled out in triplicate,
fingerprint scans and who knows what other scans. It’s quite a process and
there are a lot of hoops I must jump in order to join this club of border
crossing travellers. Maybe not drink a live fish or anything like that… but you
get my point. But, Christ… has already gone through that initiation process, he
drank the fish… and guess what? It’s still alive. We don’t need to do anything.
Just believe that He loves us that much. His door is wide open; we just need to
walk in. That’s it.
We are chosen by God, we are not thrown on this earth like dice
tossed across a table. We are sovereignly and lovingly placed here for a
purpose.
No disorder, no disease, not even death itself can weaken or
threaten God’s ultimate love over our lives. No matter what the problem, no
matter what the disappointment or depth of pain, no matter what kind of
destruction occurs in our bodies or around us, we are divinely loved… always.
Believing in this kind of love has a tremendous healing power.
Hebrews 11:6
“Anyone who comes to God
must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
Psalm 62:5:
“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.”
A classic letter of hope is found in 1 Peter 1:2-6 and as you read the words picture Peter saying these things to you.
“God the Father knew you
and chose you long ago, and his spirit has made you holy. As a result, you have
obeyed him and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. May God give
you more and more grace and peace. All praise to God, the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. it is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because
God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and
we have a priceless inheritance - an inheritance that is kept in heaven for
you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your
faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation,
which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.
So be truly glad. There is
wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little
while.
You see Peter (the Apostle), didn’t try to pump them up with
positive thinking. Instead, he gently reached his hand to their chins and
lifted their faces skyward - so they could see beyond their circumstances to
their loving God.
He’s saying to them… now look… stop looking at your trials…
If God brought His son through the most painful trails and back from
the pit of death itself, certainly He can bring us through whatever we face in
this world no matter how deep that dark pit may seem at the time.
That brings us to…
Openness to Change:
So… okay, you’ve chosen to walk through that open door and believe.
Now, what? Just sit on the couch and wish for things to change? Maybe even
resist change? Change is scary… I have. I have found myself a few times like
this…
(I opened up a bag of chips and
flopped down on a zero gravity chair with a blanket and pillows on it and pretend to flick channels on a remote while munching
on the chips).
"Oh, Lord… I wish my life
would change. Please change it for me... Oh, Bones is on Netflix?"
Yes, the door is open to that particular Frat House. Yes, you
believe and walk in and are accepted unconditionally. But, you are still in University
and there is a lot to learn. You can’t just sit around and do nothing and just
wish for change. You’ve got to open up the books and study. How else will you
get to know what God wants you to do? You’ve got to be open to learn something
new.
Let me put it this way… I love piano music. But, I don’t know how to play.
If you lock me in a room with a beautiful baby grand piano and left
me there for a day. I would not be able to play Pachelbel’s Canon for you. If
you locked me in that same room, with the piano and perhaps a pianist playing
Pachelbel’s Canon all day. I may be able to give you a few notes from it, but,
it wouldn’t sound pretty. Now, give me lessons each day and theory on how to
play a piano for months, perhaps many years and I might sound like
Liberace…well, I might be able to play you something that sounds like
Pachelbel’s Canon.
Same thing… If you stuck me in a room with a Bible and I stared at
it all day. I wouldn’t really get to know God. I wouldn’t be able to teach you
about God and how much He loves you. Now, if you threw a Pastor in with me, and
he prayed and he talked about God all day, I may pick a few things up, but I
would really get to know God if the Pastor did all the work? I need to pick up
this Bible and open it and read it and pray and seek wise counsel and this must
be done for many months, perhaps even many years.
Okay… Maybe you need me to show you a different way. (Throw
sunflower seeds to the ground).Okay those seeds are hope. You can grow now…
(Pause)… Hmmm…
Okay… come on. I am hoping you grow now… Why are they not
growing? These seeds need water, dirt,
sunshine, and maybe fertilizer. They
won’t grow without it. You won't grow if you do not have the openness to learn something new, roll up those sleeves and get a little messy. I know... It's out of the comfort zone.
Jesus desires a hands-on, day-to-day,
moment-to-moment relationship with us. With Christ in
us, we gain perspective, we grow deeper in a relationship with him and maybe we
even grow up?
Power to Change:
God’s power in us can change us.
Spiderman… He’s the protagonist in the Spiderman’s stories, or if
you like, the hero. So who is Spiderman’s archenemy or antagonist? The Green
Goblin? I think he has a few, doesn’t
he? Well… did you know that you are the protagonist of your story? Yes, you are
the hero. And you have a few antagonists wearing you down… don’t you? Well, you
may not have “spidy” senses or a web that can help you fly and/or swing from
tower to tower. You have something greater; you have the creator of the
universe right by your side. That’s pretty powerful stuff.
Philippians 4:13:
“For I can do everything
God asks me to with the help of Christ who gives me the strength and power.”
We just need to tap into it!
Our final meeting is not with the antagonist in our life’s story,
but with the author himself… as a Christian, what you are going through isn’t
the end of the story… it’s simply the rough journey that leads to the right
destination and out hope in Christ stabilizes us in the storms of life that
blow our way and want to knock us down.
Expect to change:
Matthew 17:20:
“If you had faith even as
small as a tiny mustard seed you could say to this mountain, “Move!” and it
would go far away. Nothing would be impossible.”
The dictionary says Hope is to desire with expectation of
obtainment… to expect with confidence.
How do we do that when we feel like crap? When we feel unworthy?
Did you know that some of the most famous pieces of art in the world
-Mona Lisa or the Pieta in Rome- are priceless because of their makers?
World-renowned artists created them.
You were created by God.
Psalm 139:13-14:
“For you created my inmost
being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am
fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful…”
Now ask yourself: What is my worth? My value as a person? If we
really paid attention to who made us and actually embraced that our worth is
found in our maker and not in ourselves or in other peoples opinions of us,
it’s not a stretch to say that each of us sitting here is a priceless treasure.
Who we are is derived from who God is. Because of God’s greatness, we are
created in God’s image just might have great worth.
God doesn’t make junk. You are not meaningless accidents - You are
God’s masterpieces.
In closing, I’d just like to end with:
“As important as water is to fish,
Vital as electricity is to a light bulb,
Essential as air is to our lungs,
Hope is that basic to life
Take away our hope, and our world is reduced to
something between depression and despair.”
Charles R. Swindoll from the book Hope Again
Without
hope prisoners of war languish and die, students get discouraged and drop out
of school, athletic teams fall into a slump and continue to lose, fledgling
writers, longing to be published, run out of determination, addicts return to
their habits, marriage partners decide to divorce, inventors, artists, entertainers,
entrepreneurs, even preachers, lose their creativity.
Hope isn’t merely a nice option that helps us temporarily clear a
hurdle. It’s essential to our survival.
This week may you be filled with a deeper understanding of who your
Higher Power is and may you be drawn to his grace and mercy this week. May you
be open to change and encouraged to step out of your comfort zone. May the
freedom Christ gives to you, give you power through the trails and the storms
that may pass. And from those experiences, may you find yourself expectant that
a change is a coming.
In Jesus name.
Amen!
Thanks to:
- Celebrate Recovery Leader's Guide and The Landing Leaders Guide
- Jesus
- Spiderman
