Rekindling Hope: The Habits of Hope - Ian Graham

Pastor Ian Graham looks at habits of stewarding and embracing the gift of hope that comes in Christ. 

Notes/Outline: https://www.ecclesianj.com/_files/ugd/092876_c583920f16784082b9292d3fd726cfc0.pdf

Transcript

Cry Of Lament From Psalm 10

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor. Let them be caught in the schemes they have devised. For the wicked boast of the desires of their heart, for those greedy for gain curse and renounce the Lord. In the pride of their countenance the wicked say, God will not seek it out. All their thoughts are, There is no God. Their ways prosper at all times, your judgments are on high out of their sight. As their foes they scoff at them. They think in their heart, We shall not be moved. Throughout all generations we shall not meet adversity. Their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression. Under their tongues are mischief and iniquity. They sit in ambush in the villages. In hiding places they murder the innocent. Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless, they lurk in secret like a lion in its covert. They lurk that they may seize the poor. They seize the poor and drag them off in their net. They stoop, they crouch, and the helpless fall by their might. They think in their heart God is forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it. Rise up, O Lord. O God, lift up your hand, do not forget the oppressed. Why do the wicked renounce God and say in their hearts, You will not call us to account? But you do see. Indeed. You note trouble and grief. That you may take it into your hands, the helpless commit themselves to you. You have been the helper of the orphan. Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers, seek out their wickedness until you find none. The Lord is king for ever and ever, the nations shall perish from his land. O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed, so that those from the earth may strike terror no more. The word of the Lord from Psalm 10. Just a couple blocks from here, a father of four, after dropping off his youngest child, was taken by the customs, and uh I don't even know what the ice stands for, to be honest. Um and again, I I wish that me standing up here wasn't positing as if you're like trying to triangulate me into what I feel about politics. Uh I wish that was the case. But if I could just appeal to your emotions for a minute. I'm a 41-year-old father of four, so was this man. I took my kids to school on Friday with every expectation of seeing them again at the end of the day. And this man took his child to school, and yes, I don't know what brought him here. I don't know his story, I don't. I'm certain he's part of the wider network of people that we serve to the food pantry. I'm certain that uh we have crossed paths before. And so I stand up here a little bit upset, a little bit angry. Uh, I at who? I don't really know. At powers and principalities in high places, that's what Paul tells us that our our warfare is against. But I also stand up here just to say that we as the people of God, we have a call that that supersedes our call as people of this nation. Those two things can coincide, they can converge, but they also at points diverge. And faithfulness to Jesus right now is not always clear, but we read in the words of the Psalms right here, and I see God's unrelenting heart for the poor and the oppressed. Now, there's a lot of wisdom that needs to be applied in those circumstances, but I think it starts with our hearts. And so I'm appealing to you, I'm encouraging you as this church to be discerning, to listen to the words of the scriptures, to allow them to form our imaginations for what is and what should be. And with the Psalms, there are times where we don't have any agency, we don't have anything we can do, another chess move, and to say, Lord, we entrust our lives to you, we entrust ourselves to you. By praying these words of Scripture, saying that this is the true story of the world. We supersede all claims that say that they are the true story or that this is the right way. And so I encourage you, Ecclesia, to be people of lament, to be people who are discerning and paying attention. And uh, I think it's kind of faithful at times to walk around with an imprecatory psalm in your heart directed at the powers and principalities that be. And I don't know. I'm still processing a lot of this, but I find it very upsetting. And calling us to be a people who are faithful, people who are just, people who worship the Lord who gave himself on our behalf. There's uh no easy transition between that, which I think I needed to say, and talking about hope. We've been talking about hope as we begin this new year, and we've been talking through the kind of hope that Jesus calls us to, the shape of the hope that Jesus has for us. I recently with our kids and Courtney, we rewatched the movie Miracle about the 1980 uh U.S. hockey team. Have you ever seen this movie? It's great. Now, if you are familiar with sports movies at all, you know that there are certain checkboxes, tropes that they have to just check off. And all of them are there. It's awesome. You know, the team starts off and they don't like each other, but they have to come together. And the coach keeps asking them, who do you play for? And they say their individual school. I play for Boston University or Central Michigan. No, the right answer, who do you play for? I play for US hockey. And it's only at the end of this like immense session of suffering that they finally get the answer. And they it dawns on them, they're like, oh yes, this is happening. We're coming together. They have the seemingly insurmountable opponent in the 1980s, the Soviet. Even our daughter very, very wisely asked, Why are they called the Soviets? I was like, because this is 1980. This invincible, insurmountable hockey team that had not lost an international competition in decades. And so they have this opponent that they're trying to overcome, and nothing about where they start would suggest that they will be able to overcome the Soviets. But, spoiler alert, because it was way too many years ago, which implicates something else about me that I'm not super comfortable with. The U.S. on their way to the gold medal defeat the Russians, beat Finland in the gold medal game, and win. And it's a stunning portrayal of hope. And really, when we watch any sport, we're seeing sort of hope in action. The hope that we might be surprised. The hope that a whole lot of daily discipline, of suffering, of things that we will never see will go into this moment of glory that will transpire before our eyes. That the team that seems like they could never lose will be dethroned. If you're not a sports movie person, I understand. Maybe you've seen the movie The Martian, starring Matt Damon. He's an astronaut marooned on Mars in some not too distant future. He's literally left behind on Mars. That sounds like a nightmare, right? It's not a horror movie, though. He has limited supplies of air and food that will run out eventually, but he determines that he's not going to go down without a fight. He's going to try to get back to Earth. And the only thing that he can start doing, as he says, is start doing the math. He is a brilliant rocket scientist of some stripe in the future. He starts solving the problems of that day as he hopes to save his life and return to Earth. I've structured this series so that we would not start talking about hope with the things that we do. Because the hope that we are called to, the hope that we are invited to receive, the hope of Jesus, is a hope that is a gift. And so, in every way, this our time together, this sermon, which will become a teaching on our podcast, is a part two to what happened last week. Last week we talked about the gift that we have received. No merit of our own, nothing we do, it's just given to us. And within that gift is everything we've ever longed for, everything we ever desired, that thing we toil and spend our lives striving to achieve in every different realm of our lives. It has been given to us by the Maker of heaven and earth. Yet, when we receive this gift, we are called not just to bury it in the sand, as Jesus tells the story about, but to steward it, to take it and to do something with it. And so, as we reach part two, talking about hope, we're talking about what do we do with that gift that we have received? How do we begin to steward that which God has entrusted to us? What are the habits of hope? How do we become people collectively, people individually, who are filled with the hope that Jesus offers to us? Philosopher Ernest Bloch said that hope is teachable. It's like a virtue. And I love that. For some of us, our predisposition is not towards what would be labeled often as optimism, right? But if we extract what hope actually looks like, some of us, our predisposition is not towards hope. Victor Frankel in his seminal Man's Search for Meaning tells the harrowing tale of the post-Christmas weeks of 1944 and 1945 as he was imprisoned by the Nazis in a concentration camp. Frankel was a Jewish man imprisoned by the Nazis, and just a reminder, it was the shallow theology, a distorted reading of the Bible and a misunderstanding of history and fear that formed the twisted, unrationale that enabled German Christians to go along with Nazi propaganda and program. But Frankel observed that many of the prisoners had been living in the hope that they would be rescued by Christmas. And this was almost their slogan as they tried to endure life in the camp. We'll be out of here by Christmas. This is towards the tail end of the war. At many times they could hear the fighting, and it seemed at times closer and at times further off, but they had this sense that the Allies were turning the tide. And for many of them, at the tail end of their time in the camp, they're telling themselves, we will endure, we will survive if it's by Christmas. Christmas in 1944 comes and goes. We move into the early days of 1945, and people began to die. And it wasn't from the usual suspects in a terrible, unhuman place like a concentration camp, things like food shortage and illness. But people began to die. And Frankel's observation of this bleak calculus was that many of the people had so convinced themselves of this contingent hope, this contingent reality that once it did not come to pass, that their will was shattered. Their hope became despair and nihilism, and they lost heart. Frankel says this. He says, There's nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There's much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche. This is very ironic that Frankel is quoting Nietzsche, but he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. And so what we want to do is talk about the hopes. How do we embrace the hope that Jesus has given us, and how do we live out of the willpower that Jesus gives to us as well? Now, first of all, this is kind of the ground we've covered, but I want to cover it very quickly. There is a macro hope, an objective hope that is true of every single one of us. We all have, in some sense, the same hope. And that hope is to be united with Christ forever and ever, to receive from his life, to eat from the tree of eternal life, to dwell in the inheritance of what Jesus has done for us, and to see his face. Do you know that the point of all existence is that you would see the one who made you? And you would see that he likes you. You would see in the words that we pray and we bless every week, his face shining upon you. That is the point why you are here. That is the glimpse of the beauty that we get when we look out the window and you're like, wow, what a world you've made, God. What a gift. And eventually we will come face to face, eye to eye, with the Maker, the giver of the gift. And he will wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more. That's our destiny. That's what you were made for in Christ Jesus. This could be our objective hope. This is true of all of us. This is what we're talking about. We're talking about the ecosystem of hope that we discussed last week. We inhabit it. It is a spacious home, a refuge, a fact. Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension is pouring out of his spirit. Nothing can take it away from us, Romans 8. This objective hope is relational and it changes us. A couple of things about Christian hope as compared to the hope that we so easily sort of conjure and imagine in our own culture and worlds. Christian hope is based upon a person, not a position. Christian hope is based upon the revelation of the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, in everything that he does throughout his life, his death, his resurrection, ascension, pouring out his spirit. Christian hope is not based upon where you were born, how smart you are, what you can achieve, how much money is in your bank account. It's based upon the person of Jesus. And that, as we see, is unchanging. Christian hope is based upon a promise, not a premise. We receive the promises of God, the inheritance that He calls us to. We receive those as a gift, not upon a premise that we might happen upon. And Christian hope is based upon the provision of our God's gracious and abundant hand, not production. It's not about what you can toil and make. It's about receiving the provision from his hands. But then, we get to the individual contours of our own lives. The question that has guided this series where are you looking for hope right now? Where are you looking for the goodness of God in the land of the living? We could call this our micro hope, our subjective hope. Perhaps you have hope that you will have a new career, or that you'll find a spouse, or that you'll be freed from an addictive habit or a sinful pattern in your life. Perhaps you have hope that a relationship, a marriage, a relationship with a parent, a sibling, a friend can be healed. Perhaps your life just feels a little bit beige and meaningless, and you are hoping for something, some semblance of meaning. What I'm not here to do today is to promise you outcomes. I would love to be able to do that. I sincerely would. It'd be awesome. Do these things and you will get these things, and you'll be like, wow, Ian. Thank you. I'm like, I know, right? We should buy a jet. What I'm not here to do today is to tell you without reservation that your wants and your desires are in and of themselves correct. That you automatically hope for the right things. Have any of you ever hoped for something that turned out it would have been really bad for you? Yeah? Right? But what I do trust and what I am here to tell you is that orienting your life to these habits in Christ will change you. Because no matter where you have determined that the destination of your hope is, no matter where you have in your own mind determined that where you're going, Christ will join you both as a fellow pilgrim, he will walk alongside you. We see this in Luke 24, but he will also reorient your hopes. Read Luke 24 later and see how Jesus so patiently and graciously walks behind alongside disciples who have misplaced their hopes. And they think all hope is lost. And yet here's Jesus, hope in fullness, walking alongside them and just asking them questions. They're sad. Jesus asks them, What are you sad about? And they say, Are you the only one who doesn't know about Jesus of Nazareth? And Jesus is like, Tell me more about this Jesus. They don't know it's him until he is revealed in the breaking of bread. And that ultimately Jesus is not just a co-pilgrim. He's not just one who walks alongside us, he's not just one who suffers alongside of us. He does all those things. Yes and amen. He is more. He overcomes that which would lead us to despair. He overcomes the dead ends in our lives. And in the breaking of bread, these disciples with their forlorn hopes see Jesus for who he is. And hope is reborn, it is renewed. So our micro hope. And this is where I leave it to you. Where are you looking for hope in your life? I want to see change in this area of my life. Ecclesia. God can handle your honesty in this space. Even if you feel like it's hope for the wrong thing. Hebrews 6 says it this way in the message. Oh, you know what? Before I do that, Craig, can you go back to that QR code? I realized that this teaching had a certain shape to it. And so, as I've been trying to do when I see this shape emerging, I wanted to give you an outline. Uh what a minute to start with. But we got there. So if you'd like to follow along, there this will take you to our website that has a PDF that has a sermon outline. Okay, so that's where you're going just to be hopefully that's where the destination is. If not, somebody let me know. I had a friend text me right before I got up here. I was telling him, yeah, we're a church. I'll talk to you later. He goes, You're a church? I read the AI summary and it said church was canceled. And I was like, clearly AI is demonic technology. It wants to keep you from church. So don't trust the AI summary. Or I don't know, maybe the writing needs to be clearer. We'll see. From Hebrews 6. When God made his promise to Abraham, he backed it all this way. Putting his own, excuse me, he backed it all the way, putting his own reputation on the line. He said, I promise that I'll bless you with everything I have. Bless and bless and bless. Abraham stuck it out and got everything that had been promised to him. When people make promises, they guarantee them by appeal to some authority above them, so that if there is any question that they'll make good on the promise, the authority will back them up. When God wanted to guarantee his promises, he gave his word. A rock solid guarantee. God can't break his word. And because his word cannot change, the promise is likewise unchangeable. We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It's an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances, right to the very presence of God, where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us in the order of Melchizedek. This is Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the New Testament, and I find it quite beautiful. You can read Hebrews 6 in one of the more traditional translations and see that the heart is there. Okay, so first we want to talk about hope as a theory of change. You know, one of the things I love about where we are in world history and in exploration is there is a science for everything. A couple of Easters ago, I talked about wonder. And I was like, huh, I wonder if anybody has scientifically studied awe and wonder. It turns out that many people had, which was great. Today we're talking about hope. Is there a science of hope? So glad you asked. Absolutely there is. And I've been reading about the science of hope, and the beautiful thing is with something that sort of traverses the grounds of psychology and social sciences, they apply it to all sorts of different situations. And so one of the situations they explored was the presence of hope in corporate cultures. And they had all these metrics of measuring what does hope actually look like in a corporate setting. And they determined where hope lies, where hope rests, that employees are much happier, are much more productive, much more contributing to the bottom line, where hope exists. And that seems sort of self-explanatory, right? You're like, of course. Like where hope is, people would do better work. Hope as a theory of change involves goals, willpower, and pathways. A social science approach to hope says this: hope is not just an idea. Hope is not simply an emotion. It is far more than a feeling. It is not a wish or even an expectation. Hope is about goals, willpower, and pathways. A person with high hopes has goals, the motivation to pursue them, and the determination to overcome obstacles and find pathways to achieve them. Do you see why we talked about hope as a gift last week? Because we could get this all distorted and all backwards, right? Talking about hope in Christ is something that we have to manufacture and do. So now we're talking about the hope that we receive. Now we respond with goals, with willpower, with pathways. We join our hearts with what God has given to us. Hope is a science with identifiable, measurable elements. It is measurable and it is malleable. You can give your level of hope, goals, willpower, and pathways in life a score and measure it in others as well. Then you can increase your hope score by intentional strategies. Rising hope is predictive of short-term and long-term positive outcomes in people's lives. If you apply the science of hope of outcomes in people's, or excuse me, if you apply the science of hope to your life, it will change you. If you embrace the language of hope, you will talk differently, act more intentionally, and live your life with greater purpose than you ever have before. I'm curious, just where you are, you don't have to say a number out loud, just on a scale of one to ten. One being low, ten being high. How would you rate your own hope score if you just had to put a number to it?

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Dr.

Five Pathways That Raise Hope

Habit One: Narrate A Better Story

Attention Shapes Imagination And Maps

Carry A Psalm And Rehearse Truth

Habit Two: Thanksgiving And Feasting

Habit Three: Community That Carries Hope

Habit Four: Ask Boldly, Fast Wisely

Habit Five: Sow Seeds And Keep Going

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Duane Bidwell and Dr. Donald Batiski were two of the first researchers to look at hope in children suffering from end-stage renal failure, which is a way of describing the fact that there is hell and there is a God who has overcome it. They found higher hope in children through five pathways. Maintaining their identity by participating in activities and relationships outside of diagnosis and treatment. So they needed things that were outside the domineering story of their diagnosis and what it meant to be treated, the pain that that often involved. Realizing community through informal connections with others that also had the disease. They needed some co-patriots, some people that have suffered what they had suffered. Claiming power by taking an active role in setting goals, self-advocating, and monitoring their condition. This is one of the most powerful things you can do for people that are suffering with something that they have no control over, is give them whatever measure of control that you can give them back to. Number four, connecting to spirit to spirituality through prayer and other contemplative practices. And number five, developing wisdom and then finding ways to give back to others. They found that hope was the highest when children had more of these pathways in their lives rather than only a few. They also found that when children felt they had a team of support, they evidenced higher hope. When children could set goals of any kind and accomplish them, they did better in treatment. The book on the science of hope was written by a lawyer and a doctor, Casey Gwynne and Chan Hellman. And they write that hope is the belief that your future can be brighter and better than your past. And that you actually have a role to play in making it better. And what I want to do is talk about the role that we are invited to play as God gives us the gift of hope, then invites us to steward and to co-cultivate what it means to be a people of hope. The first narration and storytelling. The story that we live in is the story that we live out. And again, you can see this so starkly when it comes to places of anxiety, places where we don't have the resources or the wherewithal to deal. When you're faced with something that you don't have within your hands the power to overcome and to address and to fix, where do you go? Do you go to fear? Do you go to anger? Do you shrink back? All of these are perfectly understandable responses. And all of these responses are held within the all-seeing, all-caring hands of God. You can bring all of that to Him and say, Lord, here's what I'm feeling right now. This is the Psalms, right? We have this. I'm feeling despair. I'm feeling hemmed in on every side, that I'm surrounded by enemies at every turn. And yet I know that you are with me, that you are for me. And so we see where this story turns from a story of despair and bleakness and hopelessness to a story that has a way out, a door where there seems to be a dead end. But the story that we live in is the story that we live out. If we convince ourselves that it's all on us, that all the pressure lies on our shoulders, then we will try to gain some measure of control. We will fight and grasp. And so we'd have to tell ourselves the story over and over again. It's the beautiful wisdom in Jesus assigning us every week to gather and to hear anew the words of God, to tell the story again. Because it reorients us, it reshapes not only our hearts but our minds. It helps us to see the imaginative landscape of the scriptures. Because so often we are confined to these small and narrow spaces. Princeton professor of sociology and African American Studies, Ruha Benjamin, says this. We need to give the voice of the cynical, skeptical grouch that patrols the borders of our imagination a rest. I think of the Muppets, you know, the two old guys. I kind of like those guys, though. I don't know what that says about me. Philosopher Bjun Chul Han says this. He says, Hope is eloquent, it narrates. Fear, by contrast, is incapable of speech, incapable of narration. Hope inhabits the future, he says. To the extent that it can use signs that bear meanings, an animal can speak, but it cannot make a promise. The language of animals is also not narrative. They cannot narrate. Animals may well have wishes, but unlike a wish, hope has a narrative structure. Narrative presupposes a significant temporal or timely awareness. An animal cannot develop the idea of a tomorrow because this idea has a narrative character. An animal has no access to a narrative future. My good friend Dr. Tim Schoenfeld, who along with my mom and dad is probably one of the three people who listen to our church's podcast. Hello, Tim. Love you, man. Writes of the orbital frontal cortex, or the OFC, as the region of the brain responsible for map making. A large purpose of these maps, Tim writes, is to predict the future. The OFC determines how the world works through contingency maps, but they need to be continuously updated as life unfolds. These updates are especially important when life plays out in surprising and unpredictable ways. As the OFC updates our mental maps, the rest of the brain utilizes the maps to solve problems and make decisions in real time. All of this is very eloquent scientific endorsement for the fact that what you pay attention to will form the story that you are living in. And thus the story that you are living out. And this can take so many different shapes. I mean, think about the overwhelming ubiquity of distraction in our world. Think about how often we are led so easily to look into the lives of others. And we see this curated, filtered version of their life. And if we're honest, we say, wow. They have it really nice. It must be nice to have that life. And we think about the way that our brains are being formed, the things that we are paying attention to. As Tim says, these things have to be continuously updated, continuously retold, continuously rehearsed, the narrative, the story that we live in, and thus the story that we live out. We have to come back to it constantly. And the question, as we talk about being a people who engage the habits of hope, is what story are you living in? And what story are you living out? If you're looking for hope, here is my prescription. Very simple. And if you've ever sat down with me, you know this is probably my one prescription that I write to just about everybody. Find a psalm that speaks to where you are and where you want to be, and carry it around. The genius of our eternal, wise, good father of putting a book of prayers, a laments, a book of mystery in the middle of our Bible and saying, Here, this is for you. It's just such an overwhelming gift. Find a psalm that speaks to your life and carry it around. Even if you don't consider yourself a poetic, artsy person, the psalms will sing to you. Psalm 27 has been where I have lived and resided for many years now. The Lord is my light and my salvation, of whom shall I be afraid? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I fear? When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and foes, they shall stumble and fall. Though in an army encamp against me my heart shall not fear, though war rise up against me, I will be confident. One thing I have asked. And this one thing have I sought, to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble. He will conceal me under the cover of his tent, he will set me high on a rock. You can have Psalm 27. I didn't write it. But you might have another one that's for you. Find the psalm, carry it around. Commit it to your heart, commit it to memory. This helps us dwell in the story. Alright, the next habit. Thanksgiving and feasting. There's a great book on the ecological crisis that has a great title. I'm not sure if the book's great, but it has a great title. And the storytelling is very great. And the book is called Fall in Love with the Future. And, you know, for me, people ask, how do you pick books? And I'm like, titles and covers. Right? And so this book talks about the ecological crisis, but that line, fall in love with the future. How do you become a person of hope? You fall in love with what is to come. And that might shape what is in your life right now. One of the miracles that takes place every single Sunday is that we are a sign of the shimmering future of God. However small a glimpse, however clouded, however narrow, when we gather, we are a signpost, pointing to the redemption of all things. This reminds us, despite our circumstances, of our objective hope that is sure and is certain. That it draws us out of the mire of our circumstances into a brief glimpse of glory that is secure and promised. It reminds us that ours is a story of joy, that our sins have been forgiven, sin and death have been defeated, that we are not what we will be, that people from every tongue and tribe and nation are forming a new humanity, a new creation people. It reminds us that God is on the move. One of the main ways that we inhabit this story is retelling the story. And when we do that, we come together in a feast of worship, of giving of our gifts, and saying, Lord, this is the truth. We draw the past into the present. And there's a beautiful convergence that happens. I don't have time to go into all of it here this morning, but you bring in all that you carried in throughout the week, your present here, and you're already starting to draw that into the future. What is to come? And the question that so often we come back to is what has God done in the past? We talk about what Jesus has done: an event in time and space that transcends forevermore time and space. Again, there's this objective hope, what Jesus has done, then there are our own personal tributaries to that great river. What has God done in your life? And how can you give him glory and honor and thanks? Revelation 19. Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters, and like the sound of many thunder peals, crying out, Hallelujah, for the Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. To her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, Write this, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true words of God. The end of the story is a feast. And each week we, in some small way, grasp the end of the story for just a moment. We bring it into the present. Third, community. Hard to imagine a feast without imagining a people. A community is a place of storytelling, of feasting, of communal memory. And one of the ways that we isolate ourselves is by acting like we have it all together. Part of the genius of Alcoholics Anonymous is the assumption when you walk into the room that you don't have it all together. And I wish the same were true of church. Another way we isolate from each other is through envy. We use our shallow vantage point into people's lives to determine that God has been kinder to others or made the road easier for others. But God has called us to be a people, a body. And when people in our midst are hope sick, they are without hope. Part of our role as a people is to be present and carry hope for those who have lost hope. According to marriage and family therapist Terry Real, the part of our brain that is rational, wise, and not triggered, the prefrontal cortex, can be borrowed. You can give it to somebody else whose isn't operating as it should be, who's stuck in that fight or flight. And you can say, hey, you may not have hope right now, but I have hope for you, and I will carry it for you. Ephesians 2 says this, talking about what God has done in merging and bringing together a new people, he says, For he is our peace. In flesh, he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall that is the hostility between us. Verse 19 says, So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with saints, members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. Hope does not isolate us, it reconciles us. And it makes us into people who bear one another's burdens. Fourth, two more. Prayer and fasting. Jesus was adamant about the process of communing with God through reproduction. Requests. Did you hear that? Jesus says, Hey, come to know me. Come to love me. Come to see me. And do that by asking. In Luke 11, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. And then he gives them Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer, which we prayed not too long ago. If you paid attention to the Lord's Prayer, it's also a lot of requests. Give us today our daily bread. It's almost demands. But then Jesus goes on to tell a brief parable and he summarizes in Luke 11, verse 9. He says, So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and everyone who knocks, the door will be open. Is there anyone among you, if your child asks for a fish, would give them a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, would you give them a scorpion? I have to imagine this was hilarious. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Often we are short on hope because we give up on asking. We need to invite others into the asking as well. That is an extension of vulnerability if there ever is one. Where are you looking for hope? That conversation between you and God may be fraught with all sorts of landmines. You bring somebody else into that, that feels very exposing. But I assure you that there's something that happens when the body of Christ begins to bear one another's burdens, when we bear one another's hopes, that produces and brings about exponentially more. One discipline that accompanies our asking is fasting. Now, we don't fast at the beginning of the new calendar year because, as Lydia said, Lent is coming in like three weeks. The Christian calendar has all sorts of fasts built into it. We don't need to impose more fasts, all right? We got Christmas and we got Epiphany. Live in the feast. The fast is coming. For Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Convention, self-purification was a key step in any of their organized resistance. Dr. King said a mass movement exercising nonviolence is an object lesson in power under discipline. And for these black Christians and those who joined them, striving against the instruct the injustices of Jim Crow and pushing for what eventually became the Civil Rights Act, 1965, these practices of self-purification were prayer, meditation, fasting, and nonviolence. And for us today, Jesus says, and he's talking about certain strongholds that are present, he says, these only come out by prayer and fasting. Jesus invites us to be a people of hope by being a people who ask, a people who strive. Blessed. Sowing seeds, giving. It's easy for us to tell ourselves while we are waiting for what we think we're hoping for, to stay passive, to wait on the world to change. But within the context of a story of hope, our daily actions are not just biting our time until things change. They are seeds that are sown, entrusted to God. Again, if the world is meaningless and an accident and by chance, then the things that you do throughout your day don't matter. They have no significance. I'm sorry to tell you. But if the world is encased in a story for which these little daily actions, the little things that we do, the little acts of love, the little acts of service are seeds for an eternity that will flourish and flower forevermore, then every little thing you do, as Paul says in Colossians 3, can be done for the glory of God. And even the things that you are doing that seem to be a delay of the hope that you are longing for, or seem to be just holding on and waiting, these are all gifts in the hands of the Giver that he takes as seeds sown in faith and will turn them into the expression of the hope that he has for us. We have to change our view of what God is up to. Because so often we're waiting for the results, we're waiting for things to change, and God is just saying, I'm here with you. Trust me. Every little thing that you do is an expression of your faith in me if you'll let it be. And if you'll keep asking, you'll keep drawing other people into your need, into your vulnerable places. If you'll keep narrating the story of hope, He is taking these seeds, and He is a faithful and good giver. He will bring about the harvest. Now, giving these sowing seeds, they may take all sorts of different forms. They may be financial. This may be about your time. This may be about your perspective or ministry. In order to be a people of hope for the future, we are people who sow into the hope in the present. And what we find is not the limited scarcity economy of supply and demand or something transactional with God, as if if we do this, then God will do this. That's not what we find. What we find is that in God's hands our meager offerings are blessed, they're broken, they're multiplied, and they're given. And that there is enough, more than enough. Paul writes this in Galatians chapter 6 Do not be deceived. God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh, but if you sow to the spirit, you will reap eternal life from the spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right. For we will reap at harvest time if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith. I'm gonna invite the worship team forward. Some ten years ago I couldn't sleep, and I had the TV on, and these were the days. I don't know if you remember these days. I longed for these days. I had a remote in my hand and I could flick through the channels. It was great. I didn't have to wait on something to load and stream. It was awesome. And you just happen upon stuff. That's never gonna happen to me now. And I came upon this movie, and it was just like the lighting of it, I don't know. I was just attracted to it. I was like, oh, this is interesting. I'll watch this, and maybe this will help me drift off to sleep. Now, in the movie, the men in the main characters' families can travel through time. Strong premise. This movie's called About Time. And uh I I failed to give this warning to Courtney when we first watched it. She's like, I want to watch something lighthearted and funny. This is like yeah, that's right. That's the proper response. It is light-hearted in a way, but also deeply, deeply sad. So fair warning. And yeah, that's about how it went in my house that night. Um the men can travel through time. It's a family secret that they learn to harness and control. And they have to exercise considerable discipline around their time travel exploits, as you know. If you travel through time, you've got to be very careful not to mess with anything, otherwise, you irreparably damage the present and the future. The story's beautiful, it's it's humorous. At the end of the movie, the main character's father is dying. And he's imparting his winsome wisdom to his son about harnessing their gift, and he says, you know what the secret is? The secret is living each day as it comes with all of its troubles and problems, big and small. And then, at the end of it, as almost this kind of embodied exam, he would travel back to the beginning of that day. And he would go through everything without changing anything, just receive it. But this time, instead of surprise or anxiousness or fear or scarcity, he would receive it all as a gift. It's like, ooh. And again, I was trying to go to sleep, and I'm watching this video, like, well, this is the secret, this is the gift. He says, because you know it's going to be okay, then you can enjoy it. You can be present, you can stand in wonder and awe at the precious gift of life with these people in front of you. The dynamic of Christian hope that Jesus has given to us is not all that different. You have been given a sure and secure future in the hands of Christ. The hands that were stretched out, given for you, freely, abundantly, at great cost, but given. No matter what comes in this life, our future is settled, and we will be beyond okay. We will be glorious, healed, full of everlasting joy. So, how should we live in the present? As people of this story, grateful, contending, non-anxious, joyful, giving out of the abundance of the life that God has given to us. This is the call to be a people of hope. And if you're looking for hope in your life right now, again, I wish I could promise you results. But I can promise that God will show himself to you. You will see his face, you will see his hand, you will see the truth. That you are loved and restored and redeemed by a Father who has given himself for you. Let's pray for the Holy Spirit to come. Jesus, we pray. For your spirit to come. We pray, Holy Spirit, come. God, I pray that as a people we are getting serious about the business of hope, Jesus. God, that we would stake our hopes upon you. And that we would not be bashful or ashamed, God, in the places that we're looking for hope, that we would bring them before you. We would acknowledge that you know them, you see them, you see the confines of our heart, Lord. We would open them up to you in a way of trust and of faith and seeing, God, that you meet us there. I bring us back to that question again: where are we looking for hope? And I can pronounce with sure and certainty, Lord, that so often the places that we're looking for hope are born out of shame, out of guilt and regret. And I can say fully and finally that Jesus has forgiven our sins, has paid for them, God, has overcome sin and death. This is the hope that we live in and that we live out of. And so, God, help us if we're holding on to these places to let them go. And then to engage the habits of hope, Lord. There may still be overcoming that we have to do, there may be still steps of freedom that we have to take. But Lord, we are liberated people on the way to liberation, Jesus. God, I also want to pray for those for whom hope seems like such a tease, God. Like something that's been dangled over their head so many times that they have stopped looking up, Lord. God, would you meet us again with the power of your hope, God? Even if all we can muster is hope for something small, Lord, would we bring it to you in trust and in faith, Jesus? God, make us people, make us persons of hope by the power of your spirit. We pray these things in your name, in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We pray. Amen. Echo see, I'm gonna invite you to stand as we respond in a time of worship.