Hope For The Hopeless! July 17, 2011
Psalm 43:5
A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table that held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.
All but one. He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned. He told his buddies to go on without him, waved goodbye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. He was glad he did.
The 16-year-old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the applies, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, "Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay?" She nodded through her tears.
He continued on with, "I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly."
As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister..." He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, "Are you Jesus?" He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?"
Do people mistake you for Jesus? Isn’t that what a Christian’s goal should be? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world (shopping, working, reacting to others that are serving us) that is blind to His love, life and grace. If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church. It’s actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.
You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit. Let us live like we are worth the price He paid.
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There are people who seem to be in hopeless situations!
They have no hope that there situation will ever get any better!
They have no hope in their career, their relationships, in their future, in their finances and many times that ends in deep depression, or even suicide.
We Christians are not immune to these kinds of feelings.
If the truth were told, there are some days when we could just stay in bed and cover up our heads and never get up.
That is why it is so important to have scripture and each other to remind us of what we have!
Definition-HOPE = H-aving O-nly P-ositive E-xpectation.
The very word "hope" is like turning on a light in the darkness.
Psalm 43:5-Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God. (NKJV)
Psalm 43:5--Why am I discouraged? Why so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again -- my Savior and my God! (NLT)
Things aren’t what they should be. Things aren’t what you’d like them to be. Things aren’t the way you would plan them if you were in charge. And so you become despairing and you become disturbed and the psalmist says, "Stop that and hope in God."
1 Peter 1:3-5-Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (NKJV)
What we have in Christ cannot be taken away, does not fade away, does not rust or corrode, is reserved in heaven!!!!
Romans 8:31-What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (NKJV)
Romans 8:35-39-Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NKJV)
When we are His, we need to remember, doesn’t matter how bad the situation seems, no matter how dismal the outlook is, no matter how tall the mountain is, or how low the valley is….If God is for us, who can be against us!
Exodus 3:13-14-And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
We serve the Great I am. In other words, I am whatever you need.
Need Salvation? Need Healing For Soul Or The Body? Need Strength For Today?
We have got to get our eyes off present-day circumstances – turn to the all-knowing, all-powerful, creator of the universe. The Great I Am.
Our God Is A “Present-Tense God”…..Not “I was”, “I Used To Be”, “I May Be Again.”
He Is The Great I Am: He’s Available Now To Meet Your Needs.
1 Peter 3:15-But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; (NKJV)
Your hope and my hope is justifiable, It is reasonable, it make sense!
It is not some pie in the sky, in the sweet bye and bye, it is not just about the future but it is about the here and now!
It can change lives, if we share it….
Dr. Robert Schuller’s teenage daughter, Cindy, was in a motorcycle accident and had to have her leg amputated. John Wayne was a big fan of Robert Schuller. He heard Dr. Schuller say on one of his programs that his daughter had been in an accident and had to have her leg amputated. John Wayne wrote a note to her saying:
Dear Cindy:
Sorry to hear about your accident. Hope you will be all right. Signed, John Wayne
The note was delivered to her and she decided she wanted to write John Wayne a note in reply. She wrote:
Dear Mr. Wayne:
I got your note. Thanks for writing to me. I like you very much. I am going to be all right because Jesus is going to help me. Mr. Wayne, do you know Jesus? I sure hope you know Jesus, Mr. Wayne, because I cannot imagine Heaven being complete without John Wayne being there. I hope, if you don’t know Jesus, that you will give your heart to Jesus right now. See you in Heaven. And she signed her name.
She had just put that letter in an envelope, sealed it, and written across the front of it "John Wayne" when a visitor came into her room to see her. He said to her: What are you doing? She said: I just wrote a letter to John Wayne, but I don’t know how to get it to him. He said: That’s funny, I am going to have dinner with John Wayne tonight at the Newport Club down at Newport Beach. Give it to me and I will give it to him. She gave him the letter and he put it in his coat pocket.
There were twelve of them that night sitting around the table for dinner. They were laughing and cutting up and the guy happened to reach in his pocket and felt that letter and remembered. John Wayne was seated at the end of the table and the guy took the letter out and said: Hey, Duke, I was in Schuller’s daughter’s room today and she wrote you a letter and wanted me to give it to you. Here it is.
They passed it down to John Wayne and he opened it. They kept on laughing and cutting up and someone happened to look down at John Wayne. He was crying.
One of them said: Hey, Duke, what is the matter? He said (and can’t you hear him saying it), " I want to read you this letter." He read the letter.
Then he began to weep. He folded it, put it in his pocket, and he pointed to the man who delivered it to him and said: "You go tell that little girl that right now, in this restaurant, right here, John Wayne gives his heart to Jesus Christ and I will see her in heaven." Three weeks later, John Wayne died.
Colossians 1:5-6-because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit, as it is also among you since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth;
We have a responsibility to show good fruit to the world. When people hurts us or take a bite out of us just like a piece of fruit they can say “wow that was sweet,” because we respond to them with love and kindness.
