Sermon Central
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Overflowing Hope Series
Contributed by Scott Kircher on Feb 12, 2014 (message contributor)
Summary: Hope. For many who have placed hope in the wrong things, it is scary to put our hope in something. But hope is essential to life and to living. How can we experience a hope that doesn’t disappoint us and grow in hope so that it is not drowned out by our circumstances?
Overflowing Hope
God helps us live in hope through His word (v. 15:4)
God helps us live in hope through His Church (v. 15:5-11)
God gives us hope through His Son (v. 5:12)
God gives us overflowing hope through His Spirit (v. 15:13)
Slide
Hope.
Where is your hope?
There are probably some of you here today that have come and you aren’t feeling a lot of hope in your life right now.
Maybe you don’t even know why you came to church today because what is the point.
Nothing is changing. Life is bad, and it isn’t changing and you feel there is no hope.
Maybe you have had your hope in things that let you down.
Maybe you have had your hope in the wrong things.
Maybe you have had your hope in God, but what you expected God to do, didn’t happen.
Where is your hope?
Maybe you have lost hope or are afraid to put your hope in anything for fear of being disappointed.
Well, today, I want to give you hope and help you to live in hope because hope is absolutely essential for life and for living.
Wharf rats drowning illustration
I read about this experiment that some behavioral scientists did once with some rats.
These behavioral Scientists put some Wharf Rats in a tank of water, and observed them to see how long they would survive before drowning. The average time was 17 minutes. Then, they repeated the experiment, but this time they "rescued" the rats just before the point of drowning, dried them off and returned them to their cages, fed them, and let them play for a few days, and repeated the drowning experiment.
This time, the average survival time for these rats increased from 17 minutes to 36 hours! The scientists explained that phenomenon by pointing out that the second time around, the rats had HOPE. They believed that they could survive this, because they had done so before.
Hope is essential to life.
Hope is essential to living. Living with hope can truly change things going forward.
And that is not just true for Rats!
Eugene Lang gave hope
Self-made millionaire, Eugene Lang, who had received some help to go to college, wanted to be able to help those who were like him, coming from underprivileged backgrounds.
When he was giving the commencement speech to those graduating 6th grade at PS121 in East Harlem, the same school he had attended years earlier, “he promised the 62 graduates that he would help finance the higher education of any in the group who stayed in school and finished high school and wanted to continue on to college.
At that time, the high school they would be attending had a dropout rate of 60% and on average only 2 students from PS 121 went on to college. That is about 3%.
This was in in 1981. By 1985, when these kids were in their sophomore year, all 62 were still in school. It turns out that 90% of them graduated high school and 70% went on to college with half of those completing a degree!
http://www.beyondphilanthropy.org/reviews/wise_givers_eugene_lang
What explains the change?
Those kids now had hope for a different life.
Before, it seemed they had no hope at all.
They could graduate High School, but then what?
To the streets?
To drugs?
To dealing?
Before, they did not experience any hope that things could be different.
But now they had hope and that hope helped them to live a better life in the present in hopes of an even better life in the future.
Hope.
Sometimes it is tough to have hope.
There are so many things that are seeking to rob us of hope.
An economy that continues to sputter
Maybe it is a relationship that is difficult
Maybe it is an illness or continued illness in your family
Maybe it is struggling through some difficult financial situations
Satan will seek to use many poor circumstances to try and rob us of hope.
How do we live in Hope?
So how do we live in hope, even when we are facing struggles in life?
How do we live in hope, when we don’t have a Eugene Lang around?
Well, we have something better than a Eugene Lang.
We have Jesus Christ, and He has offered us hope not just for a college education, but for eternity!
Slide
In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you.
Now that is awesome. We have that when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior by believing in Him.
The most famous verse of the Bible is John 3:16
