It's Never Too Late to Hope
When circumstances aren’t turning out like you want them to turn out, when a relationship isn’t working out like you would like it to work out, when things just aren’t going your way, you basically have one of three choices.
1. You can look down in discouragement and despair.
2. You can look around for someone to blame. Or
3. You can look up to God in hope.
Those are you’re options. The really important thing to remember is that you have a choice. Now if you are in despair I know how hollow that may sound, but it is true. You can’t control what happens to you to, but you can control how you respond.
We started a series last week called, “With God, It’s Never Too Late…” Last week I pointed out that with God it’s never too late for a new start. This morning I want to show you that it is never too late to hope. This is not a blind hope; there are good and sufficient reasons to look up. No matter what is happening in your life, if you look up to God then it’s not too late.
Maybe you can relate to Psalmist who wrote psalm 88:3-4; let’s read it:
For my life is full of troubles,[anyone feel that way sometimes?] and death draws near. I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left. (Psalm 88:3-4, NLT)
Aren’t you glad you came to church today to hear that? Don't you feel like your ready now for the week now? Don’t worry I not done yet. I brought this passage to your attention this morning because it reminds us that for thousands of years people have been feeling that way. And the corresponding truth is that, for thousands of years, God has been giving people hope. So I want you to know that you are not alone when you feel that way.
In fact, if you’re feeling that way right now I want to encourage you this morning, because the corresponding truth to those kinds of feelings, the thing I want you to understand, is that with God, it is never too late to hope. It’s never too late to look up. In fact if you’re even feeling in despair you need to know that discouragement and despair are just hunger pains for hope. It’s the sign that you are hungry for hope.
Another fact I want you to know is that everyone feels this way from time to time. You are not weird, singled out for failure or just a hopeless mess. Those things are not true if Christ is in your life. There are many of you here this morning that could give testimony o that fact. You know the kind of life transformation that is available to Christ followers.
So we all feel discouraged and sometime in despair; so the question I want to raise this morning is what can you do when you’re hungry for hope? Do you just wait for your circumstances to change? That’s what a lot of us do. “I’ll wait for the circumstances to change and then I’ll be ok. I just sit still and wait it out.” But what if they don’t change and the good news is that you don’t have to give the power to your circumstances. You may be facing the worst of circumstances of your life but the good news is that you don’t have to live without hope the rest of your life. But you have a part to play. You cannot be neutral; you must exercise faith in Christ.
There was a guy who had hope through difficult circumstances in the OT; that guy’s name is Abraham.
God had told Abraham that he’s going to lead him to the Promised Land, a land that was going to be a place where he’d be the father of a multitude of generations and it would be a rich place where they could really enjoy life; but in order to get there Abraham would have to leave everything that was familiar and follow God’s leading.
So Abraham takes God at His word and he sets out to discover this Promised Land but the journey leads him to a lot of rocks, a lot of challenges. That’s about all that he found on his journey for a long time. He had to live in tents; He had to travel from place to place, there were people who didn’t like him and wanted to take all his stuff. There were all kinds of problems and famines and difficulties. Yet Abraham still trusted God in the midst of the hardship, he chose to place his hope in God’s promise.
Look what the Bible says about him in Romans 4:18:
Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping—believing that he would become the father of many nations… (Romans 4:18, NLT)
My question is how do you live that way? How do you make that kind of choice in the midst of difficult circumstances, when things are not going your way? Where do you find the strength to make that kind of choice?
The really good news is that God wants to give you that kind of strength. So we’re going to talk together about what do you do when you don’t know what to do? What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Five things.
1: YOU MAKE GOD’S LOVE YOUR LIFELINE
If there is anything that is foundational to success it is this issue. You must get this one right. You make the fact of God’s love for you your lifeline. What’s a lifeline?
A lifeline is what you hold on to when you don’t have anything else to hold onto, when you are drowning and it’s the only thing that can keep you from drowning. Here’s the crazy thing. When we face tough times the easiest thing in the world to do is make self-destructive behavior your lifeline. That’s where we tend to go first. We use them to try to escape our circumstances. Because self-destructive behavior offers us a quick numbing effect. And the really crazy thing is self-destructive behavior seem like they can help you cope with the problem. So you turn to drugs or alcohol or lust or anger or self-pity or burying yourself in entertainment - All kinds of things that may numb the pain for a few hours, but they can never really save you and in most cases they make things worse.
Friends, don't make any of these things your lifeline, these are Satan’s imitations; they are his way of keeping you trapped.
In fact, don’t make things that might seem strong your lifeline either because they’re not enough. Things like your job, it’s not enough. What if you lose your job? I know a lot of people who make their spouse – their husband or wife or children – their lifeline. And that is not fair to your husband or wife or children. Think about this: What if they’re going down with you? What if they’re facing a circumstance worse than your circumstance? You should deeply love your husband or wife and children. They should give you strength and encouragement. But to make them your whole lifeline is asking a human being to do what no human can do. Only God’s love will last through any and every circumstance. So don’t ask a person to do what only God can do. Make God’s love your lifeline.
Look at Lamentations 3:21-23 says:
Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. (Lamentations 3:21-23, NLT)
I have hope when I think about God’s love. I have hope when I think about God’s mercy.
If you drive into a gas station, what would you hope to find there at a gas station? - Gas. You go into a coffee shop, what do you expect to find? - Coffee. When you go to our God of hope and love, what are you going to find? Not fear, not guilt, not condemnation; you’re going to find hope. You’re going to find love because that is who God is.
Now because I think a lot of us hear me say, “Make God’s love your life line… you think, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I need to do that. But how are you going to do that? How do you bring that into your life when you’re feeling hopeless?”
Let me just give you a very practical action step. You choose to do it every morning. Every morning. Remember it is never too late for a new start, but that new start is going to come from God, it’s all about God; we talked about that last week.
So if you really want hope, if you really need a new start, you have to spend time with the One who can give it to you. If God’s mercies are new every morning then you need to think about and tap into that every morning.
In fact, let me get even more practical than that. If you’re feeling hopeless, or if you don’t want to start feeling hopeless, here’s a practical thing to do. Before you even get out of bed in the morning – remind yourself that God’s love is your lifeline. Before you even get out of bed, say to yourself or proclaim this truth: “God, no matter what happens today, I know that You love me.” Just remind yourself of that. Every morning. There is power in doing that. So make God’s love your lifeline – hold tightly to the truth of it.
2: MAKE PATIENCE YOUR PRIORITY
You say, Wait a second, I don’t want patience! I want hope and I want it now!” In fact, just track with me on this just for a minute. If you’re looking for hope and someone says to you when you’re in the middle of a problem, “Oh, just be patient.” Does that sound like an answer? To me it sounds like a platitude. To me it sounds like somebody just patting me on the back. “Oh, it’s going to be ok.” And send me out with no real answer.
That is not what I am doing here. When God talks about our problems in the Bible He talks about the power of patience to make a difference in our lives. Look at Romans 5:3-5:
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (Romans 5:3-5, NLT)
I want you to notice it doesn’t say, “We have joy because of our troubles” does it? Notice it says we have joy in our problems. If you have joy because your problems, if you’re happy that you have problems, you’re sick. Really! You’re messed up. There’s something very wrong with you.
Healthy people are not happy because they have problems. That is not what this verse is saying. When God is involved in your life then you can have joy along with the problems because you understand that if God is involved in your life then He can make your problems work for your good. God can take your problems and use them to produce character and hope and all kinds of good things in you – if you endure.
What is endurance? It’s part of patience. What is patience? My definition is simple. I have taught this to my kids. Patience: is waiting without complaining.
When God in involved in your life, there is gold to be mined in every problem. God knows that you’re going to far outlast any problem that you have. Problems that you have, they might last five days, five months, or five years. They might even last the rest of your life on earth. But compared to the eternity that God has created for those who are in Christ, that is a very short time. Because God knows that you’re going to far outlast your problems. He’s more interested in your growth than he is in solving the problem immediately.
Without faith we usually look at our problems with this pattern: Problem – find solution – done. Problem – find solution – done. But God’s pattern is a little different. His patter goes like this: problem – patience – growth; Problem – patience – growth.
More than anything else after your salvation, God is interested in helping you become the person He created you to be. And your problems, my problems, are the raw material out of which God manufactures hope. Out of which God moves us to trust Him in something that in this world is not going to last, to trusting in Him in something in the next world that is going to last forever.
We all have a tendency to trust in things that aren’t going to last: money, time, and other people. One of the things our problems can do is to help us to realize that we really can’t trust in those things. God tests us, not to grade us but to grow us.
But, here is the really important truth: your problems will not turn into benefits automatically. Growth and hope are not guaranteed results of problems. I know plenty of people who go through problems and they’ve not grown, not changed as a result. It takes patience. That’s why you want to make patience your priority.
When we talk about having patience in the midst of our problems that is easy to talk about, but it’s hard to do. How do you stay patient when problems come? So what do you do? Here’s an idea that will help.
Don’t face your problems alone. Don’t try to be patient alone. God never meant for you to face those problems alone and try to be patient alone. Look at Galatians 6:2:
Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2, NLT)
We are to share each other’s troubles and problems. God didn’t mean for you to face it alone. So in a very practical way how do you do this? You do it every week.
If you’ve been a around North Point for awhile you know that we are big on Life Groups. A Life Group meets on a weekly basis in each other’s homes and we spend time talking about what’s going on in our lives and we read God’s word together and we minister to one another using our spiritual gifts. They are safe places to share what is going on in your life and what you hope to accomplish.
So you don’t have to face it alone. You were not built to face it alone. God has designed us to need to share our problems with other people so we can lift each other up and encourage each other. So first make God’s love your lifeline, second, make patience your priority (there are no quick fixes) and then third:
3: MAKE PRAYER YOUR PRESSURE RELEASE VALVE
Who do you talk to when you feel hopeless? I’ll tell you what my default is. When I feel hopeless, my default is to not talk to anybody. To throw myself into some work or into some project and just hope the feeling goes away. Or to set down in front of the TV and click through 150 channels hoping I’ll find hope on one of those channels. I’ve never found it yet but I just keep hoping. It doesn’t happen that way.
When I finally wake up to my self-destructive behavior, I usually go on a long walk. And I just pour out my heart to God and that usually is the turning point for me.
Not only do you need to talk to other people but you also need to talk to God about it. Talk to Him regularly. You talk to Him honestly. Look at Psalm 17:1
"… O Lord, hear my plea for justice. Listen to my cry for help. Pay attention to my prayer, for it comes from honest lips." (Psalm 17:1, NLT)
Do you know why a lot of us don’t like to pray? I think one of the problems is that we don’t pray honest prayers. We pray pious prayers. We pray fancy prayers or at least we think we have to pray fancy prayers. So it feels phony because it is and then we wonder why prayer does not work for us. And God says, “I'm looking for honest prayers. Tell Me how you feel. Tell Me what’s really going through your mind.” He already knows anyway. He’s the God of the universe. He knows everything you’re thinking. So if you can’t talk to God honestly, who can you talk too honestly?
Look at Psalm 143:7:
Answer me quickly, O Lord; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me or I will be like those who go down to the pit. (Psalm 143:7, NIV)
This is not a pious prayer; this is an honest, gut level prayer. God answer me quickly! Too often we pray what I call prayers with disclaimers – you know, like “batteries not included,” at the end of an ad. We pray like: “Answer me quickly, O Lord, unless of course You don’t want to hurry.’
God can handle your emotions, He wants your honesty. So I encourage you to make prayer your escape value. How do you do this in a practical way? You do it everyday. Take some time every day, a few minutes at the beginning to talk to God honestly. Find some space to talk to Him about the opportunities of the day, the feelings of the day, your relationships, your hopes and you problems of the day.
In fact, let me get real practical about this. In your car. Turn off the radio and the cell phone and stop putting on makeup or shaving. And just for five minutes talk to God. I'm not saying talk to God all the time you’re in the car. Don’t make this so crazy you can’t do it. But just take five minutes. For many of us the only time we’re sure to be alone sometime during the day is somewhere driving in the car. So just turn everything off and take five minuets to say, “Ok, God, let’s have an honest talk about how I'm feeling.” If you begin to do that as a daily habit it can make an incredible difference in your life.
4. MAKE GOD’S PROMISE YOUR PLAN
Daniel Burnham’s famous statement, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood. Make big plans. Aim high in hope and work.” Here is the problem with that statement: all of our plans, as human beings, are little plans. All of them. You may be sitting there thinking, “Not mine! I have big plans.” And compared to everybody else sitting in this room, you may have big plans. You may have tremendous plans, huge plans. But compared to the plans of God, all of our plans are little plans. He’s the God of the universe. He made it all. He sees all time in a moment, beginning to the end. God’s plans are the biggest plans. The Bible says in Proverbs 19:21,
You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail. (Proverbs 19:21, NLT)
You can count on that. So what I am saying at this point is that you need to plan based on what you can count on because that’s where the hope comes from. That’s where the hopes aren’t dashed. Plan based on what you can count on and you can count on God’s promises and His plans.
When we talk about God’s promise and God’s plan I know it’s easy for some to think “It’s too late for God’s plan for my life. I wish I had gotten on to this earlier. At my age, I made some decisions and I’ve wasted too many years. There’s no time for God’s plan any more in my life.” Listen that is a lie because, with God, it’s never too late for a new start.
I like what Oliver Wendell Holmes said about old age. He said, “To be seventy years young is far more hopeful than to be forty years old.”
Some of you are seventy or sixty or forty years young. You’ve got a lot of life in front of you. God has incredible plans for your life. It is never too late for God’s promise resulting in God’s plan in your life.
How do you get on board with that? How do you stay focused on God’s plan? Here’s the practical step with this one. How? Do it every weekend. You do it as a part of coming to church to worship together; because that’s where we interact with God’s Word in a way that reminds us of His promises and His plan. We look at His word together. We see His promises together. We understand His plan together so we can hope together.
Another thing you can do is to read God’s word as a part of your everyday life. Spend five or ten minutes each day to read five or ten verses out of the Bible. You should do that.
But there’s also something about getting together like this. Being together and talking together about God’s word, and letting it lift us up together. There is strength in that. So how do you keep on board with God’s plan? You get together with other people who want to keep onboard with God’s plan. That’s where you get the encouragement. When we worship together, that’s a reminder that God has a bigger plan.
Then there’s one final thing, a fifth thing that you and I can do when we don't know what to do.
5: YOU MAKE THE FUTURE YOUR FOUNDATION
Make the future your foundation. You don’t build your life on the foundation of the past. That’s over and there is nothing you can do about it. That’s done with. Good or bad, it’s over. Nor can you build your life on the foundation of the present because that’s not going to last either. But you can build your life on the foundation of God’s future; God’s future – eternity in heaven – which is going to last forever.
You see, we all need foundations to build on. If you’re going to build something significant in your life, if you’re going to build something that lasts in your life, you’ve got to build it on a good foundation. There are all kinds of foundations you can try to build on but the only one that’s going to last – is your future in eternity. Heaven is the ultimate foundation of life. Look at 2 Corinthians 4:17-18:
For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, NLT)
Look at Colossians 3:2; it’s the abbreviated version of 2 Cor. 4;
Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. (Colossians 3:2, NLT)
That idea of letting heaven fill your thoughts, I know some people are a little scared of that. There’s this phrase out there “People who are so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good.” I haven’t met very many people like that. I really haven’t. I’ve met a few; people who were so self-consumed that they didn’t care about anyone on this earth. But the vast majority of people I’ve met, who are heavenly minded, have a deep care and compassion for people on this earth and a driving passion to make a difference. In fact being heavenly minded helps you get rid of the selfishness we so easily live with; it get our eyes of the worries of tour own life that won’t last and gets us focused on the things that will last forever.
How do you do that? Especially for those of you who are feeling hopeless right now, how do you do that? You do it every hour. Every hour. You make hope your alarm clock. Every hour you set your watch and every hour you remind yourself “This world is not all there is. I’ve got something to hope in. This isn’t all there is. I’ve got something to hope in. This isn’t all there is. I’ve got something to hope in.”
Those of you who are feeling particularly hopeless right now, let me just be frank with you. You’re not going to want to do this. There’s something about hopelessness that ensnares us. And we stay caught. It’s not going to feel quite right to you the first few times you do this. But I encourage you, by faith, just to it anyway every hour. Just to take those fifteen seconds to say to yourself; “This world is not all there is. I'm going to build on the future not on now.”
Of course the key to all of this is establishing a relationship with God in Christ. If you don’t have that yet, today is a great day to receive that from God this morning. That is the starting point. The title of this series and the truths we are studying is: With God….with God it’s never too late. Do you have a personal love relationship with God? If you don’t today is a great day to start one. The good news is that you can have that not based upon your own merits or efforts, but based upon what Christ has already done. He suffered and died on that cross, He gave up His life, so you wouldn’t have to. The Bible says that Jesus stands at the door of your life and knocks. He wants to come into your life, but you have to open the door, you have to receive Him. You can do that right now.