Who We Are

Real Hope
Why is hope so important?
We are all hopers, aren't we? Hope is why people get married. Hope is why people have kids. Hope is why they pay to send their kids off to college. Hope is why we buy ab machines. Hope is why kids go nuts on Christmas morning.
The human spirit can survive just about anything, but it cannot survive without hope.

Hope is essential for a vital life.
One of the wisest individuals that ever lived wrote this proverb:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams 
come true there is life and joy.
Proverbs 13:12 NLT

Hope is essential to life. Without it we do things we wouldn't normally do, to think things we wouldn't normally think and we quit when we really need to go on. Hope - when it's deferred, it effects the core of our being. So . . . here's the million dollar question: Where are you putting your hope? In what are you placing your hope?

Where are you putting your hope?
How about the next generation of kids? Know any middle school and high school students? Each day they are looking to their left and to their right and say, "What's going to pay off? Where can I put my hope?" A kid thinks as he grows - maybe if I'm a star athlete-maybe if I'm a MTV star-maybe if I become a model, a computer guru. What kids are doing is trying to decide what hook they are going to hang their hope on. Let's face it - what you put your hope in makes all the difference in the world.
We don't want our kids to put their hope in the wrong thing. But it takes some of us a little longer to catch on. We get a little older and think, "Maybe if I'm rich, maybe if I make it to the top of my profession, maybe if I achieve success in the eyes of my peers-then I can have some hope in these things." Same song, different verse! As adults we hang our hopes on things that are just as shallow as those hooks we ridicule others of using.
An intelligent, educated visionary who was a prolific writer and thinker gave us solid advice years ago in a letter he wrote to some friends in Rome. He insisted that if you do anything in this life, you must put your hope in a sure thing.

"And hope does not disappoint us ..."
The Apostle Paul

Hope doesn't disappoint - at least not REAL HOPE. False Hope does - and if you are disappointed in your life, if you are discouraged, you need real hope. And God says you can develop the right kind of hope in your life.

"... let our faith and love be like a suit of armor. Our firm hope that 
we will be saved is our helmet."
1 Thessalonians 5:8 (CEV)

You can become a hopeful person. You can make it part of your equipment. Do you have a helmet? Now, a helmet is a crucial piece of equipment. Have you ever played football? Did you wear a helmet when you played? If you didn't, you wouldn't remember if you played or not!
A helmet is critical for protection and hope is what enables you to endure the battles in life. There are no fatal blows when you have the helmet of hope that God offers.

Are you grabbing hold of your hope?
There is an interesting story about the nation of Israel that illustrates having hope in something secure . . . like God! In the book of Numbers we discover that Moses sends out 12 spies that look at the Promised Land. Get that? The promised land. This was the land that had been promised to Israel by God.
God says, "The land is yours. It's in the box, it's in the bag, I'm going to give it to you. All you have to do is trust me. All you have to do is persevere. All you have to do is cling to the hope. It's yours."
Moses sent out 12 spies. They all see the same things. They all see the same way. They all see it flowing with milk and honey. They see the possibilities. They see the same people that are living there.
Two of them come back and say, "We've got to go there. We've got to take that land. God promised it to us and it's really good. This is no time to give in." That's what two of them say. Ten of them come back, the same set of circumstances, and the other ten say, "We saw the land and it is flowing with milk and honey, but we saw the obstacles.."
In other words, their thought process follows this line: "The whole task rests on our strength and our ability and we're too weak." The ten were living in the same set of circumstances as the two, but they didn't get it. It's not the circumstances that determine someone's response, it's real hope.
You know what? I want to hang my hope on the same hook the two spies chose. How about you? Have you hung your hope on the right hook? And are you grabbing hold of that hope with all your might. I hope you hang your hope on the right hook-that's God.
Because when you do, God promises you a life. He promises you freedom. He promises you forgiveness. He promises you a life beyond your wildest dreams.

Presbyterian simply means connected. We are connected to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. To find out more, visit www.arpsynod.org .