Things can look dark around us. I know I write about the coming crisis…a crisis some believe started over a decade ago and now they wonder if it will ever end, while I tell them that the worst has not even started.
It is easy then to become hopeless.
Don’t.
Let me give you two reasons. First, even as I point out a crisis is coming, the vast majority of us will live through it. Look back at the past events and yes, they are bad, harsh, sad, brutal. Over 40 million died in World War II. Over 600,000 Americans died during the Civil War. Economic crisis is cruel, and starvation and disease take many lives. Still, most people will live through it.
Whatever comes our way, whatever our Great Crisis becomes…we will live through it. Take heart and hold to hope.
There is, though, a better reason to not give in to hopelessness. That hope is found in God and His great love to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. One of my favorite artists, Steven Curtis Chapman sung about this in his 1996 release, Heaven in the Real World.
The lead song on the CD began with an audio clip of a message by Christian minister, Chuck Colson. Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C6b5i_ypdI
Where is the Hope?
I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by the decay around us.
Where is the Hope?
The hope that each of us has is not in who governs us or what laws are past or what great things we do as a nation.
The hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people. And that’s where our hope is in this country; that’s where our hope is in life.
The Bible has over 120 references to the word “hope.” The book of poetry, The Psalms, has 27 references alone, with almost everyone proclaiming this fact. Hope lies in God, in His word, in His rules for living, in His unfailing love for those who heed His voice and who follow His ways.
The priest Ezra tells that even as the nation revels in unfaithfulness, there is hope when the people turn back to God to obey the law of the Lord. Jonah proclaims that in the midst of despair, he turned his thoughts once more back to the Lord who heard his prayers. Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, reminded them that even during the tough times of life of pain and suffering, times that feel like even creation is groaning, we wait with a deep hope, patiently and confidently. Why? Because, as Paul wrote to the Greek city of Corinth, we know that Jesus was raised from the dead, and because He was raised, then we know for certain that life extends far beyond this mortal life, and we who choose to believe will be with Him forever. Our hope in Christ is not merely for Him being with us in this world…that would really make us, as Paul wrote, “the most pitied people in the world”—pitied for our foolish hope in some pretend afterlife, holding to that instead of seeing how sad life is around us. He is with us in this life…even though life can be, and often is, very hard to navigate. Yet, our hope is in knowing that through His great love, not only does He transform the world through, as Colson said, “the power of God working through the hearts of people,” but also in knowing there is more to this life.
Put your faith in Jesus. He is our salvation. Even if the nation won’t turn back to God, hold onto the Lord with a confident hope. The Lord God will be with you always. Say with the prophet Isaiah that because the sovereign Lord helps you (is with you, holds you, comforts you, protects you, gives you life itself), I will not be dismayed or hopeless. Instead, I will face whatever the world throws at me with my face set firm like a rock, like a stone, and I will know with great hope that I will not be put to shame.
Live Well. Place your hope in Jesus. It is the best advice I can ever give you.