Finding Hope Again

June 27, 2008 in Sermons, Worth's Sermons by WNG

Life is a series of problems. The way that we handle these problems determines the quality and the hopefulness of the life that we lead. Dr. Scott Peck puts it like this. He says: “Life is hard. But as soon as we realize that life is hard, life ceases to be as hard, because we realize life is hard.”

1 Peter 1:3-9

There is a story about a jet that was traveling from New York to San Francisco. When the huge plane leveled off at 40,000 feet, the passengers heard a voice over the loud speaker:

“This is a recording”, boomed the voice, “You have the great privilege of being the first to fly in a totally automated jet liner. This plane took off automatically. It is flying at 40,000 feet automatically. It will land in San Francisco automatically. This pane has no pilot, no co-pilot and no flight engineer. But don’t worry—nothing can go wrong…go wrong…go wrong…go wrong…”

Some of you here this morning feel like a passenger on that plane. Somehow, sometime, somewhere, something has gone wrong. You set out to meet life with what Charles Dickens called “great expectations,” but you have altered your expectations now.Like Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, you put forth the tender leaves of hope, and they blossomed, but, ere long, a killing frost nipped your hope, not in the bud, but in the root. If that description fits you, then you must pay careful attention to our text. In I Peter 1:3-9 we read:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

This is a text that can put the hope back into you! Peter says that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a Cosmic Event. It has affected my hope and yours. No longer must we base our hopes upon idle speculation. Pointing to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ he says of a surety that God is for us though everything else be against us! The dead may be “Past hope, past cures, past help.” But those of us who know Jesus have been born anew to a living hope!

Now this text is primarily about pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-by. It is about life and death and life eternal. The gospel is first of all the good news of Jesus Christ, who precedes us in the resurrection from the dead.

On Easter Sunday morning we went down to God’s Acre and surveyed thousands of our dead. Most of us paid attention to a special grave, or two, or three. Perhaps we remembered other graves in other grave yards. Perhaps we wondered how far up the hill the graveyard will have crept before it is our time to be planted. I use that word planted advisedly. We Christians believe that the dead are God’s planting. We Moravians believe that every graveyard—-not just the Salem Graveyard is God’s garden, God’s acre. We believe with St. Paul that what is sown a physical body will be raised a spiritual body. We believe that Jesus Christ the risen Lord is the first fruits of them that have fallen asleep. We believe that the grave where the Roman soldiers planted the body of Jesus has already borne fruit. We Bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ….because we have been born anew to a living hope by his resurrection from the dead. We believe that there is pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-by and—if you will forgive this image and not press it too far, we believe we will be a part of the fruit that God uses to make it up!

But what about this life. There are many of us who are confident of eternal life but well nigh hopeless about this life. We thank God for the promise of eternity, but we wish with all of our hearts that we could find something in our lives that would make us want to thank him for what we already have!

I want to recognize the validity of that wish. All too often those of us who have led relatively uneventful lives fail to see the tragedy in the lives of folk who live right beside us. Death is not the only tragedy. And death is not the only cause of grief and hopelessness.

I want to press this point. In his book, Finding Hope Again, Roy C. Fairchild, a professor at Golden Gate Presbyterian Seminary in San Francisco, California, measures the other tragedies against death. Using a scale developed by researchers at the University of Washington using 5,000 subjects, Fairchild assigns these tragedies points called “Life Change Units” (LCU’s) on a scale between 1 and 100. Fairchild assigns 100 LCU’s to a person who has suffered the death of a spouse. He assigns 63 LCU’s for the death of a close family member—-a child for instance, or, perhaps, a brother or sister. He recognizes of course that a 70 year old man experiences the death of a brother differently than a 13 year old girl would.
But consider the LCU’s you accumulate that have nothing to do with death:

Divorce 73 LCU’s
Separation 65 LCU’s
Reconciliation 45 LCU’s (It is almost as stressful to reconcile as it is to divorce. Probably because reconciliation requires a sacrifice of self).
Retirement 45 LCU’s
Birth of child 39 LCU’s
Change in arguments 35 LCU’s
Buying a house 31 LCU’s
In-law troubles 29 LCU’s
Outstanding personal achievement 28 LCU’s
Major change in church activities 19 LCU’s

Now there are two things to be noted here: Fairchild does not attempt to measure the frustrations of life like living single when you wish you weren’t, or raising children as a single parent, or failing to get the job, or the college that you want.
The second thing he notes is that LCU’s accumulate. It is possible to have more than one problem going at a time, and the stress and grief and sense of hopelessness adds up. When you accumulate 150 LCU’s you are having a mild crisis. 37 per cent of the people who do will have health problems. When you accumulate 200 LCU’s you are having a moderate crisis. 51 per cent of the people who do will have health problems. When you accumulate 300 LCU’s you are having a major crisis. 81 per cent of the people who reached this level fell ill and/or had psychological problems the following year!

There are people all around us who would like to bless God because they have been born anew to a living hope not just in the next life, but in this life, and they cannot.

So a question comes to mind: How do we find hope again when we have given in to hopelessness. I am going to suggest three steps.

First, recognize how fortunate you are that you still have the opportunity of finding hope again.

Norman Vincent Peale tells the story of a man who came to him convinced that his problems were absolutely insurmountable. The man was living without hope. He wanted Dr. Peale to council with him. Dr. Peale responded, “I don’t have time to council you. but I am on my way to a place where there are thousands of people without a single problem. If you wish to go with me to see this place you may.” The man eagerly accepted the invitation. Dr. Peale walked him to his car, and together, they drove from Manhattan to Long Island. The man was surprised when Dr. Peale turned into a graveyard where he had been scheduled to preach a funeral. Gesturing to the thousands of graves, Dr. Peale said, “These people have no problems.”

If we expect to sail through life without problems—we are deluding ourselves. If we expect our faith to protect us from our problems, we are deluding ourselves still further. As Dr. James S. Stewart has said, “It takes a world with trouble in it to make us the kind of men and women that God wants us to be.” The Greeks had a saying, “Where there is life, there is hope.” So the first point I would make is, “As long as we have life, we have the possibility of finding hope again.”

There is a second step to finding hope again: We must realize that God is with us.

In the 2nd Chapter of Ephesians, St. Paul describes the gentiles as those who were “without God and without hope in the world.” Those two realities go hand in hand. Those who are without God are without hope. They have no confidence for eternity. And they have no confidence for 1998. Sometimes, we Christians put ourselves in the place of those who are without God and without hope in the world. We come upon a hard spot and we convince ourselves that God has forgotten us. We think that we have lost his favor. Not so. The resurrection of Jesus guarantees that we have a bright future—no matter what our present may be like. And the death of Jesus Christ on the cross assures us that God not only prepares us a place in heaven with him, but also takes his place in this world with us. One poet, writing of the two natures of Jesus Christ put it like this. He wrote, “If man has known the stars, then God has known the dust.”

The second step to finding hope again is that we must realize that God is with us.

III

There is a final step to finding hope again: We must realize that God is not only with us, but with us to help.

If I may quote James S. Stewart just once more. Stewart says:

The central business of preaching today is telling men and women that the same power that took Jesus Christ out of the grave is available to them now, not just in the moment of death (Though it is certainly available then!) but in the midst of life.

I don’t know what your problem is, but I know this—one man, one woman, plus God is a majority in any situation. There is no mountain too tall to climb if God is helping you to the top.

I like the determination of Robert Schuller when he says, “When faced with a mountain of a problem, I will, with God’s help, climb over, find away around, tunnel underneath, or stay where I am and turn my mountain into a gold mine!”

Conclusion:

You can deal with your problems. You can find hope again. But you can’t do it without help. Our text says that those who have been born anew to a living hope are those who are “guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” That means that easy times are not here—-yet! It means, too, that though the times are not necessarily easy, we do have one to help us through them.

Are you guarded through faith? Have you really turned all of your problems over to God? Have you trusted God with the details of your life—both large and small? Have you given him your successes as well as your failures? It takes an act of faith. Begin by giving as much of yourself as you know (including your problems—and your possibilities!) to as much of God as you know, and you will soon know more of God and more of how God would have you respond to your problems.

Finis