Hope Restored
Sermon notes from “Hope Restored,” preached by Jason Hillier at Valley Creek Church, on the erosion of hope and cultivating hope through endurance and encouragement.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord
Thank him for the breath in your lungs, for his kindness and faithfulness, and for the hope you have in Jesus. He is holding your future.
2 Praise Him for His mighty acts; praise Him for His excellent greatness.
3 Praise Him with the sound of the horn; praise Him with the harp and lyre.
4 Praise Him with tambourine and dancing; praise Him with strings and flute.
5 Praise Him with clashing cymbals; praise Him with resounding cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Hallelujah!
Hope is here for you
Hope is here. Everyone is welcome. Jesus changes everything.
Hope is a person. His name is Jesus. Hope is not just for everybody else. It is available for you and for me.
Today, we declare in Jesus’ name that Jesus wants to restore your hope. Hope for you, your family, and our church.
The erosion of hope
Disappointment, unmet expectations, and things we have longed for that do not come to pass can erode our hope.
Like erosion in a yard, it can begin with a trickle. Over time, the grass grows over the divots, and we forget it was ever different. We start thinking, “That’s just the way my life is. Things don’t work out for me.”
That erosion can begin to eat away at what we believe about God and his goodness. Jesus warns us about building a house on sand. When the sand erodes, the landscape of our lives can change.
25 The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock.
26 But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
27 The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its collapse!”
4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground will become smooth, and the rugged land a plain.
Restore our hope
Hopelessness is not normal in the kingdom of God. Hope is.
Holy Spirit, fill in the valleys of despair, depression, and discouragement. Lower the mountains of pride, fear, and impossibility. Straighten the crooked paths in our thinking and smooth out the rough places in our hearts.
What is hope?
Hope is the confident expectation of the goodness of God.
Valley Creek exists to be a movement of hope for the city and beyond. We are a movement of the confident expectation of the goodness of God.
Not the goodness of people, circumstances working out, or our bodies always being reliable. God is good even when the world, our thoughts, and our situations are not.
Is it hope, or misplaced trust?
Could some of what we are experiencing be the erosion of what we thought was hope? Could it be the erosion of misplaced trust?
The goodness of God is secure. But our expectations of people, places, things, and situations may not be.
I have struggled to fight for hope in this season. My eyes have been low, looking at people and circumstances. I think Jesus wants to raise my gaze so I can see him high and lifted up.
What are you looking for?
Have you been placing your hope in everything other than God? What have your eyes been searching for?
Have you been looking for hope in circumstances changing, people no longer disappointing you, or the health of your body?
Those situations are real. The grief is real. The loss is real. What was said or done really hurt. Scripture makes room for the real things people go through. There is an entire book about lamenting what has been lost.
20 Surely my soul remembers and is humbled within me.
21 Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail.
Dare to hope again
It takes courage to dare to hope. It takes boldness to say, “I still trust in God even when my eyes can’t see it and my heart is struggling to believe it.”
Sometimes it really is an awful time. Sometimes there is genuine suffering. And yet, I still dare to hope.
Grief and hope are not mutually exclusive. We are not told that we cannot grieve. We are told not to grieve like people who have no hope.
Recognizing a hopeless heart
Sometimes grieving is the perfect time to say, “God, I have a confident expectation that you are good, even when none of this is.”
But how do we recognize hopelessness when it has become familiar?
Control and apathy are byproducts of a hopeless heart.
With control, we think: “If I don’t believe in the goodness of God or see goodness around me, I have to make things good for myself.” So we try to control people, places, and circumstances.
8 And Saul waited seven days for the time appointed by Samuel, but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the troops began to desert Saul.
9 So he said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the peace offerings.” And he offered up the burnt offering.
10 Just as he finished offering the burnt offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.
11 “What have you done?” Samuel asked. And Saul replied, “When I saw that the troops were deserting me, and that you did not come at the appointed time and the Philistines were gathering at Michmash,
12 I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will descend upon me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the LORD.’ So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering.”
13 “You have acted foolishly,” Samuel declared. “You have not kept the command that the LORD your God gave you; if you had, the LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time.
14 But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought a man after His own heart and appointed him ruler over His people, because you have not kept the command of the LORD.”
2 So Sarai said to Abram, “Look now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Please go to my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.
3 So after he had lived in Canaan for ten years, his wife Sarai took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to Abram to be his wife.
4 And he slept with Hagar, and she conceived. But when Hagar realized that she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
8 “Take the staff and assemble the congregation. You and your brother Aaron are to speak to the rock while they watch, and it will pour out its water. You will bring out water from the rock and provide drink for the congregation and their livestock.”
9 So Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, just as he had been commanded.
10 Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, “Listen now, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?”
11 Then Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff, so that a great amount of water gushed out, and the congregation and their livestock were able to drink.
12 But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust Me to show My holiness in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”
Control and apathy
Saul saw his soldiers slipping away and offered the burnt offering without waiting for Samuel. Abraham tried to control having a child through Hagar. Moses struck the rock rather than trusting God’s provision as instructed.
How often do we make things worse by tightening our grip on people, circumstances, and family? A tightening grip may reveal a place of hopelessness.
Apathy says, “Why should I care? They won’t change. It doesn’t work out for me anyway.” It is insidious because it flies in the face of the truth that there is always more in the kingdom of God.
11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.
12 Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
13 You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
With all your heart
God spoke of hope and a future when the Israelites had learned they would remain in Babylon for seventy years. That would have been a time when apathy could easily creep in. Yet God called them to seek him with all their hearts.
Have you been engaging your work, school, parenting, and marriage with all your heart?
Control and apathy can reveal places where the Lord wants to heal our hopelessness. What helps hope rise again?
Endurance and encouragement
Endurance and encouragement help us regain hope that has been lost.
Sometimes endurance sounds like this: “I’m not leaving. I’m not stopping. I’m going to walk through this season with patience and keep believing in the goodness of God.”
Sometimes winning in the kingdom looks like faithfully enduring. There is something about endurance that lifts our heads and helps hope rise.
25 But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently.
The hope, not just the have
We want the thing. God wants us to become people of hope.
Once we receive what we have hoped for, something else eventually comes to our hearts and minds. The problem gets solved, the relationship breaks through, and then there is something else.
Could God care more about cultivating hope in us than about our getting the exact thing we want? As we wait patiently, we learn to rely on him and endure.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.
Hope will remain
Someday, when we see Jesus face to face, know even as we are fully known, and every tear has been wiped away, hope will still remain.
Hope will never die. Hope died on a cross, was buried, and was raised to new life. Now hope is seated at the right hand of the Father.
The confident expectation of the goodness of God will never cease. Even in eternity, going from glory to glory, we will continue to experience more of his goodness.
Practicing for forever
When we cultivate hope, we are practicing for forever. Hope is found in Jesus.
We can think of hope as the completion of a circumstance, a relationship, or something we desire. But God is forming people of hope who learn endurance and will experience hope eternally.
May we endure with him so that we can reign with him. May we live this hopeful life now and forevermore.
Encouragement through his Word
We cultivate hope through patient endurance and through encouragement from God’s Word and his people.
At Valley Creek, we love God’s Word and value his voice above every other voice. Our chapter-a-day reading plan is an invitation to grow in that love together.
There is something to be said for unity. If we are being attacked together as a movement of hope, let us turn to his Word together. Let it speak to our hearts, encourage us, and build us up.
24 And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds.
25 Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Encouragement through his people
We do not just go to church. We are the church, gathering as his people.
One of the most important things we do when we gather is encourage one another and spur one another on in hope.
There are people who desperately need your encouragement, and people whose encouragement you desperately need. Let us speak of the confident expectation of the goodness of God together.
A hope carrier is a disciple of Jesus who lives on mission to change their world: the portion God has entrusted to them.
Hope on the inside
Being a hope carrier is not like carrying a bag of hope beside you. Hope is a reality inside you: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Having received hope from Jesus, we have something to give. We can recognize someone’s hard season and endurance, then encourage them to place their hope in him rather than in the situation.
Is it difficult to encourage others with hope because you have not yet received it for yourself? It is hard to give what we have not received.
In Jesus, there is hope within you that will never run dry or run out.
Hope restored
May we cast off control and apathy. May we rise in endurance and encouragement. May we see Jesus high and lifted up and receive his hope afresh.
What is the Holy Spirit saying to you?
Maybe he is lifting your head away from your circumstances and toward him. Maybe he is revealing misplaced trust. Maybe he is simply reminding you, “I am with you.”
You do not have to endure alone. He is with you, and the people of God are with you.
A prayer for restored hope
Jesus, you are the anchor for our souls and our strong tower. For every place where hope has eroded, raise the valleys, lower the mountains, and smooth the rough places in our hearts.
Remind us that you are pursuing us with your hope. We are not alone.
For what was done and said, and what was not done and not said, bring healing. Make us whole through your Word, your life, and your Spirit.
Thank you that hope is rising over Valley Creek Church. We will continue to joyfully be a movement of hope, a movement of the confident expectation of the goodness of God, for the city and beyond.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
