Hope - Part 2

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hey, welcome back to Grow Tension. Happy New Year. I'm Sarah. I'm here with my dad Doc, and we are a father daughter duo who is learning and growing and trying to do our very best to grow into the person that God has called us to be. [00:00:17] Speaker B: How are you enjoying a happy New Year? [00:00:22] Speaker A: How was Christmas? [00:00:25] Speaker B: Great. [00:00:27] Speaker A: We're laughing because we're filming this prior to Christmas, so the holidays haven't happened yet, but we're looking forward to them. Yeah. That was a great Christmas present you got me, dad. Thank you so much. Okay, so we are in part two of our series on hope. Thank you so much for last month. And today we're going to be getting into, like, where does hope show up in scripture and who is it initiated by? And so a lot of times when people think of scripture or think of the Bible, they kind of split it into the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the Old Testament gets a bad rap because nations are being formed. God's creating a covenant culture and a people. And so there's a lot of law, laws and rules, and there's a lot of wars. And so when you think about hope, you really tend to think about hope is in the New Testament, but it's not really in the Old Testament. Can you talk to us about hope in the entirety of Scripture? [00:01:31] Speaker B: Yes. We're going to learn in the New Testament that God is a God of hope. So in his relationship to humanity, he's always been inspiring hope. A word that's commonly used in the Old Testament. It gets translated wait, but it literally means to wait with eager expectation, which is what we call hope. [00:01:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:01] Speaker B: Having an expectation that the thing I desire is just about to happen. [00:02:07] Speaker A: Right. It's not this wish or, oh, fingers crossed. It is an eager expectation of what you want most is just about to happen. [00:02:17] Speaker B: Right. And in the Old Testament, as in the New Testament, our hope is not just in the world that is to come. God gives us great hope for the world that is to come. [00:02:31] Speaker A: You mean like heaven? Yeah, the new earth. [00:02:34] Speaker B: But he also promises us hope for right now. For example, Psalm 37:9 says, for evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait with eager expectation for the Lord, they shall inherit the land. You see, that is hope. That is rooted in my day to day experience. In my day to day experience. Fear tells me all these bad people are going to win every time. But hope tells me because God is who he is, that's not going to happen. Hope tells me that those who have an eager expectation in the Lord they're going to inherit the land. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So when you think about hope, then in the New Testament, what do you see? [00:03:29] Speaker B: Well, we're lucky or we're blessed, because the most common word for hope in the New Testament is used 86 times. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And when you see that amount of repetition, it's pointing you to that something's important here. [00:03:46] Speaker B: Yes. So in my thinking, understanding, hope in the New Testament begins at Romans 15:13. [00:03:56] Speaker A: And it says, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. So when you think of these, what image this bears that? The God of hope, it's telling us that really hope is from the Creator. [00:04:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:04:22] Speaker B: God in his very nature is a God of hope. God has no fear of the future. He has great expectations and eagerly awaits the unfolding of the future. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He knows the beginning and the end, and guess what? He's hopeful. [00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And when we are connected to that, when we are connected to God, it produces something within us. [00:04:51] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:04:53] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:04:53] Speaker B: The nature of God affects my nature. I'm being conformed to the image of Christ and that means I'm being conformed to the image of the great divine hope of God. [00:05:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And I love this picture of it's producing joy and peace. And I don't know about you, but that is something I could use a lot more of. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:05:21] Speaker A: And so I think as our listeners. Listeners are listening, it's going to be the very first week in January. A lot of people are going to be thinking about their word for the year or writing new goals or doing things better than they did last year. And so personally, for me, I would love your opinion. When we are connected to the God of hope, it fills us with joy and peace. When you have, in your experience, how have you made that into a goal or made that into a reality in your life? The experiencing God in the kind of way where you are full of peace, full of joy. [00:06:06] Speaker B: If we begin by saying how. So we learned in our last podcast that hope is future focused. [00:06:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:22] Speaker B: So if you want to think about what are your expectations for 2025 and where do those expectations come from? Are your expectations of 2025 expectations that raise your sense of well being and your sense of peace? Or are your expectations for 2025 filled with hope? I mean, filled with fear, filled with doubt, producing anxiety in you? [00:07:00] Speaker A: All right, do you know what this is making me think of? Do you remember back to Our first or second podcast on identity and living the authentic life. Being the author of your own life, this is making me think of. When you are trying to live an authentic life of peace or joy, what thought process is guiding the way? Just a unique connectedness. [00:07:31] Speaker B: That is a good connection. All right, so I want to think into 2025, and I want to say if I am relating to the God of hope the way I have the opportunity to. The things that God is going to do in my life this year will create joy and peace. And in fact, God wants to work in my life this year in the kind of way that the Holy Spirit actually increases my hope. [00:08:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:09] Speaker B: By the end of this year, I will have more hope than I do right now because the God of hope through the Holy Spirit is increasing hope within me. [00:08:20] Speaker A: Okay, so this is something you and I talk a lot about, but we don't know how to articulate it. Well, I'm reading a book called Practicing the Way, and I'm helping our staff go through it. It's by Mark Komar. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of him, John Mark Komer, but he. His big thing is spiritual formation. And one of the things that he talks about is getting back to that truest form of discipleship, what Christ actually meant by it. And so you and I have talked about these moments that we spend with God that you try to express. You try to say what you did or what you experienced, but it's bigger than. There's, like, not enough words to experience this. But one of the pieces of that true connection with God, living in the hope, the Holy Spirit being connected to the Holy Spirit is those moments of quiet time with God that you get to sense his presence. You get to sense his great care for you. When I think about those times of peace in my life, it is wrapped in those moments with God. [00:09:40] Speaker B: Oh, yes. [00:09:42] Speaker A: And I'm going to ask a question. We were both saying it's hard to articulate. But I do believe that when you have intentional time with God, not a list of questions, not a list of prayers or requests, but intentional time with God where you are coming to him to be connected to him, there is a fullness of peace. There is a fullness, and sometimes it's 30 seconds, and sometimes it's 30 minutes. You know what? When you seek God in that kind of way, just very practically. What are you doing? [00:10:23] Speaker B: Okay, I'm. I start at be still and know that I am God. That's where I start. So I try to. I Try to get myself quiet on the inside. [00:10:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:41] Speaker B: I try to. I try to separate my inner self from thinking about what I'm going to do next. [00:10:54] Speaker A: The phone, text messages, emails. [00:10:57] Speaker B: I want to separate my inner self from the daily bombardment. I want to be still. And then in that stillness, something in me feels out for God. Your soul is a natural receptor for the divine. In the very same way that the radio picks up the radio channels when it's dialed in, Right? [00:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:25] Speaker B: Your soul picks up God when it's dialed in. [00:11:29] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:30] Speaker B: And that's what I want to do in my inner self. I want to feel out for God. I want to. And it turns out Paul said was true. He's not far from every one of us. In him. We live and move and have our being. He's there. It's just me dialing in. [00:11:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:58] Speaker B: And then I'll commonly want to say something like this. I just want to hang around in your presence for a few minutes. [00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:09] Speaker B: Ah, not all I want right now is you. Yeah, I just. I just want. I just want to be in your presence for a few minutes. And then usually when your soul is there, then the Holy Spirit starts initiating. Do you know what I mean? [00:12:35] Speaker A: I do. [00:12:36] Speaker B: And he starts prompting your thinking. And it's about spiritual things and it's about God's best for you, and it's about who God is. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I heard someone once say, because mine looks very similarly, where I try to separate the noise and sit in the piece to quiet myself, to get in the posture that I feel like is honoring. And I'm more receptive to hearing. I like the, the frequency and the receptivity because I do think there's truth in that. Although it might sound odd, there's truth in it. And then I'll. I'll do forms of worship of just like how much I love him. And I heard someone recently say it's like shooting arrows of love to God. Just those moments of just shooting arrows of love to him and then sitting in that presence. Because I do the exact same thing that I ask. I just want to be with you. I don't want anything else right now. I just want to be with you. And it is in those moments and that reality that you, you do feel that fullness of hope and that fullness that yields to peace. And so I think, if nothing else, wherever you're at on your spiritual journey, make that a priority. To set intentional time every morning to seek God in an authentic, real way where you are seeking his presence, not the reward. [00:14:17] Speaker B: Seek God, while happily he may be found, call upon him when he. While he is near. [00:14:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so let's help shape one other thought here. So if the Holy Spirit is working to produce this in us, if we're connecting to him, what is a very tangible goal for us to try to create this year wrapped around hope? [00:14:43] Speaker B: All right, so you come out of these sessions and you come out of these moments with God and. And the future doesn't look the same. I can go in angry with life. I can go in annoyed. I can go in feeling like I'm way behind. But after I've had this quiet time with God, I have a different expectation about the future. And that's when I want to start. That's when I want to start writing down goals. When I am fullest of God, that's when I want to start saying my preferable future would be right. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:35] Speaker B: Because that's what hope is, a preferable future. If God blessed me to the fullest extent that. That I desire, what would that look like? If God blessed my home, if God blessed my relationship with Shay this year to the fullest extent, what would that look like? All right, now there is where I want to connect hope. I want to hitch my hope on that thought that we are. We will. It's my goal for us to be better friends this year than we have ever been. It's my goal to love Sharon the way God wants her to be loved. It's my goal to speak to her in more affirming ways. It's my goal to be less sarcastic. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Does that make the list every year? [00:16:34] Speaker B: Every year. Because I had so far to come. All right, all right. And then these become my expectations. Now I expect myself to be more friendly to her. I expect myself to treat. Talk to her in a more affirming way. I have a desire to increase her daily well being. All right, so it's not just a goal. It's me seeing a desired future. That's hope. [00:17:12] Speaker A: Yeah. The preferred future. I like that a lot. [00:17:14] Speaker B: I'm not saying this year I'm going to coerce myself into doing this because hope always includes desire. This year, I really desire to do this. [00:17:29] Speaker A: That's very interesting. I like that a lot. Okay. I want to hit on someone who is listening who said, oh, I have had hope. I have had hope time and time again. And the disappointment is real because what I hoped for did not happen or what I asked in prayer didn't come through. So how would you respond to that? [00:17:53] Speaker B: Okay, first of all, I would say You're. You are experiencing the human condition. [00:18:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:03] Speaker B: It doesn't mean that God doesn't love you. It doesn't mean you're not a good person. It doesn't mean that you're being punished for something. In fact, as far back as the proverbs, the. The scriptures say hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life. All right. When we have hope and it doesn't work out the way we want it to work out, it is a human reality that it makes the heart sick. It doesn't make you. It makes you human. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:50] Speaker B: All right. Let's just ask ourselves a couple of hard questions. Okay. If I. If I had genuine hope in the Lord and I really desired this and it wasn't something evil, why did it not happen? Okay. I want to say something positive and negative, so I want to get the negative done first. All right. It turns out that God is the God of all humanity, not just me. And sometimes for God to accomplish his bigger purpose, he has to say to me, son, I love you, but I have a bigger purpose and this hope isn't going to be fulfilled in your life. And that I have enough trust in his fatherly wisdom that I can accept that. [00:20:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And that is a big picture thinking that I think does come with maturity and does come with time in relationship with God. But I do think it is a necessary part of life that in his wisdom, there is a bigger plan. And I don't want it to sound like a Christian cliche or Christian rhetoric. There is a reality in the providence of God that he is working and willing towards something. And we get the privilege of being a part of the plan, and we get the privilege of being partners with him. But it does. There is pain in it, too. [00:20:42] Speaker B: I have to be humble enough to let God be God. You would ruin your kids if you gave them everything they hoped for. All right. The second side of this is positive. God uses hope to reform me. So it's not the fulfillment of the hope, it's the shaping of the hope. [00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:13] Speaker B: I have hoped for things I should not have hoped for. [00:21:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:17] Speaker B: And I thank God he did. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Amen. [00:21:21] Speaker B: I have hoped for good things that would have been positive and would have been very helpful, but they didn't. And they didn't happen. [00:21:29] Speaker A: Okay. [00:21:30] Speaker B: But it shaped me. The hoping was the shaping, not the receiving of the hope. Okay. It's like working out. Okay. The workout is the. The workout is the benefit. Right. Whether you lose the weight you want to lose or you get Your muscles as big as you want them to be or whatever. The workout itself is what makes you healthy. [00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:14] Speaker B: Whether you reach your goal or not. [00:22:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:17] Speaker B: Well, the same thing is true in a lot of Christian virtues. It's not the achieving, it's the hoping. It's not the achieving, it's the believing. It's not the achieving, it's the surrender. So in hope, God forms us in the hoping, even if the thing I hope for doesn't happen. [00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I heard once, and we had talked about this before, and there's a little bit of difference of opinion, but the idea that hope is in the assurance of God, not in the assurance of the outcome. And so part of the hope is that I am trusting in God to be God, and this is my preferable future. This is what I hope for. But the hope comes in the assurance is that he is God, that he does know that he does have a plan, that he does love me, that he does care for me. Does that. [00:23:23] Speaker B: Yes. And, Sarah, I'd like to say from a lifetime of experience, God hasn't done everything I hoped for, but I want to tell you this. He's done a whole lot better in a lot of ways than I ever hoped for. [00:23:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Amen. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Do you see? [00:23:43] Speaker A: I do. [00:23:44] Speaker B: I don't want to just look at. I hoped for this and it didn't happen. I want to remind myself and everyone else, God did way beyond what I hoped for. [00:23:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:55] Speaker B: I mean, I. I was incapable of desire, of seeing and desiring that kind of future, and God went way beyond my hope. [00:24:06] Speaker A: What a great way to end this podcast. That is the perfect way to end it, because I do. I think sometimes we can stick on the pain that's happened in our life and we stop seeing. Seeing the beauty, and we stop seeing all the ways he went bigger or better in different areas. So I think that's the perfect way to end this podcast, is that he can go bigger and better than we imagine. And we've both known that to be true in our lives, particularly in the painful spots, too, you know? So thank you so much. [00:24:41] Speaker B: Thank you. I enjoy your company. [00:24:43] Speaker A: Happy New Year. We hope you enjoyed this. If this was helpful at all, we ask that you share it to someone you care about, and we hope you have a great day.