13 May Taking Hold of Hope

Who hasn’t faced deep discouragement?

Who hasn’t felt the walls of hopelessness close in on them?

In the Bible, Abraham was a man in your shoes.

If you know his story, you may know that his and his wife’s barrenness was a dead end for his dreams.

For a man like Abraham, all his hopes for the future rested on having a son, and when that had not happened, when the future he believed for did not come to pass, his heart began to sink.

But, thankfully, God threw Abraham—and throws you—an anchor to keep his heart (and yours!) afloat in the middle of an uncertain future. What was it?

It wasn’t money, it wasn’t a new camel or a promotion; no—it was a promise.

And if that doesn’t sound like much to you, it’s only because you don’t know the one who has done the promising.

It’s easy to become a “promise skeptic”, with promises made by political candidates being broken at every turn, or when promises made to you years ago at the altar fall by the wayside of hurt and baggage.

But imagine a person for whom it is impossible to lie.

Impossible! When he or she makes a promise, it would be like a virtual financial printing press—when the promise came out of his or her mouth, it would be as good as money in hand.

I want you to consider that God is this person—He was this to Abraham, and He is this to you.

He said to Abraham, “Surely I will bless you. Surely I will multiply you.”

And the writer of Hebrews looks at that one promise and says to you today:

“In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul…” (Hebrews 6:17-19)

There is encouragement here, yes, but also a challenge, and here it is:

Hope is something you take hold of.

You have to reach out and take it in, internalize it, grab it, make it yours.

This means hope doesn’t just come on its own—it doesn’t come from more television watching or news watching or Facebook scrolling. If you are discouraged—check that, when I am discouraged, what I need more than anything is to press into the Promise Maker, the Promise Giver, the Promise Keeper, and I must take hold of hope.

It may not make sense—actually, it probably won’t. It didn’t for Abraham.

What good is a promise, he might have asked?

If only he knew what we can know—that a Promise made by this God is as good as done. It may take years, as it did with Abraham, but it will come to pass.

The Greater Son every heart has longed for, Jesus, has been given, and if He was not spared, but God gave Him up for us all, how will He not graciously give you all things?

Friend, take hold of hope today, and don’t let it go.

With that in mind, I wanted to let you know what is happening over the next three weeks here at Mosaic—we’ll be doing a few different things, all of which I believe will be hope-filled for you:

1. This Sunday, we will be taking a one week look only (not three after all) at the incredible book of Ecclesiastes (which will be the final message in our Wisdom series)—don’t let the strange title fool you—this is a book of power and insight into our modern world like no other, and it has an amazing and encouraging message to you today.

2. Next Sunday (the 22nd), we’ll be taking a one week look at the importance of honesty and the power of transparency in our lives and church, and then,

3. the following Sunday (Memorial Day weekend), I’m going to lay out some ways I believe which can help us handle the upcoming election well, in a message called “The Gospel and Politics”. Once upon a time, Jesus was asked who he would vote for, and his answer was, dare I say it—revolutionary, counterintuitive and unbelievably freeing.

How does Jesus’ response to politics shape our lives? How does the central Gospel message keep us out of ditches and keep an eternal view in front of us? That’s what we’ll be looking at.

As a pastor in an amazing church full of incredible people (that’s you!), I am confident we will handle the upcoming national election well and every single one of us will show the watching world what it looks like to love one another and demonstrate confidence and hope in an unshakeable kingdom.

With hope,
Morgan