It’s hard to believe this, but the Holiday season is upon us! Time sure flies when you are having fun! With that comes a new series here within our Spiritual Family. We are calling this series “All I Want for Christmas.” I know we are all excited about Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday…but when we talk about The Holidays, it’s all about Christmas! There is an excitement that builds as we move towards that big day, which typically centers around the presents! Whether you are a young child so excited about what you will open Christmas day or trying to get the right gift for your loved ones, so much of Christmas centers on the gifts. We gather around the Christmas Tree with our loved ones and give and receive gifts. I love watching the children’s faces as they open the gifts these days, and no matter your age or stage of life, I think you may remember those days of staring at the gifts under the tree, so excited to unwrap them or that Christmas when you got that gift you were hoping for. This Holiday Season, we will dive into the greatest gift and gift giver of them all, Jesus Christ—the true reason for the season. As we celebrate Jesus, we will have some fun focusing on the gift that He is and some of the gifts we experience when Jesus leads our lives. This is not a complete list, but we will focus on six powerful and essential gifts that Jesus gives us. Hope, Peace, Joy, Grace, Salvation, and The Holy Spirit.
This week, we are going to discuss the gift of hope. Hope comes up often in our Bibles. In fact, depending on the version of Scripture you read, you can find hope over 120 times in your Bible, and you know what I point out often about Scripture on repeat! It’s a big deal. In Romans, Paul calls God The God of Hope.
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. NIV
I love that, and if you notice, in that one verse, we see four of the gifts we will be talking about in this series. Paul is praying that the God of hope will fill us with all joy and peace…which happens as we trust Him to a place where we are overflowing with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. That sounds awesome and hints at a process we humans walk through that we will discuss in a bit…but when I first started thinking through this concept of hope, a particular moment hit my heart. I wanted to start with it because it is a snapshot of our culture today and starts to help us with how big a deal hope is. This moment is found in the book of Job 8, and it’s one of Job’s friends talking to him as he walks through horrific times in his life.
Job 8:11 Those who forget God have no hope.” TLB
We live in a time when many people forget God and push away from God, and I think we see many people today walking through life with no hope. Our God is the God of Hope, and here we see that those who forget God have no hope. I’m just going to say this, but I believe this describes the human condition here in the times we live in. We forget God and put our hope in other things. We just watched this country go through another election, and I find it heartbreaking how many people put their hope in politics. For some of us, it’s our finances. For others, we put our hope in our own strength or material possessions, or our future hopes, goals, and dreams, but whatever we put our hope in, when it isn’t placed in the God of Hope, we struggle, we won’t find what we are looking for, and a life without hope is sad, empty, and drains what little energy we have from us…that one statement, that those who forget God have no hope is powerful and paints a clear picture of our world today.
So, what is hope? Well, to most of us, when we think about hope, we cross our fingers over something we wish for that may or may not happen. We hope that we will have a nice and peaceful family holiday. We can hope that our team wins. We can hope that our child gets the part in the play or the spot on the team. That’s often what we think of as hope, right? We cross our fingers and hope something happens. But according to Scripture, hope is different. I love this definition. Hope – joyful and confident expectation. That is different. Joyfully and confidently believing or knowing something will happen is different than wishful thinking or forcing ourselves to be optimistic in tough times. What makes hope such a gift is that we can have it and experience it, even when our life circumstances wouldn’t
Ephesians 2:12 In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. NLT
Jesus is the key to hope because, through Him, we no longer live in this world without the God of Hope in our lives; with Him, we live a life of hope. I could spend all day showing you Scriptures that point to the benefits of the gift of hope in our lives…but to make sure we get to our story of the day, I will point out two important things that hope does.
First, hope empowers and energizes us.
Something we all need as we navigate this challenging world we live in. Scripture explains that we gain energy and strength as we hope in the Lord.
Isaiah 40:31 But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. NIV
Second, the gift of hope becomes an anchor for our souls.
This is so important in a world that beats us up and can throw so much at us. We need an anchor to stay on course because we are so opposed, with an enemy doing his best to distract and misdirect us from living our best lives.
Hebrews 6:19 This certain hope of being saved is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls, connecting us with God himself behind the sacred curtains of heaven. TLB
How huge is that in a world that opposes us so greatly? We have this certain hope of being saved because of Jesus. So, I wanted you to see some things about hope today. I wanted you to see how important it is. I wanted you to see what it is and what it isn’t. I wanted to point out that we often place our hope in things of this world, but certain hope (I love that term in Hebrews) can only come from God. I wanted you to see that it’s this gift of hope we have been given from Jesus that brings the energy, strength, focus, and determination needed to navigate life. It also gives us the anchor for our souls to stay in The Truth, connected to God, so we don’t forget Him and lose hope and sight of life as God designed it to be lived! We can joyfully and confidently look forward to that day, which allows us to navigate all that life throws at us and experience our best lives, regardless of our circumstances! Hope truly is a gift.
All of this sounds great to me. We place our hope in God, and we are soaring on eagles’ wings, with energy and strength…but is it really that clean for us? In an ideal world, it sure is and sounds great in a sermon, but if we get honest here today, life is hard, and we can struggle to trust what is happening around us. We can feel challenged in this hope department, can’t we? Well, that is why hope and faith are tied so closely together.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. NIV
Let’s face it: this all sounds fantastic on paper, but it is a challenge to live out or truly experience in our lives, so how do we find this hope and truly experience this gift? To answer that, we will learn from Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the process she walks through, a process that can help us so much as we navigate life. So, let’s set the scene here. The children of Israel are living in a very hopeless time. It’s been over 400 years since they have heard anything from God…think about that for a moment. They had all these prophets pointing to a savior who would come and free them and give them a better life. That news and those proclamations (when they paid attention to them) would be so hopeful! But it’s been well over 400 years, and nothing but silence. Hope would fade after a few hundred years, wouldn’t it? Now, out of the silence, an angel appears to a young girl with THE message of hope. Let’s read this story, and then we can stop and point out some things from Mary processing this information.
Luke 1:26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” 34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her. NIV
Today is probably not the first time you have heard this story, but I don’t want you to miss what is happening here. Mary is living in a dark and hopeless time. All the promises God made through those prophets of old of a Savior to come were ancient history at this point, and the people were living under the brutality of the Roman Empire. They had to question so many things. These are not hopeful times. And out of this silence, an angel comes to Mary with this powerfully hope-filled announcement of God’s plan to save us! So, what kind of emotions do you think this young girl is going through? Scripture shows us how she processed this. We can relate to it and learn a ton from it! So, let’s look at how Mary works through this intense yet hopeful message from God!
First, make no mistake: Mary is greatly afraid and has much to process here, and the angel helps calm her down.
Luke 1:28 Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” 29 Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30 “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! NLT
Just like Mary, there are moments in our lives when life is hitting; God is in it fully and may even lead us to challenging and intense things. And just like this young mother of The Savior of The Universe, we will go through many emotions. Fear, confusion, and many questions God may or may not answer! So, we can find comfort in those emotions, which means we are human! The angel announced, “The Lord is with you. You have found favor with God,” then explained that she would conceive and bear a Son named Jesus, who would be great and reign forever. Wow, this is it! But the fact is that she had to have something else before she could experience this gift of hope. She had to have faith. She had to believe the Word of God. She had to believe and trust it, which allowed her to experience hope. Faith and hope go hand in hand. Remember in Hebrews how tightly hope and faith are with each other. We need to remember this hope isn’t based on our emotions but on our confidence in the Word of God. Hope is the anchor to our soul; we don’t anchor to our emotions but to God’s Truth, His Word! That’s important because our emotions will go up and down. God’s Word is the consistent truth we anchor to as we navigate life. Now, even with faith…she still has questions. And if you think about it, she has so much to navigate here.
Luke 1:29 Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30 “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God!…34 Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” NLT
Remember, this hope we have is a confident expectation for God to do what He says He will do, and while we all want it…it is hard to get there. It’s hard to trust God, especially when things seem too intense, hopeless, or, in Mary’s case, completely impossible! I mean, a virgin can’t have a baby, let alone be carrying God’s Son…not to mention how she has to break this news to her fiancé and then eventually to everyone else…in Scripture, we see her afraid and then ask a question. I think we would all have many questions for God on this one. We need to grasp the whole scene because we haven’t had the same encounter with an angel. From the moment Gabriel addressed her as the favored one, she was confused. She didn’t understand why the angel addressed her in this way. She wasn’t a prophet. She had heard of the prophets of old and likely heard many of the prophecies, but there was no reason for her to expect to hear a word from God. Not only that, but she seemed to be the most unlikely candidate. Why would God choose her of all the people on the earth? Why would He refer to her as the favored one? And to know that God was with her, that was amazing. For 400 years, God had been silent. Why should she believe he is there and speaking now? I mean, there was little reason to have confidence because none of it made sense…how would it? I think she did what any of us would do. She started trying to make sense of it. Her question seems to be the right question! She was wrestling with trusting God on something that seemed impossible, and I want you to see that we do this, too. Hope is awesome! Then, we start thinking about how we can make things happen. We may not have an angel give us an incredible message like Mary is processing here, but we deal with this, too. You have this joyful and confident hope in life and have moments where you know God is all over things in your life, but then, life hits, and things take turns we don’t see coming. We run into difficulty and pain. We know God has us, but we also wonder why we walk through these things. Why isn’t life coming together in a way that makes more sense? We can ask the same question Mary did: How can this be? Life is so hard, and life with people is even harder. Often, we find ourselves in challenging, painful, or just big moments trying to figure out how it will all work out, just like Mary here…and if we aren’t careful, we can lose that joyful, confident hope that allows us to live our best lives possible. What is beautiful in those moments is something else we see in this story. That God actually can and does help us with that. He gives her some reassurance or proof that He is in this moment with…did you see that? He does this with us, too.
Luke 1:35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. 36 What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she’s now in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God.” NLT
God shows Mary proof that if she can open her heart and mind to it, it can help her trust His Word and plan here, allowing her to walk in the gift of hope. Her cousin Elizabeth was an old woman who could not have a child, and now she is pregnant with Jesus’ cousin John The Baptist. You know, God does this for us too. He shows Himself to us and gives us proof that He is with us along the way…yet so often, we aren’t paying attention or just aren’t aware enough to see and be strengthened by those moments. Please think about this and ask yourself this question. How has God proven Himself to you? What things has He done in your life to remind you that He is capable of anything? We may not always see Him in things, and we may not always understand what He is up to, but if we are watching and aware, God does give us glimpses to see Him in our lives, which gives us peace that we are on the right track. But to see it, we not only need to slow down, but we must be so connected to God that our hearts and minds are open to Him…and when we see those glimmers of Him in this world, we should thank Him for them. They are hope-strengthening moments and reassure us that God is with us. Those moments are taking place, pray for eyes to see, and a ready heart to experience them, and when you see them, take the moment to thank God for them. Those moments are a gift of pure love from Him…because He doesn’t have to do that, but He does to help us along the way. They help us see what Mary now sees and remembers, that nothing is impossible with God…even when it feels impossible, it isn’t. So, we have watched Mary go through quite a process here. It started with fear and the emotions of standing before an Angel of the Lord. Then the confusion and questions as God lays out His plan…a plan that didn’t make much logical sense and had to feel intimidating and confusing. Then God lovingly shows her proof that He is truly with her. But the most awesome part of this, is how Mary responds to this whole thing.
Luke 1:38 Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her. NLT
I love how she responded. Mary trusts God and surrenders to the Lord. None of her logical questions and fears have been resolved here. The angel didn’t explain it to her. God just basically said, I’m in it with you. She doesn’t know how people will treat her for being pregnant out of wedlock. She doesn’t know how Joseph is going to respond. She doesn’t know why she was chosen or how to raise the Savior of The Universe. All she knew was that God was leading her, and she trusted Him and chose to follow His will for her life. What a powerful example for us to follow! She heard, believed, and surrendered herself completely to God’s will, which leads to a question we need to ask ourselves today. Could you do that? Can you trust God and His Word? Can you surrender and follow God even when things don’t make sense? Could you move forward without every single question being answered that you would have? Mary did walk through all the emotions and questions we would have, but in the end, she chose to follow God’s Will, and because of her faith, trust, and hope in God, we now have this incredible gift of certain hope through Jesus.
Through Jesus, we receive incredible gifts, but maybe none is more empowering and energizing than the gift of hope. We can walk through life with this joyful, confident expectation of what lies ahead, which is awesome. As we close today, please consider and truly personalize a few questions.
Do you walk in this gift of hope? Maybe you are feeling hopeless in this world today. Why is that? Have you thought about it? What do you place your hope in? Is it God or something from this world?
I wanted you to see how important the gift of hope is in our lives. When we place our hope in God, we gain strength, are energized, and have the very thing our soul needs to be anchored to as we push through all that life throws at us. That is important because life is so hard, and we will have many things to navigate. We looked at the most hopeful news ever given and how Mary processed it all, which can learn so much from this courageous young Mary here.
So, what situations are you facing where it may be hard to trust God or even see what He is up to? Do you find yourself questioning God? Wondering, like Mary did, how can this all be? When you look at life, could God be trying to show you proof of what He is up to?
God will reveal glimpses of Himself, but you must be open and ready to see. Pray about this, and ask God for eyes to see. God loves and is with you, and He is showing that to you; you need to recognize it! In the end, remember that hope and faith go hand in hand, and while you may never have all the answers or ever see the clear way through, our job is to trust God and to surrender to Him, living in and empowered by this amazing gift of hope we experience as we walk with Him through it all.