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Living Hope SDA Church

Christian Martin

How to Find Hope When It is Lost?

The message of that song spoke to my heart.

Jesus, I long to be with you in your kingdom.

And I pray that that is our desire and our prayer.

And as we open the word of God today, I trust that God will have a word of encouragement, A word of hope for all of us here today.

So with that in mind, let's bow our heads together as we pray.

Our Father in heaven, thank you that you got us out of bed this morning.

Thank you that we can see the light of a new day.

And thank you that we can encounter you on your Holy Sabbath.

As we open the word of God, we pray, Lord, that it would speak to us powerfully as well as gently and personally.

For we know, Lord, that you are an intimate God who knows us more than we know ourselves.

And so we pray, Lord, that you would speak to us through your word, and we thank you in Jesus' name.

The year was 2018, and the story captivated the intention of the world.

The youth soccer team's name was the Wild Boars.

It was a team composed of 13 boys, ages 11 to 16, and their coach, 25-year-old coach, and they set out to explore the longest cave in the country of Thailand.

But they became trapped in a small chamber about 2 and a half miles deep into the cave.

2 weeks after heavy rains had quickly flooded all the passages leading to the point where they were.

None, None of the 13 boys and their coach, members of the soccer team, had any diving experience and most of them could not even swim.

Trapped, scared, terrified, It doesn't take much to feel hopeless.

Take for instance, Toni Williams, with tears in her eyes.

She recalls her time in the hospital with COVID-19.

She said, I was hooked up to everything known to man and was just left there, was just left there.

1 of the toughest parts for her was the isolation.

I don't think, she said, I'll ever get over the emotional drama it did to me.

Alone and emotionally desperate, She lost hope.

And then there's others like Daniel, a young man, a different story but the same cry.

You see Daniel is a black student at Butler College and he attended his first protest on June 6th where he shared these words, we just want to be treated equally, we don't want more, we just want equality, I shouldn't have to flinch every time I hear sirens.

I shouldn't have to worry about being arrested if I want to go out on a walk.

I shouldn't have to worry about matching the police description.

But unfortunately, all these things and much more are a reality for me and many black people in America.

And for many, it's been lost for a long time, as it was for John.

He would stay home as often as he could, more often than coming to church.

Where I was a pastor there in the state of Michigan.

He often stayed behind a closed bedroom door in his house several hours a day.

Other members of the church family would visit him at times and they would all come back with the same story.

Pastor, we spent hours with John but we made little or no progress.

If he said it once, he said it several times.

For many today, it may not be trapped under miles of rock, but deep in the pit of depression.

It's just as dark and it's just as despairing For others that I may be talking to today, you may not be alone in a hospital due to a virus, but you're all alone due to fear and you feel hopeless.

Many wake up in the morning realizing that their worst nightmares were not bad dreams, but a reality treated unjustly because of their skin pigmentation.

It's a feeling mixed with loss, fear, and deflated dreams.

It's a common feeling in the heart of humanity, in the heart of the human race.

Because we live in a world that's under the sway of the enemy.

We live in a world where the enemy has 1 agenda, and that is to steal, kill, and destroy.

And he will do whatever it takes to steal hope from our hearts by speaking lies to us, and then killing our faith, our trust in God, leading us to destroy our confidence in Him, in God, and in ourselves.

Hopelessness is a far too common emotion to far too many people.

How can 1 provide hope to the 1 who so desperately needs it?

We're often surrounded by people that need hope so much in their life.

What is the best way to be able to offer hope?

Is it directing people to websites where they can find content that will respond to their greatest need?

Is it another YouTube presentation that we can direct them to?

Do we as the church by default end up educating, informing, transmitting information?

Lots of information to get out into a world that needs hope.

So let's share, let's share everything we know, Let's share everything we have.

Let's take hundreds of glow tracks and place them across the country, all over our community.

Let's leave stacks of them in public rest areas.

Let's do whatever it takes to get the word out that there is hope.

As a pastor, for nearly 20 years now, If I've heard it once, I've heard it many times.

Let's go sharing things that people need.

Implying that we have content that needs to be put out so that people can find hope.

So we have ShareHymn, we have Hope Channel, we have 3ABN, we have Hopelifts365, we have hundreds, hundreds of sharing books and glow tracks, we have all sorts of materials to share, to share.

You know I typed that word share on an internet search engine and you know what I found?

I got over a billion, yeah a billion hits on the word share.

No doubt there's definitely a lot of sharing going on.

Sure, they have the content and the information they need on hand.

If transmitting information is all we do, and by transmitting information I mean putting content out there, transferring content, putting it out so that people will find it.

If that's all we do, we're missing something profoundly necessary.

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How to Find Hope When It is Lost?

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