Sermon by Pastor Mark Finley at the Living Hope Seventh-day Adventist Church. Hope is Pastor Mark’s specialty. Listen and be inspired.

<p>Sermon by Pastor Mark Finley at the Living Hope Seventh-day Adventist Church. Hope is Pastor Mark’s specialty. Listen and be inspired.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

HopeLives365

Mark Finley

How to Face 2022 With Hope

I looked at a recent survey from Chapman University that revealed that Americans today are living in a culture of fear.

Fear of dying of COVID-19, or 1 of the variants of Delta or Omicron.

The fear of dying of a heart attack or a cancer.

Health fears dominate our list of fears of Americans in 2000 and 2021.

An interesting fact that if you're not aware of is extremely significant and it's this.

For the first time in history, today's children will live shorter lives than their parents.

For the first time in history, our kids growing up will have shorter lifespans if trends continue than their parents.

Now, Americans' fears also include civil unrest, the fear of economic collapse, the fear of natural disaster, And these are legitimate concerns.

Let's review just a few of the concerns of 2021 and that have bridged over into 2022.

Of course, If you have 1 eye half open and sand in the other eye, if you're half asleep, you recognize that COVID-19 has really dominated the news cycle in 2021.

There have been 281 million cases confirmed around the world, 5, 400, 000 some odd deaths.

Of course, in March of 2020, vaccines were authorized and that generated incredible debates across America, debates on whether the vaccines were efficacious, whether there's safety.

Now we're hearing about new strains of Delta virus, Omicron, that seems to be spreading so rapidly.

I mean, names we never heard of before, and hospitals seem to be overflowing and people are dying.

But then there's the problem of civil unrest in our society.

You think back on January 6, 2020, American capital breached, 5 people died, 700 now have been arrested.

16 of America's cities have had more homicides than this last year than ever before in American history.

We've had 28, 000 homicides in America in 2020.

Now I want you to put that in perspective.

If you take the 20-year war in Afghanistan and all its deaths, and you take the Iraq war and you put those deaths of Americans together, you get 7, 000.

But yet in our cities, in 1 year, Last year, in American cities, we had 28, 000 homicides, murders, deaths.

So, when you look at that fact, crime is skyrocketing.

34 school shootings have taken place last year.

I mean, you'd expect to send your kids to school and at least they would be safe where?

A shooting on November 30th, you remember that, in Oxford, Michigan.

Deadliest school shooting, 4 kids killed, 7 injured.

I mean, I never heard that term, smash and grab robberies.

Gangs approaching high-end apartment stores, like these jewelry stores, people coming with crowbars and smashing the jewelry cases, and over Thanksgiving weekend, $338, 000 stolen.

Now, the fears of Americans, our health, our cities, rising crime, school, I mean, you can understand, you read the statistics, and if you didn't read the book, your heart would be shaking for fear as well, right?

But many people are concerned about our national debt.

The economists that I talk to, bankers that I talk to, tell me that our economy is on a slender thread and it's about ready to collapse.

We're on the verge of possibly another recession or depression.

In February, just to show you how quickly things can change, in February, there was a ship going through the Panama Canal called the Ever Given, it was a massive cargo ship, it had 1, 800 containers on it.

It blocks the Panama Canal, 400 other ships are stuck and it costs the economy 60 billion dollars in an instant, like that.

I mean this whole economy could fall apart so quickly.

Our supply chain is blocked, consumer goods are rising, price of gasoline and food prices have skyrocketed and house prices are through the roof.

You talk about a society that is filled with fear, then there are challenges on the international front.

You look at Iran, Iraq, nuclear weaponry, North Korea, China, the China-Taiwan problem, Russia on the borders of the Ukraine, 100, 000 troops.

That's not even to consider natural disasters.

Deadly tornadoes in America's southwest, massive fires in our west, historic flooding and typhoons in China, life-threatening cyclones in devastating Asia, fiery volcanic eruptions in the southern hemisphere, fierce winter storms in the northeast, and unprecedented hurricanes in the south.

I mean 2021, you step back and take a deep breath and say wow, what a year!

Wouldn't you agree with me that the thing we need most today is a fresh dose of hope?

We can face the future, not with hearts filled with fear, but hearts filled with hope.

Although challenging times are coming, whatever challenges we must go through, whatever heartaches we must face, whatever hardships we must endure, whatever sorrows we must experience, we can live life today because of hope, a hope that burns in our hearts.

I was thinking about President of the United States, Franklin D.

He served America in 1 of the most challenging times.

We're just coming out of a deep depression.

And Roosevelt actually had his own challenges.

He was paralyzed by polio, unable to walk.

And there's the words he wrote that we can place on the screen.

Roosevelt once wrote these words, we have always held to hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world beyond the horizon.

Something better than sickness, disease, heartache, and death.

Something better than the fear of economic collapse or the fear of nuclear war or crime in our cities.

You know, Albert Einstein made this amazing statement.

And Einstein said, learn from today, learn from yesterday, Live for today, but hope for tomorrow.

There's that hope, that's the Christian hope, the hope for tomorrow that we have.

A Queen, Alfred Lord Tennyson, popular English poet during the reign of Queen Victoria said this, hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering it will be happier.

We have that hope as Christians, it just burns in our heart.

I was interested in an atheist, what does an atheist have to hope for?

And John Paul Sartre, a very famous atheist, put it this way.

I hope I shall die in hope, but hope needs a foundation.

If you don't have a foundation for your hope, you're going to fall apart in crisis.

The Bible presents a solid foundation for hope.

Hope is mentioned in the Bible depending on the translation of the Bible you read between 141 and 181 times.

We use hope as a very interesting in our society.

I ask a student, how did you do on your final exam?

I mean, it's kind of this kind of flimsy, superficial, vain wish.

A family goes on, plans to go on a picnic, and I say, you're gonna go on a picnic?

Yeah, it's just kind of this superficial thing you know it's kind of like well it's this sanctified doubt you know.

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How to Face 2022 With Hope

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