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Living Hope SDA Church

Christian Martin

How to Keep Hope Alive

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

As were many survivors amid the devastation caused by the powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

The deadliest disaster in Turkey's modern history.

Modern history, bringing the overall death toll in both Turkey and Syria of the latest I heard to over 43, 000.

And at the same time, stories of survivors found in the rubble are not a few.

1 such story of amazing grace is that of a newborn baby girl.

The story reported that residents digging through a collapsed building in northwest Syrian town discovered a crying infant whose mother appears to have given birth to her wild buried underneath the rubble.

The newborn's umbilical cord was still connected to her mother who was found dead.

The newborn baby was rescued Monday afternoon and was found more than 10 hours after the earthquake struck.

The doctor said if the girl had been born just before the quake, or found just an hour later, she wouldn't have survived due to the cold temperatures.

After dust and rocks were removed, the newborn baby girl was found alive in front of her mother's legs.

Another amazing story is that of Mert Sahin, A 19-year-old university student.

It felt just like another Monday morning, he recalls, as he was lying on his bed watching an Amazon Prime series on his phone, when suddenly his world shook to the core, literally.

Mert had been staying a few days with his grandparents.

They lived in the second story of a five-story building.

And what felt like an eternity only lasted a few seconds, but the devastation was devastating.

Without warning, he recalls, he felt the floor cave in.

The crumbling and tumbling of cement rumbled all around him, when all of a sudden, it became eerily quiet.

He was unable to move due to a stone column that was pinned down at the waist.

Not knowing that both of his grandparents had been instantly killed in the collapse of the building, he found himself helplessly at the mercy of rescue specialists.

Yet something, something kept hope alive in Mert's heart.

My message today is entitled, How to Keep Hope Alive.

Father in heaven, we're going to pause as we examine the Word of God.

Yes, stories of amazing grace are heard often, inspiring us, giving us hope, but we live in a world that is constantly experiencing unexpected pain.

And this world makes it very hard to have hope.

And so we ask, Lord, that you would just draw near and speak to our hearts.

So we ask the question how to keep hope alive.

You know I remember the day I officially enrolled as a student missionary at Southern Adventist University.

I was destined to be a missionary, a student missionary, because I was born and raised in the mission field.

I lived in Central America and El Salvador, Honduras when I was a toddler.

It was in my bones and I was excited to finally be a student missionary after 2 years of college.

I felt called for there was a hope that was burning in my heart.

Well I had originally enlisted to go to Papua New Guinea and that was exciting because you know I heard all the mission stories and the jungles of Papua New Guinea were so appealing to me.

And through a series of divine interventions, I ended up with a visa and an airline ticket to India instead.

Ended up going to India, a country of a population of 1.4 billion people.

And there I was excited to be a missionary, to take a message of hope to the people of India.

To make a long story short, it only took 1 conversation, just 1, with John Baxter, career missionary at that time in the mid-90s, to realize that the strategy that would make a difference among billions of people would only consist of a very simple step.

It would not mean opening a radio station, a local radio station, no.

It would not be recording TV programs, nope.

It would not be a massive literature campaign.

But John, I remember saying, John, we need to get the word out.

You know how much hopelessness there's in India, John.

Out of all people you should know A never-ending cycle of reincarnations through many heavens and hells based on whether you do good or bad.

That can lead to a state of despair, John.

He was such a man of wisdom, just listening.

He said, Christian, people in India don't care how much you know.

And I asked myself, if they don't care how much I know, what would it take for them to care?

What is it going to take for them to care?

Here we are over 25 years later, living in a different place, same world, and the bottom line is this, that it's a question that we do well to ask ourselves in our very own communities.

It is a conclusion that you and I need to make ourselves.

Just ask an ostracized outcast, a bloody bruised demon possessed man.

Just ask a poor blind beggar and they will tell you.

Such a ragtag group of Bible characters, for sure, but the very kind of people that Jesus loved.

Let's take a closer look to get our answer.

In the Gospel of John, John chapter 4, if you have your Bibles I invite you to to just Go to these passages, go to these verses, for there we're going to just take a closer look at, yes, well-known stories, but we're going to take a look at what was happening behind the scenes.

In John chapter 4, we find a woman living in sin, straight out.

Just to give an idea, Without going into the details, because the details aren't in the story.

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How to Keep Hope Alive

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