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Plymouth-Sorrento SDA Church

Ralph Henderson

Holding On To Hope

Our loving Father in heaven, Lord this morning I come before your throne and I'm lifting up my prayer in behalf of this church.

Lord, you know everyone that walked through those doors this morning.

You know every circumstance, you know every trial, you know every struggle, you know every difficulty, you know every discouragement.

Lord, you know those times when we don't quite have the faith for the victory.

And you know those times when we hold on until the showers of blessing come.

Today, Lord, I'm just praying that you'll be with each 1 of us here.

How much we need you in our hearts and in our minds.

And Lord, above all things, help us to be able to put aside all the rubbish of the daily life, all the worries, the cares, the trials, those things that cause so much anxiety and stress, and help us just now to be able to focus upon you, to listen to your word and to understand the blessing you long to give us on this special day that you gave.

So we pray that you would be in our midst.

We ask that you would touch our hearts because we ask it In Jesus' name, amen.

This morning we are going to talk about holding on to hope.

And this morning as I was sitting in our Sabbath school class and as we went through the various days and topics, it became more and more evident to me how much we need Jesus in our lives.

And then as I sat here and I listened to the prayer request, it became even more evident to me of how much we need Jesus.

But it also comes to my mind that 1 of the devil's greatest tools is discouragement.

He wants to discourage us from being faithful to God.

He wants to discourage us from trusting in God.

He wants to discourage us from believing in God.

And he mainly wants to discourage us from holding on to God.

This morning I want to talk to you about holding on to hope.

Because We live in a world that is filled with hopelessness.

Holding on to hope when everything around us seems impossible.

I want to challenge you today to have hope instead of despair.

And I want you to turn with me to our text for today, Lamentations chapter 3.

And while you're going there, I want to remind you of 2 things.

I'm going to ask you to read along with me, because it's vitally important that you see the Word, that you hear the Word, and then that you repeat the Word.

And so today I'm going to ask you, because as we go through this message today, you are going to be joining me as at times we will repeat the words of Jeremiah.

Lamentations chapter 3, beginning in verse 21.

This I recall to my mind, Therefore have I hope.

It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not.

The Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in him.

You see, hope is to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence, to believe, to desire, to trust, a person or thing in which expectations are centered.

And Jeremiah said, my hope, my expectations are centered in the Lord.

This morning as you came through those doors, were your hopes and your expectations centered in the Lord?

Or were you even thinking about the Lord?

Were you overwhelmed by everything else that's going on in your life?

I read some interesting quotes on hope this week.

1 said, hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.

But the 1 that I liked the best was this 1.

Some see a hopeless end while others see an endless hope.

You know, we're going to look at 3 illustrations from Scripture today.

The first 1 you will find, and if you want to turn your Bibles there, it's in Luke, chapter 15.

I'm not going to be reading the verses, but Luke, chapter 15, the story begins in verse 11.

Jesus tells the parable of the father and the 2 sons.

And you know, this story, I believe, every 1 of us relates to in 1 way or another because my Bible says that all we like sheep have gone astray, each 1 seeking his own way.

You can imagine what it must have been like for him growing up, the prodigal son, as a young man.

He was growing up in an affluent home and he had pretty much everything that a boy could want or ask for.

But like many of us, as we got into our teens and maybe into our early 20s, we felt like home was too confining, too restrictive.

For those of you that have kids, you may refer to it as I did, and that's called busting out at the stalls.

We got to get out on our own because we're tired of everybody else telling us what to do.

We want to go and tell somebody else what to do.

And so This young man came up with a great idea and he went to his father, as you know, and he told his father, look, I've got an inheritance coming to me and I want to take it now because I want to go out and make my way in the world.

Now I'm sure that his father loved him very much.

And I'm sure that his father probably sat down and tried to reason with him.

But you know, when you're a young man, sometimes you don't think your parents know very much.

Maybe you remember that little saying, when I was 14, I didn't think my father knew anything.

When I was 21 I was surprised how much he learned in 7 years.

But the case is true that as we grow up we have this this insatiable need to get out from under somebody else's rule.

And he wanted to make his way in the world.

He said, look, give me my inheritance now, so that I can go out and make my way in the world.

And I'm sure that father did everything in his power to counsel him and to give him wisdom.

And I'm sure that as he left that home with all of those goods, his father said, beware, you're a young man, Don't let people deceive you.

Don't let false friends come up and take what you have.

The Bible says very clearly that he went into another land and he squandered away all of his living.

And here he was trying to figure out how he would even survive, and he finds himself actually working now for someone else in a very lowly position feeding the pigs.

Now you know I know every 1 of us in this room has jobs that we don't like to do.

But you know sometimes we have to do things that we don't like to do because as we do those things we are learning a lesson from God and that boy didn't realize it but as he was sitting there feeding the swine and living with the swine and recognizing his helplessness, suddenly the Bible says in verse 17 of Luke chapter 11 that he came to himself.

You know what it means when you come to yourself.

But what came to him as he came to himself was he began to look at his situation in life and he realized that the way I am right now, the circumstance that I am in today, I have put myself in this place and my situation is hopeless.

Suddenly He began to realize that what he thought was restriction was love.

What he thought was confinement was wisdom.

And he began to realize how much his father loved him.

But what an embarrassment that would be to go home and to try to come back.

That's where he forgot what his father's love was really like.

But he decided that he would go back and he would just say, Father, look, I have sinned against God and against you.

And so he began that long trek back down that road, that dusty road that led back to his home, thinking that he was going to have to somehow figure out a way to get them just to allow him on the property, and what a surprise it was when as he's walking down that dusty road, I picture him hot, his clothes are looking pretty bad, ragged and torn and dirty.

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Holding On To Hope

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