ARE
you walking around in functional unbelief because you do not treasure the Great
News and joy in your heart?
That’s the question and point one of
our pastors raised with us during his Christmas Day sermon. And it demands a
lot of thought and prayer. A passage in the Bible says that we are always to be
ready to give an explanation for the joy and hope that reside within us, but if
we don’t look, speak, and talk like we’re hopeful, what’s anyone going to ask
us about? We won’t look any different than the world, and they’ll think we’re
in the same sorry shape they’re in mentally, physically, spiritually, or
emotionally—or worse! So what kind of advice could we give them?
In a message Dr. Norman Vincent
Peale gave on New Year’s in 1987, he drew attention to Hope, something we rang
out 2016 discussing. But it’s worth a spillover visit on this second day of
2017. Why? Because Hope has so much potential to change hearts and lives. It’s
something we can possess, and it’s something we can offer to others, along with
Christ’s love. And hope is something no one can live without. As Dr. Peale
pointed out, “Hope is a dynamic force, a concept full of power. It can bring
the weak back to strength. It can bring the sick back to health. It can turn
failure into success. No wonder Saint Paul included it as one of the three
great principles of Christianity: faith, hope and love.”
So how are you doing on the hope
meter? Are you somewhere in the middle, off the charts high or ground level
low? Dr. Peale asks pointed questions to help you figure out how much hope
guides and sustains you. He asks, “Does it get up with you every morning? Does
it carry you confidently through the day? Is it still there, soothing and
sustaining you, as you fall asleep? If cares and worries and fears and
discouragement have gained ascendancy in your mind, then you need to open the
windows of your soul and let a strong, fresh current of hope come surging
through.”
Treasuring the Great News and joy in
your heart helps nurture hope. If you believe the Great News, and the joy of
it pervades your heart, you can’t help but possess hope. It comes with the
territory.
Did you make a list of New Year’s
resolutions yesterday? A list of things you’re “going to do” this year to make
your life better, more successful, more satisfying? How many lists have you
made in the past? Have you been successful in keeping them, or have they fizzled
away by the end of January? And were they more wishes than hopes.
While statistics show that people
who write down their goals have a greater chance of succeeding with them, just
writing down the goals—which end up being wishes, really—without writing down
the specifics of how they’ll be attained, doesn’t work very well. And they have
to be real, gut-felt “wannas.” Those things you really want to do, not just talk about and
wish happen to you.
Dr. Peale drove that point home when
he said, “Wishing is weak. It’s even faintly negative, because when you say, “I
wish,” it usually means you don’t believe the wish will come true. But when you
hope—really hope—then a magic ingredient comes into play. That ingredient is expectancy. Expectancy says, ‘This
desired outcome can happen. I think it’s going to happen. Right now it may be
just a dream, but it’s a realizable dream.’ When you start hoping instead of
just wishing, then expectation is stirring in you.”
In a book I bought my younger son
for Christmas some years ago, The
Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life, author Ben
Sherwood recounts a multitude of true stories of survivors and non-survivors
and the attitudes and behaviors that helped decide the different outcomes. They’re
stories of hope, purpose, guts, determination, miracles, and prayer that
changed things. They’re eye opening, and convicting. I found myself asking,
“Would I have fared so well in that circumstance, or would I have given up and
resigned myself to my presumed fate?”
Dr. Peale noted that Paul summed it
all up in Romans 8:24 when he wrote: “For we are saved by hope…” And as hope
and expectation get intermixed with your faith, and the conviction you have in
your belief, you cannot be defeated. As Paul goes on to say in the same chapter
of Romans, in verse 39: “No [problems] fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m
absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic,
today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing
can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has
embraced us. (The Message)
Dr. Peale also showed the wisdom of
his years when he pointed out: “I have lived a long time now, and have known
and observed many people through the years. And I maintain that the nearer a
person comes to the Savior, the more hope he or she has. You just cannot live
with Jesus Christ and be defeated. You cannot live with him and say, “Tomorrow
is not going to be any good.” Because he is the Lord of the tomorrows.”
So how is your “tomorrow” looking
today? How is your New Year already stacking up in your mind? Is it full of
promise and hope or just the same-old same old?
If you want your tomorrow to look
up, remember who walks beside you, guiding, loving, teaching. If we want our
year, and lives, to be vessels of overflowing hope, I think the first place all
of us need to start is by turning over our hearts—not just pieces of them but
all them—to the One who fashioned them and knows how they work. We can change
the outcome of this New Year by first becoming like children, possessing the
simple faith that says, “I can and will give you my heart, God, because you
know it better than I do, you know what to do with it, and I trust you.”
And that’s the only resolution I can
recommend to you as we start 2017. Because when we abandon our hearts
completely to Him, life looks and functions better. We’re better able to make a
list of attainable goals that He has placed in our hearts. We’ll go forward in
faith and hope that He is with us and will never forsake us, even if the world
does.
We will be treasuring the Great News
in our hearts and walking around in functional belief, hope, and joy that
others will notice and be changed by. We will know and act with humble
assurance that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Love others can possess, too. And they’ll want to when they witness our lives
of functional belief and hope.
May 2017 be the year you turn your
whole heart over to the One who loves you unfailingly and loves you most, and
may it be your best year yet!
____________________________________
So, until next Monday, may your heart
overflow with love, because love hopes all things!
Blessings,
Andrea
May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your
soul prospers (3 John 2).
For the complete Dr. Norman Vincent Peale article, “Let Hope
Light Your Way,” see the January 2017 issue of Guideposts magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment