AT THE END OF YOUR ROPE,

HANG ON TO YOUR HOPE

What are we to do when all that is good falls apart?  What do we do when illness invades, marriages fail, children suffer and death strikes?

Max Lucado states in For These Tough Times, Reaching Toward Heaven for Hope and Healing: “ In our toughest times we may see what the followers of Christ saw on the cross.  Innocence was slaughtered. Goodness murdered. Heaven’s tower of strength pierced.  Mothers wept. Evil danced, and the apostles had to wonder, when all that is good falls apart, what can good people do? God answered their question with a declaration.  With the rumble of the earth and the rolling of the rock, He reminded them, “the LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD sits on His throne in heaven. And today, we must remember. He is still in His Temple, still on His throne, and He is still in control.  And He still makes princes out of prisoners, counselors out of captives, and Sundays out of Fridays.  What He did then, He will do still.  It falls to us to ask Him to do so.”

“When all that good falls apart, what can good people do? The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD SITS on His throne in Heaven.”  Psalm 11:3-4 (NCV)

David’s point in this scripture is unmistakable:  God is unaltered by our storms.  He is undeterred by our problems.  God is not frightened by our problems.  He is in His holy temple.  He is on His throne in heaven.  Buildings may fall, careers may crumble, but God does not.  Wreckage and rubble have never discouraged Him.  God has always turned tragedy into triumph.

Did He not do so with Joseph?  Look at Joseph in the Egyptian prison.  His brothers have sold him out; Potiphar’s wife has turned him in.  If ever a world has caved in, Joseph’s has.  Or consider Moses, watching flocks in the wilderness.  Is this what he intended to do with his life?  His heart beats with Jewish blood.  His passion is to lead the slaves, so why does God have him leading sheep?

Daniel was among the brightest and best young men of Israel, the equivalent of a West Point cadet or Ivy Leager.  But he and his entire generation are being marched out of Jerusalem.  The city is destroyed.    The temple is in ruins.

Joseph in prison, Moses in the desert, Daniel in chains, these were dark moments.  But remember Joseph became the Prime Minister of Egypt. Moses led God’s people through the wilderness to the promised  land, and Daniel became the king’s counselor.

God’s love will never fail us in our hard and tough times.   “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?  Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity or are persecuted, or hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death?  (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day, we are being slaughtered just like sheep).”  Romans 8:35-36 (NLT)

These words were written to a church that would soon undergo terrible persecution.  In just a few years, Paul’s hypothetical situations would turn into painful realities.  This passage reaffirms God’s profound love for His people.  No matter what happens to us, no matter where we are, we can never be separated from His love.  Suffering should not drive us away from God but help us to identify with Him and allow His love to heal us.

“No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.  And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.  Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.  No power in the sky above or in the earth below, indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 8:37-39 (NLT)

These verses contain one of the most comforting promises in all Scriptures.  Believers have always had to face hardships in many forms:  persecution, illness, imprisonment, and even death.  These sometimes have caused them to fear that they have been abandoned by Christ, and have lost their hope.  But Paul exclaims that is impossible to be separated from Christ.  His death for us in proof of His unconquerable love and nothing can separate us from Christ’s presence.  God tells us how great His love is so that we will be totally secure in Him.  If we believe these overwhelming assurances, we will not be afraid or lose our hope.

We are never at the end of our hope.  “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed.  We are perplexed, but not driven to despair.  We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God.  We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.  Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.  Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies.  So we live in the face of death, but this has resulted in eternal life for you.”  II Corinthians 4:8-18 (NLT)

Paul reminds us, that though we may think we are at the end of our hope, we are never at the end of our rope.  Our perishable bodies are subject to sin and suffering, but God never abandons us.  Because Christ has won the victory over death, we have eternal life.  All our risk, humiliations and trials are opportunities for Christ to demonstrate His power and presence in and through us.

Our ultimate hope when we are experiencing terrible illness, persecution or pain is the realization that this life is not all there is.  There is life after death.  Knowing that we will live forever with God in a place without sin and suffering can help us live above the pain that we face in this life.

One final promise in Psalm 11:7: “For the Lord is righteous, and he loves justice.  Those who do right will see His face.”

That is our great promise.  No matter what we go through on this earth, when things seem to crumble around us, we are going to see His face, and as I said in last week’s blog, when we see His face, we will be just like Jesus.  Praise the Lord!

Pastor Sharon