One Hope_pt1: Hope In Christ
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There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
“Just as you were called to one hope”
What is this hope we’ve been called to?
Are we all called to the same hope?
What do we hope for? What do you hope for?
Think of 1 big thing you are hoping for
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Thomas’ cry is not unlike all of us - and not just believers, but all people.
I don’t know where to go!
I don’t know what to do!
[PAYOFF] - Is there any hope???...
Jesus is the hope
Jesus is the hope
This month, we are studying hope.
The world needs hope.
It looks for hope in many places.
It will not find hope, outside of Jesus.
Hope in Christ
Hope in Christ
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Phil
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
We lose hope, because we are hoping for less “straining” and less “pressing”… aren’t we???
Hope is in the pressing!
Hope is in the pressing!
Col 1:9
For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,
so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,
being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience,
The pressing, the straining is where his strength comes in.
This is where we grow with Him.
[DISCLAIMER] - No, it’s not all supposed to be hard. He’s not tearing us down… But, who ever said it was supposed to be easy?
The truth is...
This world is broken, and we are broken with it...
But the “easy yoke” is learning to trust on a new system = Him.
You can choose to see the future however you want:
You can choose to see the future however you want:
Your fears,
Your own expectations,
Or, hope...
Framed by the Word and promises of God.
Framed by your relationship with Him
Framed by the relationships He’s formed on your journey
[QUESTION] - But, is this hope only for the next life?...
[PAYOFF] - He is the hope for ALL that is in front of us!
[PAYOFF] - If those hopes are plans and desires He’s put in you, then those are Him! That’s part of hope in Christ!
Eternity is now! HOPE is for NOW!
Not simply Heaven (if that’s not enough…)
Hope is for HERE and NOW, a full life HERE and NOW!
Hope is the way through it!
Hope is the way through it!
For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it.
But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
The Spirit of God works in us to align our hearts with His Will!
Our prayers become His prayers
Our hopes become the things He’s promised
And when weak, we get assistance - He causes everything to work together!
[PAYOFF] - No matter how things may look, we have hope that His plan is at work!
He never fails!
Is your challenge bigger than God? Certainly not!
- “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
[TRANSITION] - I want to tell you a story about a man Jesus gave hope to...
The New International Version. (2011). (). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Hope is in us to share!
Hope is in us to share!
John 5:
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.
Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.
Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,
Think of this man’s despair...
38 years, same thing
No one to help
Everyone going before him
Did he have no family or friends to help him?
Jesus showed this man, there is a true source of life - Himself!
Do you know that we are that for the world around us?
We, now, bare this message of hope.
Hope is in us to share!
2 Corinthians
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
New creation, the new is here!
Reconciled to himself
He has commited to us the message of reconciliation!
[PAYOFF] - It’s unfair to receive freely this reconciliation - which came to us in Christ, through someone else - and not honor the responsibility He’s placed on us to share this message of hope with other in our lives.
