Hope - March 15

Announcements:

AT BEGINNING OF SERVICE:

We will be pausing all midweek programs, and continuing running sunday services until such a time as we determine that it is the best course of action to go online-only for our services.

Here are some of the things we are doing or asking you to do:

We will be extra diligent in cleaning off surfaces before and after service to ensure the safest environment

Please wash your hands thoroughly before joining us!

Make use of the hand sanitizer that we have made available.

Please no handshakes or contact - a wave or a smile is good enough!

We won’t be passing around the offering plate - if you wish to give an offering, we will make the plate available in a central location for you to come and drop in.

We won’t be serving any coffee or food after services

We ask that if you feel sick - no matter the reason - or you have recently travelled, if you would continue to self isolate for everyone’s safety!

We will be starting to stream services online - simply visit www.parklandchurch.ca/watch, or join our facebook page at Parkland Pentecostal Church, and you can watch the full service online!

Now, before we start service, I wanted to address a little bit the ‘why’

Obviously, this is in response to the recent COVID-19 or Coronavirus epidemic.

However, our motivation here isn’t fear - it’s a collective sense of responsibility and wisdom, asking ourselves the question, ‘Given this is a reality - what is the thing we can all do to help the most?’. And reduced social times, reduced gatherings, and extra dilligence with cleaning is the wise thing to do.

It’s a move that if everyone in Canada were to practice, a lot more people would be better off. The hospital systems would be better able to cope, people who are at risk would receive a much needed buffer, and we would be doing our part to contribute to the greater wellbeing of our country as a whole - which is our mission as a church!

HOPE

CALEB AND HIS LEPRECHAUN

1 Peter 1:3–4 NIV

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,

I’m going to pivot a bit from our series of late, and talk about this idea of hope.

Mercy is God’s motivation for hope - not punishment for our sins or rewards for our good behaviour

This is a really important thing to understand, because we tend to gauge our hope against what we think we deserve or SHOULD receive. We read a situation, we say, ‘this is what we think SHOULD happen’.

Not only does biblical hope NOT connected to what we SHOULD receive - it’s expressly connected to what we haven’t earned in any fashion. Mercy is the underpinning motivation for biblical hope - the idea that God, having looked at our circumstances, our character, our sinfulness - has found us wanting, has found us deserving of punishment and more, and chose to have mercy.

This is not something we’ve earned. This is not something that’s left to chance, or karma, or anything else like that. Hope in the bible starts first and foremost with God choosing to give it to us. And nothing is powerful enough to be able to deter God.

Hope is a gift from God - not a response to circumstances

The verse goes onto say, ‘He has GIVEN us this hope’. It’s a gift. It’s offered freely.

So how do we get this kind of hope? What’s the process? Easy. We say, ‘Ok God. Thanks’.

Now, we need to deeply bury our sense of hope in the living God, and what He has for our lives. This isn’t a false hope that doesn’t ask anything of us. God has a plan and a will for each one of our lives, and serving Him is a lifelong commitment to ever increasing connection to Him. This is a hope that demands a response. But it doesn’t demand a payment anymore - because Christ paid that debt, and God gave us this gift freely.

Our hope is a living person, not a thing or an ideal

Our hope isn’t placed in something temporary. It’s not placed in our health, or our success. Our homes or our refridgerators or our bank accounts.

Our hope is in a living God. A God who controls all of time and eternity. A God who is infinitely powerful and endlessly loving. Our hope is in the one thing in the entire universe that can never fail and will never leave us.

Sometimes we hope in people. But people are temporary. If we look hard enough at a person, we’ll see faults, we’ll see cracks. We’ll see ways that a person is not worth being the full and complete source of hope. And we can have temporary hope in temporary things, that’s for sure. But do we want temporary hope? Or do we want a hope that can never leave us?

Our hope is in an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade

And the implied other side of this - everything else can perish, spoil or fade. Everything we can hope in on this side of eternity is frail, if you give it enough time. There are good things here, and we have plenty of reasons to find happiness and love on this side of eternity. But even our joy in the temporary will be completely, utterly dwarfed by the majesty of the eternal.

When we have finished 10 million years before God in perfect peace and joy, no pain or suffering - we will understand the full weight of eternity. And we will not have even begun to scratch the surface.

I’m convinced the older you are, the ‘longer you’ve lasted’, the more you understand how things in this world don’t ever truly last long enough. But in Christ - His hope can. The gift He has for us can last forever. WE can last forever.

This is hope we accept, not hope we simply acknowledge.

It’s not enough to God that we simply acknowledge that He’s done something. A quick wave of the hand, saying, ‘Ya, I know this is out there.’

The reason for this is simple. Our hope is grounded in having a relationship with Christ. Our hope begins when we stand up and we say, ‘I know God is out there, I know he loves me, and I want to have a relationship with Him, I want to get to know him’. But it continues through that daily connection of getting to know him.

It’s like an infinite spiritual bank account - we withdraw, we spend, we get low, we withdraw again. It doesn’t work if we never get connected to the source of hope. ‘Ya, I’ve got millions of dollars - but I don’t ever touch it or look at it.’ You’d starve.

God invites us into a relationship with Him because He knows that with Him is the only way we can be truly and completely free and joyful. Being with Him is the only source of hope.

So I’d encourage you today - be with him. Be connected to Him.