There's Still Hope!

Introduction

*Start Galatians 6:9. The fear of it all being unrewarding.*

Wearied: Tired, discouraged Christians.

Principle: When God gives you a message, believe in it and hope in it even when you don’t have a good reason. Romans 4:18 “He believed, hoping against hope, so that he became the father of many nations according to what had been spoken: So will your descendants be.”

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 2274 No Hope Carter

While attending college, I visited a psychiatric institution with a group of students to observe various types of mental illness. The experience proved to be very disturbing. I remember one man who was called “No Hope Carter.” His was a tragic case. A victim of venereal disease, he was going through the final stages when the brain is affected.

Before he began to lose his mind, this man was told by the doctors that there was no known cure for him. He begged for one ray of light in his darkness, but had been told that the disease would run its inevitable course and end in death. Gradually his brain deteriorated and he became more and more despondent.

When I saw him in his small, barred room about 2 weeks before he died, he was pacing up and down in mental agony. His eyes stared blankly, and his face was drawn and ashen. Over and over he muttered these two forlorn and fateful words: “No hope! No hope!” He said nothing else.

Someone has said that if you could convince a man there was no hope, he would curse the day he was born. Hope is an indispensable quality of life.

Years ago the S-4 submarine was rammed by another ship and quickly sank. The entire crew was trapped in its prison house of death. Ships rushed to the scene of disaster off the coast of Massachusetts. We don’t know what took place down in the sunken submarine, but we can be sure that the men clung bravely to life as the oxygen slowly gave out.

A diver placed his helmeted ear to the side of the vessel and listened. He heard a tapping noise. Someone, he learned, was tapping out a question in the dots and dashes of the Morse Code. The question came slowly: “Is … there … any … hope?”

This seems to be the cry of humanity: “Is there any hope?” Hope, indeed, is the basis of all human existence in Christ!

Lack of hope is what causes most Christians to give up. As this man, many will die a spiritual death because their hope has been taken from them through the pains of life. This is the case with the Shunammite woman.

The Shunammite Woman’s Hopelessness

She is a prominent woman. However, her prominence does not help in this situation.

Reputation of a barren woman.

This woman is living in a life of hopelessness: Hopeless situation and hopeless husband.

She has this terrible habit of saying things are okay when they aren’t.

She has to deal with the constant experience of being let down.

Yet the difference between her and most, is out of all of this she still prepared a room for the man of God.

But hopelessness is a dangerous threat to the believer. Because she lost hope, she left something that had the possibility of living again on the ground. She didn’t go to the prophet to seek a miracle. She went other prophet to complain.

Two Options to Deal With Hopeless Situations

The impotent man John 5:1-15 “After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed.J One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.” “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.” Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk. Now that day was the Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.” He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ” “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your…”

The woman with issue of blood Mark 5:25-34 “Now a woman suffering from bleeding for twelve years had endured much under many doctors. She had spent everything she had and was not helped at all. On the contrary, she became worse. Having heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothing. For she said, “If I just touch his clothes, I’ll be made well.” Instantly her flow of blood ceased, and she sensed in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Immediately Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing against you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” But he was looking around to see who had done this. The woman, with fear and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. “Daughter,” he said to her, “your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed from your affliction.””

Conclusion: God Did Not Forget

God blessed this woman because of the house she built for the man of God when she had nothing.

Many of us are waiting until we get a breakthrough to do something for God, but God is waiting for us to do something to demonstrate it’s not about the gifts and blessings; it’s about serving a faithful God.

Whatever you think is dead, pick it up, because God has not forgotten you.

2 Thessalonians 3:13 CSB

But as for you, brothers and sisters, do not grow weary in doing good.

Galatians 6:9

Galatians 6:9 CSB

Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.

BOUNCE BACK: The sad reality is that the husband never seems to bounce back from the hurt and the pain. His hopelessness defeated him! Don’t let this be you!