Advent Week 1: Jesus Our Hope

We are starting our Christmas series this week! The series is called, / / The Reason: What Christmas is All About! and we’re going to be looking at the traditional, the Christian Calendar of Advent.

If you don’t know what / / advent is, that’s ok. I went for years as a Christian with absolutely no clue what Advent is. How many know what Advent is?

Ok, well, there’s technically three aspects of the word advent.

First, the word itself has an actual definition, it’s not just a title for a season leading up to Christmas. Advent comes from the latin word / / adventus, which simply translates as “coming” or “arrival” and the definition of the word itself means, the arrival of a notable person, thing or event.

That makes a whole lot of sense as that’s exactly what Christmas is about, isn’t it? It’s the arrival of all of that, a / / Person, Jesus Christ, a Thing, our salvation, and an Event, his birth, his death & his resurrection are all because He came.

Second, / / Advent as a word is used specifically for both the coming of Jesus, his birth, what we celebrate over Christmas, AND the second coming of Christ. So there is both a celebration of what has been, and an expectation of what is to come.

And then there is the third aspect of / / Advent, which we are coming into now as part of the liturgical or christian calendar, and that is the preparation of God’s people in the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas Day. Advent always starts the Sunday nearest to November 30th, which means it always leads up to the Sunday right before we celebrate Christmas Day.

Like I said, I didn’t know any of that growing up! In fact, it wasn’t until we were in Oslo, Norway for Christmas in 2014 that the leadership of our church there asked me the day before or a few days before the first Sunday of Advent, “So, do we have the candles for advent?”

And my response was literally, “What candles?” I had no clue, and being the pastor, I felt a little sheepish admitting that, BUT, I grew up in a very non-liturgical church, that never observed this wonderful season. Because at that point my full understanding of advent was a 24 day calendar that had little bits of chocolate behind little paper doors and everyday I got a little taste of awesome.

And trust me, I’m not opposed to a good advent calendar. Last year I had a coffee calendar. This year I have a cheese calendar. Aldi was selling a wine advent calendar… But that’s not what Advent really is. Man, we’re good at taking something really good and making it all about us, aren’t we?

Ok, so, I’ve been throwing around the word, liturgical, like we all know what that means. And if you don’t, like I didn’t, / / liturgy simply means a format, or a program for public religious worship. And if you’ve been in a traditional Catholic, or Anglican, Lutheran, or Episcopal or Orthodox, or Methodist church, you’ve probably experienced liturgy. And so we call these liturgical churches, churches who follow a liturgy. Ever been in a church service where someone says something from the front and everyone else responds, except in my case, I had no clue what was going on, so I didn’t respond...

Here’s where I have found that a lot of Christians have gone wrong. Now, I don’t know if this was the intention, but this is how it came across, and this is how it got formed in my head. The church I grew up in had almost a push back against liturgical worship, and it came across as a feeling that by following a set plan they were losing access to the flow of the spirit, or something like that, I’m not totally sure. Maybe it was a sense of freedom, breaking away from what can feel like a stuffy tradition. Liturgy for the sake of liturgy isn’t good, it doesn’t serve a purpose if we’re just doing it blindly. But, I think as humans we tend to swing one way or the other, especially when we don’t understand something, or we feel abused by something, or manipulated by something, or for any other reasons, we swing hard the other way to try and correct what we think is misguided.

What I have learned as I have grown in my own faith and walk with God is that there is beauty in liturgy, as long as the liturgy is pointing to Christ. And these fathers and mothers of the faith that put time and effort into these liturgical services had a heart to honor God in them.

The advent season is NO different. But at first, I didn’t understand it, and my history was to kind of buck at that, so I pushed back a little, until God got a hold of me and humbled me a little and I learned what this was all about.

Advent is beautiful.

Now, we don’t know exactly when the church started celebrating advent as a season, it’s assumed it was sometime in the 4th century and there was a man, St Gregory of Tours who wrote that St Perpetuus had decreed a three week fast from the time of the feast of St Martin until Christmas. But there’s no indication as to whether he was talking about a custom that already existed, or if it was something new.

There is a city in France called Tours, and the early church would have these meetings of church leaders to discuss the fundamentals of the Christian faith. If you’ve ever heard of the Council of Nicea, or Constantinople, and many others. These were where the Nicene Creed was developed and written. And the Roman Catholic church had many such councils in the city of Tours, gatherings of leaders to discuss the fundamentals of the Christian faith. One of these councils, in the year 567, it is recorded that the monks began to do a fast from December 1st to Christmas Day.

That was different from the Greek Orthodox & Eastern Catholics who were observing a 40 day fast that began on November 15th. And so in time, the eastern church was fasting from November 15th, and the western church from the fourth Sunday before Christmas.

Over time these four weeks became essentially about preparing ourselves to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord’s coming into the world as the incarnate God of love, that is literally the birth of Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, the third person of the trinity, fully God and fully man. It is a preparation of heart to celebrate Christmas. And some would also focus on the preparation of His eventual second coming.

/ / The true beauty of Advent is an anticipation, a waiting, an expectation of the arrival of something, or someone great!

I think kids get this more than adults. I remember sitting under the Christmas Tree, in the days leading up to Christmas, but especially on Christmas morning just waiting for everyone else to wake up so that we could dig into the presents under the tree. There was a huge anticipation, an excitement that is unmatched in this world. And when we take time to focus on the true meaning of Christmas, we are putting that anticipation into Jesus Christ. Kids know how to anticipate. Us adults need a little help, and my hope this December, this Advent season, is that we learn to truly anticipate again the joy and the true meaning of Christmas.

Each week of advent has a different focus. As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus on the 25th of December, we journey through these four themes.

/ / Hope, Peace, Joy & Love. And some traditions include a fifth celebration on Christmas Eve or Christmas day that represents Christ the Messiah and His birth.

Traditionally there are Advent candles, remember that was the question that started all of this for me, “Do we have the advent candles?” And a candle is lit each Sunday that represents each of these themes, and you light the specific candle on the week of it’s theme.

Now, we don’t have candles here, but like I’ve said, the true intent of Advent is to point us to Christ, regardless of whether you have candles or not. And that moment of learning was good for both me and the leadership of the church we were pastoring because it made us really think about WHY we do WHAT we do. Liturgy for the sake of liturgy can actually be dangerous because it can draw away from our focus on God. But Liturgical worship that draws our attention to Him is beautiful and can enhance our journey with Christ.

I’ve experienced this in a small way through my journey of recovery this past year. Pretty much every meeting you are in, you’re going to pray the serenity prayer, and you can simply recite that prayer, or you can truly pray it. And this is true of anything we’ve done 10, 20, 100 times. We can become numb to it, and simply follow along with the motions, or we can lean into it and truly give our heart and emotions to what we are doing. When I pray the serenity prayer, I challenge myself to really focus on the words I am saying and not just recite something just because everyone else is.

So, this week, our theme is / / Jesus our Hope.

Now, if you know me you know one of my favorite words is hope. It’s our daughters middle name. Something that was confirmed for us by God through the mouths of prophets and a constant reminder of God’s goodness.

Hope unfortunately has been given a bit of a bad name. We say things like, “I hope it happens..” which really means I’m not putting much stock in it. Maybe there’s a 50/50 chance. Or we will say, “I’m not really putting my hope in that...”

or, “Wow, I hope that works out for you...” Do we really? “Ya, I hope so too...”

Like, it would be nice, but I’ll believe it when I see it...

“I’m not getting my hopes up...” How is that even a thing we say.

Hope is one of the most powerful things God has given us, and we have relegated it to a 50/50 chance. But here’s the thing, / / hope by definition means, A confident expectation of a positive outcome.

A confident expectation.... expectation already means a strong belief that something will happen, so a confident expectation is like, a strong belief on steroids that something will happen. And hope is having that confident expectation of a POSITIVE outcome. What is that? We’re saying this is going our way, it’s going to be in our favor, it’s good, wonderful, for our benefit.

And so hope is being very very sure of the FACT, that’s how much we believe it, that wholeheartedly we just absolutely believe that what will happen is going to be good!

So, these themes that we look at over Advent are really two-fold in their focus as we not only receive these things, hope, peace, joy & love, but that these are also the very characteristics of Jesus Christ that we are celebrating.

Hope is something we receive, but truly Jesus IS our Hope.

Paul wrote in his letter to Timothy, right away in the introduction, he says, / / This letter is from Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, appointed by the command of God our Savior and Christ Jesus, who gives us hope. or, as the ESV says it, / / Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.

And it is really both of those things. / / Jesus IS our hope, and THROUGH Jesus we receive and have hope.

1 Timothy is a letter that Paul is writing to Timothy, who he has been training and teaching in church leadership, on how to lead a church, and here he’s defining that Christ Jesus is our hope. This is more than just an introduction, it’s a foundation that Paul is laying for what he’s about to say. It’s like saying, “I’m going to say some things, but everything I say, keep in mind, our Hope is in Jesus Christ!”

We read this a few weeks ago in 2 Corinthians 11, all of the hardships that Paul went through. He’s been imprisoned, persecuted, beaten, shipwrecked three times, spent a whole night and day at sea waiting for rescue, I mean, he’s been through it. And now here he’s writing this letter, which along with 2 Timothy and Titus are called the Pastoral Epistles, coming from an aging Paul, writing to this young pastor, Timothy. This is the wisdom of an older father in the faith to a young leader just starting out.

And right here, at the beginning of this pastoral letter to Timothy, the instruction is: / / Make Christ Jesus Your Hope!

But what does that mean? And How is Jesus our Hope? How do we make him our hope? How do we build this confident expectation? I want an unwavering, absolutely know, more assure of it than anything ever before, trust in God to provide and look after me and do what He said He will do because He is who He says He is! I want that!

Colossians 1:20-23 says, / / He [God] made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News [not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard…]

So, that’s a lot of what we’ve been looking at recently, God’s grace and mercy at play in our lives. The undeserved, unmerited favor of God met with the compassion He has toward us that isn’t just a feeling, but it’s followed through with an action, and so now we are made right with Him, because of the finished work of Christ on the Cross!

This is the greatest hope, isn’t it? I mean, what a promise - / / …you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

1 Thessalonians 5:8 says, / / But let us who live in the light be clearheaded, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence [hope] of our salvation.

This isn’t a, “oh, I hope I’m saved...” but this hope is a confident expectation in the fulfillment of Christ’s good work on the cross that you are no longer a slave to sin but you have been made righteous, you are redeemed, and what we mean by that, to be redeemed is that all the faults and bad aspects of something have been removed. That’s what redeemed means! We are set free by the Grace of God through our Faith in Jesus Christ and that is the HOPE of our salvation. That is the HOPE of the gospel. That is the hope we have in Jesus Christ, that we are fully, 100% redeemed, all of our faults, all of our wrongdoings, all of our junk has been removed, and we stand before God holy and blameless without a SINGLE FAULT!

So, what greater theme for the first week of Advent than to focus on the true reason why Jesus Christ is even born into this world, why we even celebrate Christmas, because Jesus is the Hope of the world. The gospel message, the good news, is the hope for all humanity. And nothing else God has to offer matters if you haven’t found your hope of salvation.

Peace in this live is nice, but without hope, what’s it mean?

Joy, to be happy, to feel fulfilled, that’s nice, but without hope?

Love, even love itself, should and does draw us to the hope of our salvation, but alone, without that piece, without knowing that we are confidently secure in the salvation of Jesus Christ...

And as we have defined, this is a confident expectation. What is our expectation?

There’s almost an element of putting a demand on something when you use that word, isn’t there? When you think about salvation, when you think about this hope you have in Jesus Christ, what do you expect? Are you eagerly awaiting his salvation? And what does that mean?

Salvation is not simply the removal of sin from your life.

Salvation is not only an eternal benefit, the hope of our salvation isn’t just a future hope, but a current, in this moment hope. It’s a confident expectation in the positive outcome that God’s mercy and grace WILL produce in our lives.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:8, the word salvation means to be physically or morally, rescued and safe, to be delivered, healthy, preserved...

Do you have a confident expectation, a healthy waiting for the deliverance of God in your life TODAY?

It’s like being invited to a restaurant, given a menu and when you look at it all of the prices have been removed, and the waiter says, “what would you like?” And you say, “How much is this stuff? It looks amazing, but, I don’t know if I can afford it.” “Oh, don’t worry sir. Do you see that gentleman over there, the one with the scars in his hands and feet? He’s covered it all. You can literally take anything from this list and he’s already paid for it.”

One of the saddest things is that most of Christianity isn’t living that way, there’s no expectation for more. There’s no desire for more. But this is the reality, that there is ALWAYS more.

I was watching a video the other night from Bill Johnson, who leads a church out in California, and he had this brilliant encouragement that he shared. He said our understanding must always grow with the mystery. If I can understand everything that is going on in my Christian life, if I can explain everything, then I have reduced God to my size. He said this, “It is important that we have parts of our lives buried in mystery.” In our journey to learn about God and our desire to grow in relationship with God, to understand His ways, our understanding DOES grow. We learn more, we understand more, BUT, there always needs to be enough in our lives that is a mystery, that we don’t understand, because that is what produces in us trust and faith. The bible says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding.

/ / I can trust that there is more God wants to do in my life, without me knowing what it is.

Listen to this, Paul, in Ephesians 3, prays for the people of this church in Ephesus, and he says, starting in vs 16, / / I pray that from HIS glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit… vs 19, May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully… vs 20, Now all glory to God, who is able, through HIS mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think...

The Good News translation says, / / To him who by means of HIS power working IN us is able to do so much more than we can ever ask for, or even think of...

Another translation expands that and writes… / / superabundantly more than all we dare ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes or dreams]...

There is more.

This hope we have in Christ is an expectation that should only grow, never diminish. What you have experienced in Christ so far in your life is not all of it.

But here’s the thing, that scripture is clear, / / because of the power of God that is AT WORK IN YOU...

Hope, or Expectation, is an invitation for that power to WORK IN US. We have to give place to God in our lives so that He can work in us.

Psalm 33:20 says, / / We put our hope in the Lord, he is our help and our shield...

We put our hope in the Lord… our confident expectation in a positive outcome is where? IN THE LORD.

Jesus our Hope.

This tends to go against the way humans normally think. Like I said earlier, hope has been sort of kicked down a few notches as far as it’s meaning. Do we have a confident expectation, or do we sorta, kinda, maybe, hopefully one day we’ll experience God’s goodness?

Here’s the truth: / / HOPE can only exist in the presence of TRUTH!

Let’s ask a few questions this morning:

What stops us from hoping?

What stops us from believing God WANTS to bless us?

What stops us from thinking that life can actually be good, and not just good, but continuously good?

A counselor Kelley and I know, Chip Judd, he’s an incredible man, and he’s been preaching this for years, that as humanity we find it very difficult, if not impossible, to believe that life can be good all the time.

Now, I’m not denying the existence of hardship, that would be ridiculous. I’m not denying we go through things, we go through hard times. But, when our expectation is that these things are what we deserve, or that they are just bound to happen, we are making room for something in our lives we don’t even want!

Why do we have sayings like, “Bad things happen in 3’s.”

William Shakespeare said, / / “Expectation is the root of all heartache”… wow, Bill, what’s going on?!?

And this one hurts, and I don’t endorse it at all, but maybe you’ve heard a Christian say this, “Greater levels, greater devils...” this idea that when you encounter a blessing from God, you should expect some backlash from the devil.

How crazy is that? To have a little bit of hope in God for a positive outcome, but an even stronger or greater expectation in the devil to produce heartache. To expect that something good we experience won’t, or can’t last.

And have you ever heard someone say something like that? I have. Oh it’s too good to be true. This won’t last. Don’t get your hopes up.

WHAT???? We absolutely should get our hopes up, if our hope is in the Lord!

Psalm 146:3-9 says, / / Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there. When they breathe their last, they return to the earth, and all their plans die with them. BUT joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God. He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. He keeps every promise forever. He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The Lord frees the prisoners. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down. The Lord loves the godly. The Lord protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows...

/ / JOYFUL are those whose hope is in the Lord!

That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to encounter hardship. / / Hope isn’t the opposite of hardship, it’s what we need in the midst of it!

In John 16:33, Jesus has just finished explaining some things to his disciples, and he wraps it up by saying, / / I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.

Clear directive here.

/ / You will experience trial and sorrow

The Christian life is not denying that we go through things, it’s knowing that when we do go through things, we have a hope that makes us secure in the midst of it.

/ / Jesus HAS overcome

Not future tense, not, don’t worry, I will come through for you later, but, take heart, I HAVE overcome the world. We are not waiting for Jesus to overcome, he has ALREADY overcome. This is why Paul says in Romans 8:35, 37, / / 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? NO despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. [we are MORE THAN CONQUERORS]

In Jesus we find hope. And our hope is a confident expectation in a positive outcome.

/ / The Hope of Christ leads to Peace

Jesus said, I have told you things so that you may have peace in me. Hope gives us assurance, assurance leads to confidence, confidence produces peace because we know that whether going through something small or big, we have a God who sees us, loves us, and has a plan for us, and we can rely on Him to lead us!

I listened to a message a few years ago from a man named Steve Backland, and he said something that has not left me and I don’t think it ever will. He said, / / If there is any area of your life that you do NOT have a GREAT hope [a confident expectation for a positive outcome], then there is a lie that is stopping you from having that hope!

Think about that for a second. Think of an area of your life that you feel you are lacking hope. This was my experience over the last couple months of trying to buy our house. I would have moments where I COULD get very overwhelmed if I gave into the lies that were coming at me. I’m a pastor, and that isn’t always looked at favorably in financial situations because our income is looked at differently by the IRS, AND Kelley is self-employed, which is also something that is looked at with more scrutiny and takes a LOT more to convince most banks that you’re safe to lend to. So you get all these thoughts. They aren’t going to approve you, there’s no way, there’s no hope, you don’t have what you need. They are going to see something in you they don’t like… etc.. When the reality is, I know we make enough to pay for the house because we already have been, but it’s all about them seeing it that way. So, in those moments, when I would feel all of that coming on, I would force myself to stop thinking, and pray, “God, make a way where there doesn’t seem to be a way. Do something I can’t see.” I had to combat the lie with the truth of God’s word.

Maybe it’s your physical health. Do you have a great hope, a confident expectation that God is going to do a work in your body, that you CAN be healed? If not, then what is it that you DO believe that is stopping you from believing God’s truth in His word?

You did this to yourself

You smoked too many years.

Ate the wrong things, maybe you still do.

You didn’t, or don’t exercise

You got yourself here, you have to get yourself out… We’ve seen that lie before and it’s one that hits a LOT of areas of our lives.

Maybe it’s finances… Do you believe that God wants to and will provide? That you can live in provision? I’m not talking about prosperity Gospel, but simply about having hope in the midst of the situation. Paul says, I’ve learned how to be content whether I have a little or a lot, and his key was a reliance on God.

So, do you believe you will be a success? that you will have enough? That you will be looked after? And not just believe it, but have a GREAT HOPE. Remember the definition of hope, confident expectation in a positive outcome! Do you confidently expect that these things will work out for you? That you’ll have what you need. That the clients you need in business will be there. That you’ll have the hours at work that you need to make what you need. that your investments will work out or that you’ll get those new connections and new ideas to further what you do, to do better, to save more, to work smarter, not harder? And if there’s not a GREAT HOPE, a confident expectation of that, then what is it that you believe that’s stopping you?

I don’t deserve that

Everyone else seems to get blessed, but it doesn’t happen for me.

They must need it more than me.

There really isn’t enough to go around.

I got myself into this debt, I need to get myself out.

Here’s the thing with missing hope in our lives. Proverbs 13:12 says, / / Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

Let’s look at that for a second:

/ / Hope deferred

Deferred - drawn out, prolonged, scattered, drawn away; to drag or seize, lead off...

You see the words here, drawn away, there’s a change of focus, a shift in our perspective. Another way of saying deferred is “put off”, when you put off something, you have to ask, what are you picking up? What have you replaced hope with?

We’ve just looked at that, when we don’t have a confident expectation, a great hope in something, it’s because we are believing a lie about that situation. You are going to hold “a truth”, whether that is THE truth or a lie masquerading as truth. And when our expectation is not filled with hope, it...

/ / 2. Makes the Heart Sick

Heart - mind, heart, inner being, the core of who we are.

Sick - grieved, to be weak and wounded

When we lack hope, when our hope is put off, pushed back, weakened by waiting and frustration, our heart becomes weak. The core of who we are, where hope is most alive, begins to feel weak.

/ / When we do not carry hope in our hearts, our hearts suffer… because we are no longer standing on the truth, but we’ve allowed a lie to come in, robbing us of our hope.

I think we’ve all felt that at some point in our lives. We don’t feel hope. We feel like our hope is lost, we can’t see the truth, or we can’t see the way out of the situation we are in. Sure, we hear the truth, but we don’t know how that’s supposed to work for us.

Life has the ability to make us feel buried alive sometimes, doesn’t it?

Last December when I hired a life coach, I felt so at the end of myself I was frozen in a fear of not even wanting to start. I felt so hopeless, so heart sick because hope had been deferred for so long, I couldn’t even get myself to try again.

My health was suffering. My body was suffering. My heart was suffering, My mind was suffering, and all because I did NOT have hope. And that’s what led me into my first meeting of recovery where I heard someone say, It’s ok that you feel this way, your life may be unmanageable, and that’s ok, because we’re going to help you see that there is a God who wants to help you, and you CAN give this struggle and hardship over to Him.

I felt buried alive, but it was hope that brought me back!

See, Proverbs 13:12 doesn’t stop there, it continues to say, / / …but a dream [desire] fulfilled is a tree of life.

/ / 3. Hope brings life!

But a dream, or desire fulfilled… Desire - the longing of one’s heart.

See, Jesus our hope is not a misplaced hope, it’s not an empty hope. We can confidently put our hope in the Lord because His word is true!

/ / Hope deferred can become Hope renewed!

A sick heart can become a confident expectation!

When we meet Jesus, who is our hope, and when we see the hope of his salvation met in our lives, when we see the truth unfold in our lives, that changes everything and brings life to our once weary and weakened hearts.

Psalm 39:7 says, / / And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you.

We have all had hope deferred. We have all experienced the sickness of heart that is felt from a lack of hope. But it’s time this morning to experience the Hope that IS Jesus Christ, the Savior who came to us!

If you have felt like your hope has been deferred. If you feel like you’ve lost your hope. You have too many questions this morning. You have too many unanswered problems, but you WANT to have a confident expectation for a positive outcome, it just seems like you’ve been pushed and pulled by the problems of life, we’ve read recently that Hebrews 4:16 says we can confidently, or boldly approach God’s throne of grace to RECEIVE His MERCY in our time of need. And we learned that mercy is the compassion of the Lord that is moved to ACTION on our behalf!

Whatever it is that you’ve been facing. Maybe you’re like me a year ago, faced with your health and so afraid to even try again.

Or maybe it’s your relationship. You don’t know how you got to where you are, but here you are, and you don’t know how to fix it, and you feel hopeless.

Maybe you’ve run into financial hardship, again, and you don’t see a way out. You have no hope, and that lack of hope has become a breeding ground for fear that you’ll end up in ruin.

Whatever it is, financial, relationship, lacking confidence in yourself, physical or emotional healing, maybe you’ve wanted to start, or build your business, but fear is stopping you, I want you to be brave this morning, and boldly approach the throne of grace and receive mercy, which is the action to change your situation. Remember, it’s by the power of God at work in you. Give him permission this morning to work in you!

I want you to pray this with me this morning.

God, my hope has been deferred. It’s been stolen. And I want it back! There are lies I believe and fears I have, but I want to be filled with your hope. I want to live with a confident expectation in a positive outcome. Would you remove the lies, and replace them with hope. I give you permission to work in my life by YOUR power.

And now I want to pray for you, just like Paul prayed in Romans 15:13, that our God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him, and that you would overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Every lie that you have believed that has held you down, let it be broken right now in the name of Jesus.

Every belief you have that you’re not enough, be replaced by the truth of who you are in Christ.

Every thing and every burden you have carried because you felt like the weight was yours to deal with, let it be lifted off of you in the name of Jesus.

Because Jesus is our hope. Jesus is our salvation. He is the one who saves us, the one who sets us free, the one who comes to our aid when we cannot help ourselves. And right now, every fear and every lie, let them be replaced with a confident hope and trust in God’s outcome for your life. Where hope has been deferred, let a tree of life grow instead. Desire fulfilled. Truth realized. Hope restored!