"Finding Hope In The Midst Of Sorrow”

“Finding Hope in the Midst of Sorrow”

{You can Watch today’s message at:https://youtu.be/p3NMOZOgcIg}

{You can Listen to today’s message at:https://mega.nz/file/zN0TnZxY#TCc1bOl-3CBE2ALSNXfnRoNuUYFPzK3OiDsM2MRGZXs}

Today, I’d like to return to a series I really didn’t know I was on until the other week when I was looking at what we’ve been talking about since our return to the church from the COVID-19 shutdown. It was from what Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthian Church, saying that after it’s all said and done, three things are left, or remain, and they are, faith, hope, and love.

For the first two weeks we were looking at the area of faith with the messages, “Following Hard After God,” and “A Greater Measure of Faith.” And before the Lord drew me to last week’s message on “Making Peace God’s Way,” we looked the topic of hope in the message, “Obtaining A Living Hope.”

Well this week I’d like to pick up on this second thing that remains, that is, hope, and then next week we’ll look at the area of love, which Paul says is the greatest of all three.

Today’s message I believe is vital for us to learn as we move forward during these uncertain times as we have seen the loss of lives, jobs, and freedoms.

This message on hope was something I looked into seven plus years ago when Yoli Bell, head of the Mesquite Cancer Help Society, asked if I would head up a small Bible study about surviving through faith the losses we endure due to sickness and disease.

What I learned during this time is something that I would like to share with you about the losses we endure, as our nation and the world have been thrown into the fire of this new pandemic and unprecedented violence, and how many people’s dreams for the future have been shatter, either through the loss of someone they knew and loved, the lost a job and source of income, or the losses they’ve experienced through illness, disease, sickness, or addiction.

Outside they may look like the picture of health, like they have it all together, as they have learned to cope and hide what really going on, but the reality is that they are slowly dying on the inside.

They feel like they’re just marking time, and time is running out. They feel their life is falling apart with only a frayed piece of twine holding it all together, and they don’t know how much longer they can keep up the façade. They’ve become a shell of their former selves, losing the man or woman God created them to be.

This really hit home with me several years back through a loss I experienced in my family. My brother went through these same thoughts, but he found an avenue of escape, but it wasn’t through faith in the Lord, but rather it was through alcohol, which soon became an addiction. But instead of reaching out for help, he withdrew within himself and within the bottle losing hope a little bit at a time until he finally took his own life.

Life became so filled with sadness and sorrow that he found no hope in what he was facing. And while I tried to communicate the gospel to him, he would not listen, probably because of the overwhelming sorrow he felt from his own sense of guilt and shame over his condition.

And this loss of hope happens to all of us when our focus is upon what we’re going through or what is going on around us, the situations and circumstances we face in life; rather than the Lord God who will meet with us and change our despair into a real and lasting hope.

Now, if anyone could understand what we’re going through it would have been King David. Many times he despaired of life itself, but there is one thing he seemed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that is that whatever he was going through, that is, the circumstances and situations he found himself in, he had his hope was in the One who holds the situations in His hands, and that is the Lord God.

David said, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God … Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.” (Psalm 43:5; 62:5 NIV)

And so, to find hope in the midst of our sorrows, we need to place our hope and trust in Jesus Christ, who is the hope of this world, and He will see us through whatever turmoil and strife we find ourselves in.

As I approached what I believe the Lord would have me share with you today, there is something King David said that I have read before, but really hadn’t paid all much attention to.