Hope Floats

HOPE FLOATS

1998 movie. The premise is a woman who thought everything was going well learns that her husband is having an affair with her friend. She takes her daughter and moves back to her hometown. But she quickly learns that the problems keep coming-in waves. In a conversation between her and her daughter, she tells her, "Try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning, just give hope a chance to float up."

There are different types of hope-there's a wishful hope, "I hope it doesn't rain today". There's an expectant hope, "I'm hoping for a good outcome". Then there's the secure hope, "My hope is in God". There is a hope that sinks, a hope that floats and a hope that not only floats, it rises.

1) Hope sinks.

Interestingly, the first occurrence of the word hope isn't found until the eighth book of the bible, Ruth. And even then, it's used in a hope sinks fashion. Naomi had lost her husband and two sons. She was trying to convince her daughters-in-law to leave her, basically saying there was no hope of her finding another husband and having two sons for them to eventually marry.

Sometimes we have hope but then something happens and we are let down. We get our hopes up but then it doesn't come to pass and we get that sinking feeling. When our hope sinks we can come away feeling like hope stinks. Job felt this way. He practically lost everything-his children, his assets, his health. Before this happened he was respected but now people shunned him. His so-called friends weren't any help. And to top it off, he felt that God had abandoned him when he needed him most.

Job 30:20-31, “I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me. You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me. You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm. I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.

Surely no one lays a hand on a broken man when he cries for help in his distress. Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor? Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness. The churning inside me never stops; days of suffering confront me.

I go about blackened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of owls. My skin grows black and peels; my body burns with fever. My harp is tuned to mourning, and my flute to the sound of wailing."

Job was a righteous man, yet God still allowed this to happen to him and Job didn't understand why. He was crying out but getting no answer. He was reaching out but he wasn't getting any help. Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever reacted like Job does here? It's completely understandable why you would.

But we learn from chapters one and two that Job didn't curse God or even blame God, he just didn't understand why God was allowing it and why he hadn't come to his aid, rescue or defense. We do the right thing, serve God and help people and then calamity strikes. We don't get it. We're discouraged and frustrated. We didn't do anything to deserve it but it happened anyway. We may feel the situation is hopeless. I'm sure that's how Job felt. But that wasn't the end of the story for Job. More on that later.

Another way hope sinks is when we put our hope in something other than God. Salvation is through Christ alone but many people don't believe that. Therefore, their hope is in something else-another religion or religious figure; it could be their own thinking-mainly that they're a good person and that's the only thing necessary for God to grant them entrance into heaven.

However, the reality is that those who have hope in anything other than God will eventually be disappointed. Eph. 2:12 says that when we were separate from Christ we were without hope. Before we were born again we were in our sin and therefore without the hope of eternal life. This is true hopelessness.

Prov. 11:7, "When a wicked man dies, his hope perishes; all he expected from his power comes to nothing." A key word here is expected. I can expect something to happen and be sorely disappointed. But when it comes to having expectations regarding eternity, it will truly be a rude awakening if my expectations are in anything other than Jesus.