I Showed a Picture of a boy I met in an Orphanage.
This picture was taken early this year at an orphanage in Guatemala. There were 30-40 kids there all hungry for love and attention. We had gone there to give them what they were hungry for. The kids surrounded us almost as soon as we got off the bus. The boy in the pictures name is Miguel – I think.
Miguel appeared to be no different from the others. He ate the same beans & rice. He played on the same grassless playground and slept under the same tin roof as the other kids. But though he appeared to be the same, there was something different about him. All you had to do was ask him. Miguel had been adopted. Even though nothing has changed – everything has changed.
Every time a car pulls into the driveway, he wonders is it them? Every time he hears there is an overseas call – he listens closely. Any day now his father will appear. He promised he would be back. He came once to claim him and he will come again to take him home. Till then, Miguel lives with a heart headed home.
Shouldn’t we all? Miguel’s situation is just like ours. Our Father also paid us a visit. We too have been chosen – adopted. Soon, He is coming again to get us and we will go home. Until then, we still live with hard bunks and tin plates. But don’t forget, you have a different, a better, future. You have a HOPE!
Hope is necessary to the human spirit as oxygen is to the physical body. When we lose all hope, we are overcome with feelings of senselessness, purposelessness, and despair. Lack of hope can destroy our very lives.
Chuck Swindoll wrote
We can live several weeks without food, days without water, and only minutes without oxygen, but without hope – forget it.
What do we do if we forget? Miguel could look at the pictures, and letters they sent. He could grab one of the gifts they left him when they were there the first time. What about us? What did our Father give us?
2 Corinthians 5:5 (NLT)
God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.
2 Corinthians 5:5 (Message)
The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.
2 Corinthians 1:22 New Living Translation (NLT)
And he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment of everything he will give us.
New Life Version (NLV)
He has put His mark on us to show we belong to Him. His Spirit is in our hearts to prove this.
I am sure at times it was hard for Miguel. Maybe even seeing me was hard at first or when we left. If he gets sick – he longs for a mom to pamper him. When he gets to play with that one special toy that they all have to share – he can’t wait until he has his own.
Romans 8:23 (NLT)
And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children,[1] including the new bodies he has promised us.
But the blessings and burdens in life, the good times and struggles, are all like an alarm clock that wakes us out of the present. Every day we aren’t home means we are one day closer to our Father coming to get us.
That’s HOPE!
We have the deposit. He marked us as His own – just look at it.
This isn’t the kind of Hope that depends on fate or luck. We are not day dreaming of getting a free vacation to Hawaii or even taking a bath in Calgon and getting carried away. It’s more than a charming prince coming on a white horse to rescue us.
This is a real hope. Because we Hope in something that we can depend on. We Hope in a person that we know we can absolutely trust to do what He promised. He not only came to rescue us from sin, but he placed His Holy Spirit within.
Colossians 1:27
… Christ in you, the hope of glory.
He also gave us His WORD to GIVE US HOPE.
Romans 15:4
For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
Illustration - The ministry of House of Hope and how they are changing teenagers lives.
Hope is not only something we have, it is something we do.
1 Cor. 13:13 (MsgB)
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
1. Our hope causes us to live differently -
1 John 3:3
Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.
When we know that Jesus is coming back, that we will live with Him in heaven forever – we have an eternal mindset. We understand that all the nice stuff in this world isn’t that significant. When we recognize that the things of this world aren’t going to last forever, we realize that there is no fulfillment in collecting it and so we are able to give to others.
When we are tempted with the sins of this world - we know longer try to satisfy the desires of the flesh because we have a greater hope in God. In hope, we anticipate that God will satisfy us in ways that cannot be understood in this lifetime. (Read vv. 24-25 again)
2. Our hope turns our eyes toward others (for God’s glory)
Like a doctor dispensing medicine, like a soup kitchen passing out food to the hungry, we Christians are to be dispensers and dealers in HOPE
Charles L. Allen (1913- ) “When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.”
There are no hopeless situations. There are only people who have grown hopeless about them.
ILLUS
The school system in a large city had a program to help children keep up with their school work during stays in the city’s hospitals. One day a teacher who was assigned to the program received a routine call asking her to visit a particular child. She took the child’s name and room number and talked briefly with the child’s regular class teacher. "We’re studying nouns and adverbs in his class now," the regular teacher said, "and I’d be grateful if you could help him understand them so he doesn’t fall too far behind."
The hospital program teacher went to see the boy that afternoon. No one had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain. Upset at the sight of the boy, she stammered as she told him, "I’ve been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs." When she left she felt she hadn’t accomplished much.
The next day, a nurse asked her, "What did you do to that boy?" The teacher felt she must have done something wrong and began to apologize. "No, no," said the nurse. "You don’t know what I mean. We’ve been worried about that little boy, but ever since yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live."
Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: "They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?"
The young boy now had hope he was going to live.
2 Corinthians 3:12
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.
A man approached a little league baseball game one afternoon. He asked a boy in the dugout what the score was. The boy responded, "Eighteen to nothing--we’re behind."
"Boy," said the spectator, "I’ll bet you’re discouraged."
"Why should I be discouraged?" replied the little boy. "We haven’t even gotten up to bat yet!"
In Hosea 2:15 the prophet writes about the Valley of Achor – This is interpreted to mean the valley of trouble – Look what the verse says
Hosea 2:15
There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day
she came up out of Egypt.
