As we get ready to start a new year, we make New Years Eve resolutions. We have Hope to do it better in the New Year.
I wrote this talk just after Thanksgiving. Two weeks later a young guy was at our home doing some work for us.
We did not talk about the weather, football, sports or his faith, we only talked about the work he would be doing. I can still see his face as he walked by me for the final time, on the way to his vehicle. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and by the time he got to town, it would be time to quit working for the day. A week later he was gone, he committed suicide.
We men, when someone asks us how we are, we usually answer, “Good.” We don’t want to get into the specifics of how we really are. We keep that inside of us.
In reality, we are unhappy at what is happening in the world around us. We are unhappy about some of our relationships. We sometimes feel as though we have failed. We feel like church is for little kids and women. We don’t want to go. We would rather cuss, drink, talk to pretty women and watch fist fights.
But the greatest fight, we will have, will be against satan. He wants us dead and with him in Hell.
The following table shows deaths in Kansas only. Unintentional deaths were vehicle wrecks, falls, drowning, etc. Drugs were heroin, cocaine and opioids. These stats came from a Kansas website. These numbers have slowly increased over the last twenty years.
Year Unintentional Suicide Homicide Drugs
| 2002 | 1,125 | 346 | 126 | 168 |
| 2021 | 2,031 | 555 | 182 | 679 |
The table below, from Gallup polls, tells us what Americans over the entire country believe in and how often they go to church. The less you go to church the less you believe in the almighty Father in Heaven and the Devil and Hell also.
Attendance Belief in God in Heaven in Hell In Devil
| Weekly | 98% | 92% | 84% | 86% |
| Monthly | 94% | 90% | 80% | 77% |
| Less often | 57% | 48% | 41% | 40% |
I believe people are losing hope. The meaning of hope is ambition, expectation, desire, wishing, dreaming, longing and anticipation. Where does hope come from?
Viktor Frankel was an Austrian psychiatrist who was put in a concentration camp during WW II. He survived and wrote a book shortly after the war called, ‘Mans Search for Meaning.’ While he was in the concentration camp he studied the other prisoners. Why did some survive and some did not? Below are some of his most famous quotes.
“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.”
The men that survived had a meaning and purpose. Some wanted revenge on the guards and Nazis. Some wanted to see family after the war was over. Those who could see no purpose or meaning to life died in the camps. And these were men who had been selected to work in the camps, not those who on arrival were sent to the gas chambers immediately.
The Bible says hope comes from the Lord.
Psalm 62:5-6 Yes, my soul finds rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
Job 8:13 So are the paths of all who forget God; and the hope of the godless will perish.
The Westminster Catechism was written for the Presbyterian Church in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1648. What follows is number one on the list of 196 questions.
What is the chief and highest end of man?
Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church in #27 puts it this way:
The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.
Over the years, if I have gotten into a conversation with someone who I think is struggling with life. I tell them, when they reach the bottom of the pit and they feel they are about to lose hope. I tell them to call out in Jesus name and say, “Jesus I don’t believe in you, but if you are real help me somehow right now.”
Mark 9:23-24 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
We come to church each Sunday to be filled again with the Holy Spirit and we take it out into the world. The world sucks it out of us and we need to be refilled, regenerated, and redeemed over and over again.
I don’t believe in the ‘once saved, always saved’ and now I never have to go back to church again nonsense.
We should live our lives in such a fashion as people wonder what we have? Why are they so filled with hope?
Our hope is in Jesus; to save us from this life of sin we are born into.
So live your life each day with hope and be ready to share that hope with all you meet each day of the week. Because as the tables above show, people are losing the battle, they are losing their hope.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
There is the real hope to life. Memorize that verse if you have not.