1 Thessalonians 2:8

As we sit here on December 1st, there is no denying that I can say Merry Christmas. Just like Pastor Miles said, Christmas is here. Now, whether your attitude is one of excitement or resignation, it sets off a time for reflection. You might consider how fast the year has gone by and how crazy this year has been. You may reflect on how you're going to make it through this next month without financially destroying yourself or dealing with your uncle who keeps talking about the wrong political candidate. Whatever the case may be, you might be excited about looking at Christmas lights or spending time with family.

This season seems to elicit different effects; it brings up various feelings in each of us. It affects us differently and uniquely. My family and I love Christmas time, and clearly, at the church, we love Christmas as well. Volunteers came and set this up because they love Christmas so much. They said, "I want to make the church look like Christmas," and they just showed up on their day off to make it look really festive. Thank you to the volunteers for their hard work.

However, some people dread Christmas time. They do not look forward to it for a number of reasons. It can be due to hurt, trauma, or the death of a loved one. You may look around and know that there will be an empty seat at Christmas, which can lead to anxiety. There are any number of reasons that we can dread this time of year.

With this understanding, we have our "why" for doing a Christmas Advent series every year. This is why we go through the same few messages each Christmas time. A big reason for that is that it gives us a chance to rejoice and reflect on the reasons we celebrate, on the reasons we are called to rejoice and be thankful for what Christmas should represent to us as believers.

Now, Pastor Miles is going to be out for a few weeks. He was out last week, this week, and he'll be out for the next week as well. This was not something he was excited to do. He's not in Fiji right now, unfortunately, and he’s not going to come back with a better tan. Well, he's on the East Coast, so I doubt it. School pulled him out, and he was not thrilled to be gone for this period of time. As he was going through that, he was asking us which messages we wanted to take, and I specifically requested this message on hope.

This is the first message of the Christmas series. Each of our pastors on staff here has been in ministry for over a decade, if not quite a bit more. You've heard the jingle: we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. Our pastors have witnessed a lot in our roles over the years. Personally, I have served this church for over two decades, many of those years as a pastor. I also currently serve as a chaplain with the police department.

When asked what I wanted to teach, there is a love that all of us have as pastors. We all cherish the subject of the hope that comes with Jesus Christ. The hope of Jesus Christ is what our foundations are built upon. So, all of us are kind of nabbing at that one. One thing we also really know and understand is that without hope, we are truly lost. I have seen it, and each of our pastors has seen it. We have encountered people who do not have hope. Hope is so important in each of our lives.

As we grow in our walks with the Lord, each of us has our own journey. As we grow in discipleship, one of the best practices we have is getting into the Word, reading the Word, and praying. It is a simple task, but it is one that draws us close to the Lord. It is key. On day one, if you want to know the Lord, here’s how to do it: we pray together. What do I do now? Go and get down on your knees, pray, and read your Word. Just start studying, start learning, start growing, and learn how to live this life.

As we go through that, we read differently. Some of us like to follow a Bible-in-a-year plan and read through the whole Bible in a year. Others prefer to cherry-pick, reading and praying as they go. Some might choose to read a specific book and then skip around to others, occasionally wondering what Habakkuk has to say. You might go back and read Habakkuk and think, "Okay, that was weird," or perhaps you find it totally edifying and love it. Who knows?

As we work our way through the Scriptures with the consideration of hope, we see what I call the different eras of hope, depending on where you're reading: the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the latter part of the New Testament. Each of these portions presents different angles of hope. Here on Sunday mornings, we just finished the book of Judges, which concluded on a pretty bleak note. It was rough. To be perfectly fair, when we started Judges last fall,

It didn't start out on a great note. We finished the book of Joshua last spring and went through a summer series like we normally do. We jumped into Judges in the fall. In Judges chapter 2, we come out of Joshua, which is triumphant. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Everybody was excited; we did it!

Then, right away in Judges chapter 2, we read that Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath Hares, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. That whole generation was also gathered to their ancestors. After them, a generation arose who did not know the Lord or the works He had done for Israel.

One generation later, the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They worshiped the Baals and abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed other gods from the surrounding peoples and bowed down to them. They angered the Lord, for they abandoned Him and worshiped Baals and Ashtoreths. It was one generation later that they stumbled, fell, and walked away from the Lord.

Now, we spent the past year and a half studying Judges, and I think it was chapter 19 that contained one of the more depraved passages we see in the Scriptures. We've actually joked as a pastoral staff about doing a series called "Holy Calamities in the Bible." That passage would definitely be included, as it prompts the question, "What are you supposed to do with that?" Pastor Miles did a fantastic job of going through that as a minister and teacher, but it is one of the more depraved things we see from the Israelites, the people of the Lord, God's chosen people.

This wasn't about one tribe or one group of people over there that we can kind of blow off. No, this was the chosen people of the Lord. It ends on a final note in Judges 21:25, which states, "In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what seemed right to him." What seemed right to him was not great; it was sometimes blatantly gross.

So, we look at Judges 21 and say, "Well, the answer is supposed to be a king, right?" There was no king in Israel, and that's why everybody did what was right in their own eyes. They needed a leader, a proper leader. Israel, the people chosen by the Lord, the ones that were supposed to be the bright shining beacon of faithfulness and love, just needed a king.

If we continue down the storyline of the Old Testament, we look at the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. Samuel was the final judge and a prophet of the Lord for Israel. He appointed the first king, King Saul. King Saul was chosen by the people because he looked kingly. He was tall and a man of great stature. I am not, but he was. He had that jawline and appeared to be a great king. He seemed like he was going to fit the part and was impressive in the eyes of the Israelites. However, his vanity got the best of him, and he slowly went mad. He fought against the will of the Lord and ultimately died in battle in shame. It was not a pretty end.

The Lord then arranged for King David to step into the role of king over Israel. King David was a remarkably better king. Many of us know and love King David. He was a man after God's own heart, as the Scriptures put it. He wrote many of the Psalms and accomplished many mighty things in the name of the Lord after hearing His word.

However, as we follow that storyline, we see that David had multiple concubines and multiple wives. One of those wives was stolen from a friend of his, a man who was in battle that David should have been leading. Instead, he stayed back and took the man's wife, leading to the deepest, ugliest part of the battle. He had the man killed because he had impregnated his wife, trying to cover it all up. This resulted in a long family history of betrayal, morally repulsive behavior, and civil war among his own children, all stemming from his sinful actions.

That was not the best resolution for Israel. I say "resolution" because David was a decent king. He was the man that God called, and the Lord used him, but he was still an earthly man, a flawed, sinful individual. He was not the ultimate hope that Israel was looking for.

As we look through the book of Judges, we find a list of all the judges who came in and played the role of judge. We see the storyline of how that mechanism worked, what their lives looked like, and how they performed their duties as judges.

And then we have 1 and 2 Samuel, which are like vignettes of the first couple of kings. They show the mechanism of kingship in Israel, how that was supposed to work, how it was going to work, and how these two individuals ended up doing. Following that, we have the books of 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. They read like "bad king, bad king, bad king, good king, bad king, bad king." It just keeps going on.

As you go through this, you consider where the people are over the course of these thousands of years, and you question, in their sight, where is the hope? What is the hope for humanity? Well, enter Isaiah, one of the prophets that we all know and love, the one with some of our favorite Christmas verses. Isaiah 9:6 states, "For a child will be born to us, and he will have a crown on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace."

This matters because of what Isaiah later said in Isaiah 53:1-6: "Who has believed what we have heard, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn't have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from. He was despised, and we didn't value him. Yet he himself bore our sickness and carried our pains, but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities. Punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way, and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all."

The core problem that we see in Judges, then Samuel, then Kings, then Chronicles, and so on, is not the lack of a good leader, a good judge, or a good king. The problem is found much earlier than that, in Genesis 3, what we call a Genesis 3 problem. When man sinned, it revealed a heart that was averse to the direction of a holy God. God is giving out punishment in chapter three after the sin and fall of mankind, first to the serpent who deceived, then to the woman who disobeyed first, and then to the man who didn't correct and followed suit in sin.

But in the midst of explaining punishment to Satan, to the being animating the serpent, according to...

Or that's how David Guzik puts it. The Lord gives us an Easter egg of what's to come that is going to solve this problem from the very beginning. In Genesis 3:15, He says, "I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." The Lord, from the very beginning, is pointing to the long-off future that would save mankind and help mankind to walk rightly with the Lord. That would crush the head and the works of the devil. It would bruise our Lord, but in the end, He was going to win.

This brings us to point number one: Jesus was the hope from the very beginning. Jesus offered us hope because He fixed the root cause of the problem—our sin, our flesh, our fallen natures, our fallen hearts. He came and fixed that problem, that core issue. The Old Testament points to the need for a Savior. Jesus was the hope. They didn't know it; they couldn't see it, yet they set a place at their table for Him. They only had the hope of what was to come. There was going to be something. They had to trust in the promise that God was going to bring something to save them.

And then one day, it happened in Bethlehem. Luke, the author, and Linus, the peanut character, said it best in Luke 2:8-14. "Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tid

Now, it's worth noting that just because God put Himself into a human body and showed up, this was not the resolution. This was not the end. This was not what fixed the problem. Jesus' arrival was the spark of the beginning of hope for mankind. His work was not yet accomplished.

Fortunately for us, Luke 2 is also not the end of the story. There is much more to come. Jesus grows and begins His ministry at roughly 30. We have spent years and decades studying the life of Jesus, and I’m not going to pretend that we can cover it all in the next handful of minutes. However, one thing we do see is that over and over, those who sought Jesus were seeking hope. They sought Him as their hope.

We see them break through the roof to lower people down, and we see others crawl through a crowd just to touch the hem of His garment because He was their hope. They had hope that He could fix, heal, and help them. They had hope in seeking Him, and He gave them hope when He healed them, fed them, and taught them.

I am also reading through Matthew right now in my personal time. One of the things I noticed is that very early on, earlier than I expected or remembered, Jesus begins to warn His disciples that He is going to die. He tells them, "I’m going to be put to death, but I will rise again." Not only does He warn them early, but He continues to repeat, "You guys, I’m going to be put to death. This is going to be ugly, but I will be back. I will rise again." He lovingly tells them this over and over, but the disciples are human; they didn’t get it. When it happened, it was a shock.

When I was learning Photoshop, I took a class. It’s a very daunting program. When you first open it up, it feels overwhelming with all the buttons and options. You start poking around, and sometimes you break things. I thought I should probably learn how to use this better, so I took a class. In the first couple of classes, it was like, "Okay, you push this button over here, and then you drag this over there, and you can do this." It was enlightening. I realized that I was doing things that looked like I was creating in Microsoft Paint. I was learning and getting the hang of it.

And then there was one day when he showed us how to use this tool. I realized, oh, I've seen that before, and something kind of clicked in my mind. Suddenly, something unlocked, and I started working. It was like, now this makes sense. I can use this to then do this. All of a sudden, your designs are looking very different. Now they're looking more professional because you learn how this actually works. But it took a minute.

The disciples were human. They heard it and thought, oh yeah, we totally got it, but they didn't get it. When Jesus died, they were scared. They fled and hid. I am so thankful that I am not a character in the Bible with my life story written out for people to study and question in 2024. I don't mean to disparage these guys; they were human. In witnessing Jesus's death, they believed they witnessed the death of hope. They had ideas of who they thought Jesus was going to be, who he was supposed to be, and what he was going to do politically and spiritually. They put all of their eggs in that basket. Everything they had, they put into Jesus. But then they watched him die, and it was an embarrassing, humiliating way to die. Beaten, bloody, naked on a cross—one of the more shameful ways that you could have been put to death. When they saw that, they really thought they had just witnessed the death of the hope they had.

Fortunately for us, we know that that's not the end of the story. As our beloved artist, Phil Wickham, so eloquently states, Friday's good because Sunday's coming. The scriptures reveal that yes, Jesus did indeed die, but on the third day, he rose again. With this death and resurrection, mankind received rescue, salvation, peace with God, and hope. Romans 10:9-13 says that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

For the scripture says, "Whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame." There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. There is hope for the broken, the fallen, and the sinful heart within us all. And that hope's name is Jesus.

Point number three: Jesus is the reason for our hope through His death and resurrection. The scriptures pointed to the hope of Jesus from the beginning. They revealed that Jesus was the hope upon His arrival and cemented Him as the hope through His death and resurrection. This is great news. It means that our eternity is secure. We are saved. We are good. It is the good news.

But now we're in 2024, almost 2025. We are saved by faith in Jesus; our eternity is secure. What now? What do we do today? What are we called to do today, thousands of years later? Well, we know from the scriptures that we have a few things we are called to do. We are called to live our lives reflecting the light and the hope that we have in Jesus. We are called to pick up our cross and follow Him. We are called to listen to His direction. Whether you're called to be a plumber or a pastor, whatever you're called to do, you're called to do it to honor the Lord in the name of the Lord.

We are called to spend time with Him. We are called to hear from Him. We are called to know Him. We are called to follow Him. Now, sometimes this is easy. You're doing great, and you see the miraculous works of the Lord. You're praising God, and yes, you nailed it. Awesome, great day!

But sometimes it's not easy. Sometimes life is hard. It can be tough to carry on throughout the day. Sometimes you sin, and you have to struggle to carry on. Life happens, and life is hard. I mean, we at this church are currently praying for a number of people who are going through life-altering trials. I've had people reach out to me a number of times. This isn't just once; it's been a few times.

I've had people reach out and say, "Hey, could you pull me off the prayer chain where we get the email for prayer requests?" They express that they are really struggling. They see the hurt, the pain, and the hardships, and it makes them cry. They feel the need to take a break. I understand this because I see everybody's hurts and people reaching out, which is a good thing. If you're writing to the prayer line, please continue to do so. If you're putting prayer cards in, please continue to do that as well.

We have some of our faithful prayer team here today, and we want to pray with you. We love praying for you, but sometimes those kinds of vibrations hit in harmony, and it can be overwhelming. You just have to take a break and catch your breath. I've had people express sorrow, saying, "I'm so sorry, I don't mean to." They acknowledge that it's really tough right now. I reassure them, "It's okay, it's okay. There will be people praying for these requests." Life has a way of kicking you while you're down, and we feel it when we're in that state.

So, in the trials and hardships, what is our hope for today? For those of us who are going to live out our lives for the Lord today, and who are called to live for Him tomorrow and the day after that, what are we called to do? How are we called to continue living for Christ?

Well, Romans 5, verses 1 through 5, provides some insight. If you want to flip there, we will anchor in this passage for a few minutes. Romans 5:1-5 is one of my wife and I's favorite passages. It says, "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have obtained access through Him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."

Beginning this section in Romans 5:1 and 2, we see something very important: our salvation and our peace with God. If we do not have this part down,

If we don't have this part solid, the promises from the rest of it don't apply. We have to have that firm foundation of our salvation in the Lord. That is key; it is critical. It is through our Lord Jesus Christ that we have peace with God since we have been justified by faith in Him. In this, we have also obtained access through Him by faith, and we are able to boast in the hope of the glory of God. We have to have that part set.

In boasting in the hope of the glory of God, we boast in the hope of the splendor, the magnificence, the excellence, and the majesty of God. If you ever need a couple of verses to meditate on, we know that the Scriptures say to meditate on the word of the Lord day and night. If you're one of those who wakes up at three in the morning, I mean, I never do that. I sleep peacefully because I trust in the Lord. I definitely didn't do that this morning, getting worried about a teaching.

If you have those moments at three in the morning when you wake up and think, "Oh man, what?" and you're ruminating on all the things you have to do or the things you didn't do, this is a great couple of verses I might recommend. Write them down, have them next to your nightstand, keep them in your pocket, or put them on a sticky note throughout the day. These are great verses to meditate on the promises and the goodness of God.

With that foundation, we're then able to move on to the next portion of the text. Not only that, but we also boast or glory in our afflictions. Whoa, hang on there. I'm not asking for trials, and I don't think any of you are asking for trials either. I'm not sitting here thinking, "Man, my life is so good right now; I think I need a speed bump. Lord, send some hardships my way. It's been going a little too smooth." Nobody's asking for that.

We joke about the song "Oceans." When you start singing, "Lord, take me farther than my feet could ever wander," it's like, have you ever been halfway drowning in the ocean, where you get out further than you meant to and you're trying to get back, fighting against the currents? It's terrifying. That's not a joyful and enjoyable experience.

But what hope is there in trials, tribulations, and troubles? Well, we continue in verse three. We also boast in our afflictions because we know that afflictions produce endurance. Endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us because God's love has been poured out.

In our hearts, through the Holy Spirit who was given to us, afflictions, trials, and tribulations in our lives are building something in us. By the working of the Lord in our lives, they are creating endurance. You run into a hardship and think, "Oh man, this is not what I was hoping to do today." You pick yourself up, learn, and work through it. You build what's called endurance or resilience.

There was a guy who was talking about cold plunges. I'm not a fan of cold plunges; I generally don't like the cold. If you enjoy cold plunges, this is not me saying that they're wrong. I've heard one good reason in my life that made me think, "Oh, okay, I understand why you're doing a cold plunge." Again, if you enjoy this, God bless you, go for it. I'm not going to join you.

He was saying that he was struggling with having a wife, multiple kids, and a demanding job that required him to maintain his physical form. He wanted to ensure that he was healthy, but he was starting to struggle with the idea of relaxing a little bit. So, he ended up doing cold plunges because it forced him to say, "Nope, I'm going to get in this water, sit there for a couple of minutes, and endure this." Then he would get out. All of this was to keep his body in subjection to his mind and spirit. I thought, "Okay, I respect what you're doing there. I don't want to join you, and I will pray for you."

When we go through hardships and endure them, we learn and grow. The Lord is doing a work in you as we walk with Him in our trials and endurance. He works in your life, allowing you to endure, withstand, and continue to move forward and grow. This endurance produces what is a proven character. As that proven character is built up in us, and as the Lord continues to reinforce that resilience, the result is hope.

Now, verse five tells us that this hope will not disappoint us because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. One of the gifts and the points...

One important aspect we haven't talked about yet is that we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, one of the persons of the Trinity, who dwells within us. The Holy Spirit pours out God's love in us, carries us through trials, and walks with us in storms. I recently saw a video of a Texas baseball game where a player was up at bat. Suddenly, the cameras flickered out for just a second, and you could hear a crack of thunder right over the stadium. The players took off running and hid in the dugout. I looked at the stadium and thought, "I would hate to be up there." When lightning strikes and the storm begins, everyone wants to run for cover.

However, we have the Holy Spirit who walks with us, unafraid to accompany us through the storm, the rain, and even the sunshine. The Holy Spirit is always there, providing hope that is essential for our day-to-day lives. We cannot live without this hope. In the last four to five years, we have seen what a lack of hope can do to people. The COVID-19 pandemic, multiple elections, and financial disruptions have all contributed to increased occurrences of anxiety and depression. We have witnessed spikes in both.

If you are struggling with anxiety or depression, I highly recommend you go back and study Pastor Jason's message from last week. Not only was it a good message, but all of the thankful messages from Pastor Myles and Pastor Jason were excellent as well. Last week, Pastor Jason provided very practical advice on how to combat depression and anxiety in your life. He outlined steps one, two, three, and four to help you get started.

You might also need to seek professional help, which is available. If you need assistance at that level, please come and talk to us; we can help. There are many areas where you can begin, and Pastor Jason has excellent points on that. The lack of hope, along with the rise of anxiety, depression, and suicide, indicates not just a lack of hope for the future or eternity, but also a lack of hope for the present. Many people feel that the trials they are facing are insurmountable, leading them to believe they will never make it through.

I'm never going to make it past this thing. It's never going to get better. That's a lack of hope. When you have either the endurance or resilience, or when somebody comes in and says, "Yes, we will make it through this trial. We will make it through this hardship, and we will make it through to tomorrow." It might not be great tomorrow, but it will be better tomorrow. We will continue to work through this.

The author of Hebrews tells us, "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19). I was reading a book called Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. We know a lot of his other works, like The Grapes of Wrath, which is a real cheerful read. However, Travels with Charley is a bit of a turn from his normal writing. It’s a book about him traveling with his dog, Charley, and the people they meet along the way. It's a little silly, but an enjoyable read.

At the end of the book, he makes it home. Spoiler alert: he makes it home and is sitting with his wife when they see that a massive hurricane is coming. They start boarding up the house and preparing for the storm that is to come. His favorite little sailboat is out in the harbor, and many people are not in the area. He thinks, "Oh man, these boats are going to crash into each other. It's going to break. They're all going to break their lines, and this is going to be bad." He realizes he needs to go re-anchor and reset his boat so that it can weather the storm.

At this point, it's raining, and the winds have already picked up. He swims out to his boat in the rain, which made me think, "Sorry, man. Insurance is going to have to take this one." But he swims out, pulls one of the anchors, and resets it so that the boat can position itself into the wind. He sets that anchor solidly, and when he comes out the next day, his boat is right there. There are a bunch of boats on the side that have broken ropes and anchors, but his boat had a firm anchor set and was able to weather the storm.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure (Matthew 7:24-25). Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine...

And acts on them, Jesus speaking here, will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded the house, yet it didn't collapse because its foundation was on the rock. Jesus is saying that He and His words, the promises of the Lord, are a firm foundation. He is our rock, our firm foundation.

We walk closely with Jesus, His spirit dwelling within us because He is the source of hope. He is the one who builds up hope in us even through afflictions. The one who is acquainted with grief knows our hurts and our troubles, and He is not afraid to walk with us through them day in and day out, building in us what is necessary for resilience, endurance, and character.

Point number four: Jesus is still our reason for hope in daily life. Now, when you're done filling that out, if you'd like to turn over to 2 Corinthians 4, we're going to anchor there for a little bit longer. I love the book of 2 Corinthians. If you haven't read through the book of 2 Corinthians in a while, I really recommend you go back and read through that book. It is so good, and chapter four could be a few weeks of study all on its own.

2 Corinthians 4, verse 15 says, "Indeed, everything is for your benefit so that as grace extends through more and more people, it may cause Thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God." As the New Living Translation puts it, "All of this is for your benefit, and as God's grace reaches more and more people, there will be great Thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory."

As we walk with the Lord and are about His business, as we're growing in Him and doing what He's called us to do, the things that happen to us are all for our benefit or for our sakes. This sentiment echoes Romans 8:28, which states, "And we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

Now, what this does not mean, and I have to make this very clear because I've heard this misused, is that everything in your life that happens is good. This is not what Romans or what 2 Corinthians is saying. Everything that happens in your life is not necessarily good.

Four of us on the staff here are chaplains. All of the pastors have sat with people in this facility who have been going through difficult times. Bad things happen to people. If something has happened in your life and you're thinking, "I'm supposed to be thankful in all things," I understand that. I know that God works all things together. However, that doesn't mean that everything that happens in our lives is a good thing.

What this promise is saying is that everything in our lives works together for our eternal good and for the glorification of our Lord, who is worthy of all praise. A pastor whom I have come to respect shared a story about cookies. His favorite thing to bake is chocolate chip cookies because they require only a few ingredients. He can excel at this because it is a very simple process. Most of us would love a warm chocolate chip cookie with a little bit of milk. If you're lactose intolerant, we can skip the milk. Maybe the butter, I don't know; I don't think it's worth it.

When we eat a chocolate chip cookie, it tastes good. A handful of chocolate chips can taste good by itself. But if you ever grab a handful of flour and stick that in your mouth, you know it doesn't taste good. Not every ingredient by itself in a cookie is pleasant. A handful of baking soda is also not enjoyable. However, as these ingredients work together in masterful hands, they create something good.

I wish I could take credit for that analogy; it is not my own, but I love it. It's something that I have had to preach to myself numerous times. Not everything that happens is good by itself, but the Lord, our master creator, the one who is masterful in what He does, is able to work all things together for our eternal good, for His glorification, and for the building up of His saints.

In verse 16, it says, "Therefore, we do not give up." Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. As for our momentary light afflictions, I want to pause for a moment here. This is not Pastor Nick saying that your afflictions are momentary and light.

This is an author, Paul, who has been through beatings, stonings, imprisonments, and, sorry, shipwrecks. I have the list from 2 Corinthians that he details. It's a paragraph of things he has endured, many of which nearly killed him. He faced betrayals, not to mention the daily pressure of his concerns for all the churches. All of this was for the sake of spreading the gospel.

Paul is well acquainted with hardships. He understands grief and persecution for the sake of the gospel. He is not calling the things you experience light or simple, nor is he calling you weak. What he is saying is that our momentary light affliction is producing an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. Therefore, we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Compared with the eternal weight of glory that the Lord is working in us, our hardships today will seem momentary. Not today, not necessarily today. We will feel these hardships. We will feel these trials. They will weigh us down, and they can be hard to withstand. However, as we maintain an eternally fixed perspective—eyes that are focused on eternity with the Lord, eyes that are fixed on our lives being utilized by the Lord for the sake of His gospel going forth—we can endure.

As we keep an eternal perspective and value honoring the Lord, our Creator, and the one who brought us salvation and life, the one who is worthy of all praise, we can withstand and endure. He is producing in us an absolutely incomparable weight of glory.

You're not going to nail it on the first try. It's not going to be easy at the beginning. Building up endurance and resistance is not a simple thing. Throughout my life, I have had different times when I was trying to get better at hiking or improve my weight training. When you start, it is hard. I began lifting kettlebells.

The first day I was there, I thought I was going to die. I might have been close. But as you build up endurance and put the work in, you get stronger. We can have hope today that even if we are walking through tough circumstances, the Lord is building in us endurance, character, and hope.

We also believe in the promise of the Lord that everything happening in our lives, which we endure in the will of the Lord, is working out for us something amazing, comparable to anything available to us here in this life. Point number five: from the beginning of time through eternity, Jesus is our hope.

I’m going to invite the worship team to come back up and say a few words of prayer. Whether this season has you excited and inspired, or whether it has you beaten and heartbroken, I encourage you to take some time today, this week, or this month to set aside some time alone. Set your mind on Jesus; set your eyes on Jesus. Focus on Him. Every one of these points here today is that Jesus is the hope. It’s not a complicated message, but it can be complicated when you start getting down to brass tacks in your life.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you doesn’t feel like enough. It’s not, but Lord, we offer you our thanks and our praise, and we offer you ourselves. We look to you and put our hope in you. Lord, would you walk with us? Would you minister to us? Would you work in us? Would you help build up endurance and help us to be a bright shining light to those around us?

Father, thank you for the work that you do in us. Thank you that you don’t leave us when things are hard. Thank you that you don’t leave us in the midst of our trials.

We thank you for the promises of Your Word, the promises of Your hope, and the promises of eternal life. As we consider the promise of Your Word, we thank You that You walk with us in the midst of our trials.

As we reflect on all of Your wondrous works, we bring before You now a time of praise. Lord, we pray this in Jesus' name. Thank You.