Living Hope When You're Discouraged

Well, I want you to grab your message notes. "Living Hope" is the name of our summer series in the book of 1 Peter that we are starting today on Father's Day. And I gotta warn you ahead of time, this is gonna be kind of a deep message. And so just to kind of lighten things up at the start, I want to open with this story.

There was a newspaper account a few years ago about a woman who owned a parakeet named Chippy. Now, you might remember this account. It was one of those little humorous articles that they put in the newspaper sometimes, like on page 2, sort of a "Bet You Didn't Know" or "Winner of the Darwin Award" this year. Those little kinds of newspaper articles. But it was a true story.

One day this woman who owns Chippy the parakeet gets a brand new shop vac with one of those hose attachments with a little thin kind of opening on the end. And she thinks to herself, "This is so much fun. I can clean the drapes. And I can clean the windowsills." And then she sees Chippy sitting there in his cage. And she thinks, "I know. I bet I could clean the bottom of Chippy's cage without ever having to take Chippy out." Yes, you can see where this might be going.

And so right after she sticks the hose into the cage, "Wooooo, it's going well. She's nearly done." But then the phone rings. And when she turns to answer it, she accidentally makes the hose go up like this and she hears this noise and she turns and there's a couple of feathers floating around and there's no Chippy. And so it's okay because in panic she cracks open the vacuum and there's Chippy still alive but covered with soot. And she said to the newspaper, "I think I panicked because she ran into the bathroom and held him under a faucet, full blast, to clean him off." And then, still in panic mode apparently, she dries him off with a hair dryer before sticking him back in his cage.

Now listen to this. She says, "Chippy's fine, but he doesn't sing much anymore. He just kind of sits and stares." Well I want to ask you a question. How many of you ever in your life have ever felt like Chippy? Can I see a show of hands? I got to tell you something. Here's the theme of this whole sermon. If you forget everything else, here's the thesis of this sermon. Life will at times suck you in and spit you out. But it doesn't have to steal your song because you can still have hope.

We need a good dose of hope these days and that's what this whole series is about. What is hope? Somebody wants to define it this way. Hope is the confident assurance that the best is yet to come. But no matter how life is treating you, no matter whether you've been sucked in and washed off and blown right off and spit back out again into your cage, the best is yet to come. And right now this sensation is in short supply.

According to Dr. Armand Nikoli, he's a professor at Harvard Medical School for 28 years and he's been an advisor to the White House on health issues, he says, "We have experienced an explosive increase in hopelessness in our country today." One expert calls this the age of despair in America. I don't know if you saw the editorial on the Santa Cruz Sentinel last week and it talked about the rise of the suicide rate in America since the mid-90s. It's gone up dramatically right now.

Suicide actually outranks death by traffic, accident, and homicide as one of the leading causes of death in America, in this country that we live in right now. People are feeling despair. People are feeling hopeless. And part of what we want to do as a people of God is bring hope to people who are feeling that way. And I want to bring hope to you today if you're feeling that way because if it's the age of despair then we need more hope to counteract that.

In fact, hope is essential for survival. There was an interesting article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that talked about the importance of hope. It summarized several studies, and let me just kind of give you the bird's eye view. One study after another showed that when people have hope, they recover faster from operations. They recover faster from illness. They not only get better, they feel better. Their mental health is better.

Hope demonstrably, medically, proven by research, a hopeful attitude makes a huge difference in your recovery and in your lifestyle. But you need a specific kind of hope to get those positive effects. Experts say lasting hope is not just wishful thinking. Not just wishful thinking like, "I hope I win the lottery," right? "I hope I get a Porsche for Father's Day." That is just wishful thinking. "I hope the Raiders win the Super Bowl next year." That's just deluded thinking.

I say that to Dave, our Raider fan. Sorry about that, Dave. Hope is not just forced optimism like, "Grit your teeth. Praise the Lord. Everything's going great." That is just lying. That is not hope. There was a guy in our church up in Tahoe who ... He was just one of these guys who always had the smile pasted on his face no matter what happened, and it was always one Christian cliché after another, the Christianese. "Praise the Lord. God loves you, brother. Yes, Jesus." And that's fine. That was who he was, but it reached, I think, pathological levels when one morning he came out to me after church and said, "Praise Jesus, pastor. Everything's good. Everything's fine."

And he walked out, and I heard this squealing of tires. "Argh!" And then a crash of metal. And a few minutes later he walks back in, and it was him who'd been in this car accident. And I said, "Was that your car I just heard outside?" He goes, "Yeah, praise the Lord. I just got into an accident. Praise Jesus." Just like that. And I thought, "You think you're being spiritual? You're not being spiritual? You're being insane, and you're creeping me out a little bit right now." That is not hope.

It's not just a kind of forced optimism. The kind of real lasting hope that makes a difference to your survival, watch this, is the result of a deeply held worldview. You just believe to the bottom of your heart the best is yet to come based on deeply held, firmly entrenched values. And of course that is where the Bible comes in. Some of you are feeling hopeless right now, just buried by all this stuff that's been happening to you one after another. You identify with Chippy 100%. Well if you're discouraged, I got some really great news for you.

Today we begin this new series in the book of 1 Peter. Living Hope is his theme. And I want to give you kind of an overview of the historical context of this, kind of a Discovery Channel moment so you can appreciate every word in 1 Peter is understood differently when you see it through the prism of historical context that I'm about to give you.

1 Peter is a short book of the New Testament toward the end of the Bible, but it's really a letter. It's a group letter written to a group of very discouraged believers. Now watch this, most of them were originally from Jerusalem, but they had been scattered to the four corners of the Roman Empire because they fled persecution in their hometown and tried to find safety only to discover that they were being oppressed maybe even more severely in their new towns too.

So it's kind of out of the frying pan into the fire for these people. And so Peter, the Apostle Peter, sends out this letter to be copied and circulated among these refugees to give them some real hope. Now they were having a tough, at the time that they get this letter, the Christians in these regions were being literally fed to lions and other wild animals in the arenas where people were watching this happen for their entertainment. They were being literally burned at the stake.

Now why was all this happening to the Christians? This is happening in the mid-60s in the first century AD. Well there's a new ruler in town named Nero. Nero was the one who burned Rome in 64 AD and blamed the Christians. Said the Christians are the ones who did this, let's get them. And then he started burning Christians alive as human torches to light up his garden in Rome. In other cities in Rome they were being tortured. They were being imprisoned. They were being killed in the Colosseums.

And that's why in this letter Peter says, "I know you're going through a few trials right now." I mean that's the understatement of the millennium, but I want you to understand the context because that's what he's saying. He's not just saying, you know, you keep losing your socks in the dryer. He's saying you are really going through some tough times. In fact, in 1 Peter he refers to suffering 15 times and he uses eight different words for suffering in the original Greek.

Like the Eskimos have a dozen words for snow because they see so much of it. These people had all these different words for suffering because they had so much of it. But in the, you're going to think this is a bummer book. It's not at all. In fact this book is full of hopeful ideas and it worked. In the midst of all this suffering even their Roman opponents wrote that Christians were people of seemingly unconquerable, undiminishable optimism.

And you're going to discover why in the summer series as we go verse by verse through this book of the Bible. I hope you bring your Bibles with you each week. And I hope you read 1 Peter in between weeks. Read those daily meditations that are attached to the sermon notes. I hope that you do not take a summer vacation break from your spiritual growth. In fact, I hope you swim against the tide.

I want to challenge you to swim against the tide this summer, make the book of 1 Peter one of the books on your summer reading list and really plunge into it. Because if you do you will find your own hope level just skyrocketing. And we're going to start off today with a look at just the first few verses. It's all about how to have hope when you're discouraged. When you're discouraged. Would you agree with me that discouragement is contagious? It's a contagious disease, right?

When you're around other people who are discouraged, life stinks. You'll never believe what happened to me. A vacuum cleaner sucked me up and then I was washed off and then somebody... When you're around people like that you just get discouraged yourself. But it's also a highly curable disease. When you're around hopeful people you find their hope rubbing off on you too. And that's what you'll discover as you read Peter's words.

Because Peter had been through a lot of suffering in his life too. In fact, just a few years after he writes this letter he himself is captured and imprisoned by the Romans and crucified upside down before an audience of Christian haters in Rome. Because he said, "I don't deserve to be crucified the way Jesus was. Crucify me upside down." This was a guy who himself knew how to go through suffering. And you'll discover how no matter what happens to you, you can have hope.

Now check this out. There are four elements of a hopeful worldview just in the first few verses of 1 Peter. If you're a believer these are four things to remember that are always true of you when you're discouraged and you need hope. Jot these down quickly. Number one, "I have been chosen." I have been chosen. God has chosen me to be part of his family. In fact, I want you to say this phrase out loud with me right now. Say it. "I have been chosen." Say it like you mean it. "I have been chosen."

I want you to just look at what essentially is the address on the letter. The first verse or two of any ancient letter was the address. It told who wrote the letter and who it was going to. Just like an address on the outside of an envelope or package these days. People would just kind of unscroll the scroll to the very beginning and they'd see the address so they would know who it was going to. And consequently a lot of people just sort of skip right over these verses when they studied the Bible, but locked in this are deep riches.

Just think about these words. First it's written by Peter. This is a guy who knows what it means to be chosen by Jesus. He was a fisherman. When Jesus shows up he didn't apply for the job. He didn't do anything to prove himself worthy of the job. When Jesus says, "You, follow me." Picks him out of a crowd. And even though Peter puts his foot in his mouth all the time, even though Peter denies Jesus, how many times? Three times. When Jesus is on trial and being brutalized and Peter's afraid of being killed himself and so he says, "I swear I don't know the man."

Then what happens? The resurrected Christ goes back to the Sea of Galilee, finds Peter has quit and he's fishing again and he says, "I'm going to re-choose you because I never unchose you even though you've denied me. Follow me. I keep choosing you Peter." So he knows what it's like to be chosen by God's grace. And then Peter's the one who addresses his letter to the exiles, the refugees scattered throughout. Now these are thick words that a lot of us don't relate to and so we just kind of like run past these to get to the good stuff.

Look at this, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Peter names five regions of the Roman Empire. Let me show you a map. He is saying, and he says these things sort of clockwise, he says Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. He's not saying this letter is going only to Christians in those cities. What he's saying is to the exiles scattered to the four corners, to the refugees who had to flee in all four directions, to the people who were scattered all over the world, and I want you to see how he addresses them.

Actually, before he even says to the exiles, he calls them something. He gives them a nickname. He says to God's elect. The very first word Peter uses for these Christians is not exiles, it's elect, which also means chosen or hand-picked. Now you can't see that in some translations like the NASB or the King James Version or the Revised Standard Version. They move the word order around, but you can in the NIV. This is the word order in the original Greek right there.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the elect, to the elect refugees, to the privileged exiles, to the chosen wanderers. And I really want to stress this because I think the first thing that you say about somebody when you write them is important, right? There's a reason for putting it first. If I wrote a letter to one of my kids and said, "Dear Jonathan, you are my beloved, even though you're going through some tough times right now," or "Dear Elizabeth," or "Dear David, you know, you're my hand-picked, wonderful, beloved child, even though life is slamming you right now," I would mean something by that, right?

So why is Peter emphasizing this? Well think about it. Being an exile usually means that you've been rejected by some group of people and forced to live in another place that's not your home, right? Exile or refugee status is virtually synonymous with having been rejected. And some of you right now feel like, "I'm living like a refugee, man. I feel like an exile." Maybe actually, physically, you've been booted out of a house or a place or a life that you once had for yourself by children or by a boss or by a spouse that once said, "I loved you," and then said, "I reject you," and you can relate to where these people are coming from.

But Peter says to them, "No, I want you to know you're chosen still. You have not been forgotten. You are precious. You are loved. God's elect exiles." You see how important this was for them to hear? I was looking for a contemporary example of a refugee who found this to be important. And I found this this week. There's a Rwandan woman named Immaculi Ilibgiza. She became a refugee during the horrific violence in Rwanda. Do you remember when this happened? Members of the Hutu tribe were going door to door killing members of the Tutsi tribe, which was Immaculi's tribe.

And so she had to flee for her life. She went into exile, and she ended up actually hiding for seven weeks in a locked out of order bathroom, just a locked out of order bathroom stall with several other women. And she found a Bible to read, and it was actually as a refugee that she became a Christian. She wrote a book about it. The book is called "Left to Tell." Left to tell. And in this little clip of a TV interview that I'm going to show you, she reads from her book about what it meant to her as a refugee to know that she was loved and chosen by God.

"Seven weeks in the bathroom have left us all frighteningly gone. We were shrinking, and our starvation diet left us weak and lightheaded. I could tell by my clothes that I have lost at least 40 pounds. Our skin was pale, our lips were cracked, and our gums were swollen and sore. To make matters worse, since we hadn't showered or changed clothes, we were plagued by vicious infestation of body lice. We could see them marching across our faces." I don't remember this. "We may not have been a pretty sight, but I had never felt more beautiful." I can remember this. I swear. I'm like, I'm falling in love with God. It felt like I had all I wanted in life. That time I was thanking God. When you feel every cell in your body is responding to God's love.

Isn't that remarkable? Here she lost everything as a refugee, and she says, "I felt like I had everything I wanted in life." Why? It was her sense of being beloved, of being chosen by God that helped her go through that. This is why I think Peter emphasizes this. He wants to say, "Your lives may feel uprooted, but actually, listen, you are rooted in God's love for you, even though you might feel rejected right now." This is so important to Peter. You'll see he says this again and again in his letter.

He says it again in verse 2, "Who have been chosen," if you got your pen or pencil, circle, "chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through the sanctifying work of the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with His blood." Do you see? There's the whole trinity right there, Father, Son, and Spirit. He's saying, "Not only did the Father choose you long before you ever chose Him," he took the initiative, "but it didn't stop there. The Holy Spirit continues to work in you every day, sanctifying you, and for the future you are covered. You're sprinkled with the blood of Christ, so even when you sin, you're covered. You're chosen. You're safe. You're secure."

It made me think of a USA Today article that I saw several years ago, a fascinating happening, and had a headline, "Dozens of Adoption Offers for the Mountain Angel, Baby." Here's what happened, you might remember it. This woman, Azita Milanian, was jogging with her dogs in Altadena, California, right here at the Cobb Estate Park down in Altadena, and when her dogs started sniffing at a patch of ground. And Azita thought it looked freshly dug up, and so she reached into the dirt and pulled out a brand new little baby boy, wrapped in towels, cold and barely breathing, a little newborn just abandoned there to die.

To this day they don't know why, what the back story was. She says, "When I uncovered him, he grabbed my wrist and started to cry. He still had his umbilical cord." She took him to the hospital. All the nurses said they fell in love with him. Social workers received at least three dozen calls from people wanting to adopt him, and he was adopted, and he's now a healthy 16-year-old boy, but I want you to listen to this quote from the woman who found him. She says, "It was not a mistake that he was found. It was a choice by God." And oh, you know what they named him? Baby Christian.

Well guess what? The Bible says, "That's your story." The Bible says all of us baby Christians, all of us, were little lost babies, helpless, as good as dead, but God found us and picked us up. It was a choice of God, and he adopted us into his family. Now could that little baby have done a single thing to rescue himself? No. He couldn't move. He couldn't forage for food. He had no knowledge. He couldn't walk. He couldn't talk. He couldn't even cry to save himself because he was buried. And the Bible says you couldn't save yourself either.

But God found you. Like that song, Amazing Grace, that we sang at the top of the service, Amazing Grace. "I once was lost, but now I'm found." Listen, the more you learn about grace, the more amazing it is. And that's why Peter closes his greeting with this. He says, "Here's what comes of believing this to the core of your being, grace and peace." When you get God's grace, it leads to peace. I don't know if you have picked this up yet, but those two words right there, that's the theme of this ministry at this church, grace and peace in a hundred thousand different ways.

As your pastor, I'm going to try to communicate to you the truth of God's grace so you can experience God's peace. So Peter says, "You guys got to grasp this. You've been chosen by God and you haven't been abandoned by him." So say that with me again. Say, "I've been chosen." I've been chosen. I want you to really memorize these truths because remember, hope comes from a deeply held firmly entrenched worldview and this is part of it. You're never abandoned.

And then he says a second encouraging thing. Number two, you can say, "I have a living hope. I have a living hope." And of course, this is where we get the name for the series, Living Hope. It's a theme of 1 Peter. Say that with me together. I have a living hope. What's that mean? Number three, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Our hope is not just based on some dead guy, Aristotle, Socrates, Lincoln. As great as they were, it's based on somebody alive. Now again, why did this matter to these Christians? Because Jesus Christ, some of them were eyewitnesses of this like Peter. Jesus Christ had been just like they were experiencing, imprisoned, tortured, executed, but then they saw him alive again in a physical resurrected body. And they looked at that and they considered that their future. Truly the best was yet to come.

And so they could say to those who were about to torture them, "Do your worst because I know that what's going to happen to me is I'm going to come back in a resurrected body in the new heaven and the new earth. The best is yet to come." I got an email this week from my friend Steve Clifford. Some of you know Steve and Dana Clifford. Steve is a pastor, the senior pastor at Westgate Church over in San Jose. Earlier this year, one of their two sons, just in his 20s, was found dead in his house in Oregon.

Now how do parents deal with a tragedy like that? Your son is in his early 20s and they find him dead and they're still not sure why he died. Well, I can tell you how they're dealing with this. They are putting their hope firmly in this truth that they have a living hope. You know how Steve now signs all of his letters and emails. He signs them all because he lives, Steve Clifford. That is why Steve and Dana Clifford are surviving, because he lives.

They know that they're going to see their son again, that in the new heaven and the new earth they're going to give him a hug with new resurrected physical bodies. I know I'm going to see my dad again. You're going to see those who've gone on before you in Christ again. That is a living hope that the best truly is yet to come. Because he lives, Steve Clifford, when I saw that this week, I thought of the song that that's a piece of a lyric from. Do you know that song? Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. If you know it, say the words along with me.

Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone. Because I know who holds the future, life is worth the living just because he lives. You have a living hope. So when you're discouraged, remember, say truth number one with me, I have been chosen. Truth number two, I have a living hope. And then number three, I have an inheritance. Man, there's something awesome when you know for sure you have got a rich inheritance that is going to make you so wealthy.

And Peter says that is what's true of you refugees even though it seems like you have lost everything. You are going to be rich beyond your wildest dreams and you can be confident of this. So let's say this together. Let me hear you. I have an inheritance. Or do you? Article on the Wall Street Journal website just this week. Headline says, "Counting on an inheritance? Count again." And it says, "The bad news, many baby boomers are likely to get less money from mom and dad than they thought. The worst news, they may have to help their parents instead." Is this like the whiniest article you've ever heard of?

It says, "Thanks to longer life spans." I kid you not. "Thanks to longer life spans in the crash of '08, most boomers can say goodbye to their inheritance." Yeah, too bad mom and dad are living so long, right? Isn't there any way we can get them to die sooner? But this is the thing with earthly inheritance, it can go away, right? It's insecure, unstable, you can't count on it. And Peter knows this. This is why he emphasizes in three different ways.

Look at these verses. "God has reserved," if you've got your pen and pencil, "circle reserved for his children the priceless gift of eternal life." And then he says, "It is kept in heaven for you." Great word, kept. That literally means to guard, check this out, to protect by a military guard to prevent hostile invasion. So God is guarding some inheritance for you where? In heaven, what safer place could there be? Pure and undefiled beyond the reach of change and decay. Circle beyond the reach of change and decay.

If the first point is that God chose you, this third point means God will never un-choose you. Here's why this is very important for people to hear in Peter's day. We know from history that there was a real controversy that almost shook the early Christian church apart about what to do about the Christians who were arrested. I mean, put yourself in their position. You're arrested as a Christian, you know that Christians have been thrown to lions in the colosseums and now the soldiers are arresting you and they hustle you into their little guard room and they say to you, "Deny Christ or that's your fate too. You're going to be torn apart by wild animals."

Now some of the Christians in the first century, many of them said, "I will never deny my Lord," and they went on to die a martyr's death. Very courageous. But we know from history not all of them did. Some of them were like, "Well, what are you asking me to do?" And the Roman soldiers made it very easy. They didn't say, "You've got to get up and spit on the cross," or anything like that. We know exactly what they did. We know this from history. They said, "It's easy. Here's a little bowl of incense. We want you to take a pinch of this incense and we set up a little altar to Caesar over here. All you've got to do is go over to the flames in front of that altar and throw that pinch of incense in the fire and then when it's consumed, we'll consider that you're worshiping Caesar as your Lord and not just Jesus and they can go on your way. Go back to your Christian community. We won't bother you again."

And we know a lot of Christians, maybe thousands of them, did that. They're like, "Okay. That's all you want me to do? I don't have to do any—Okay, here. Here's a little incense to Caesar as Lord." And then they went back to their Christian communities where people were greatly divided over what to do with them. And that is exactly what the Roman government wanted. They wanted to destroy this Christian movement which had been showing so much harmony in brotherhood by introducing into their number people that they thought they would consider traitors. And they said the whole thing's going to implode because of this strange social division.

And in fact, it was happening. This I believe is one of the reasons why in so many of Paul's letters he says things like "Even if we are faithless, he remains faithful." This is why I believe all those accounts of Peter's denial of Christ are in the Bible because Peter's like, "Hey, I denied Christ when the soldiers threatened me, when a little girl threatened me." All these accounts are in there to say, "Look, these people may have broken under the soldiers' interrogations, but they're still your brothers and sisters in Christ, and you have to be kind to them and gracious to them just as God was gracious to you."

I think this is why Peter says this here. He's saying your inheritance is kept in heaven and nothing can endanger that inheritance. You say, "Okay, that's interesting history, René. What does it have to do with me today?" Well, some of you in this room right now, the reason that you have -- listen, the reason you've delayed giving your life to Christ and making that commitment is because you're afraid. And I know this because some of you have told me this. What if I make the commitment and then I can't keep it? What if I become a believer and then I sin? You know what? You will. If you become a believer, you'll sin.

What if I can't hold on? It's not yours to do the holding. We get this idea that we go out and blow it, we make mistakes, then we crawl in the gutter back to God and say, "Oh God, I'm so sorry I let you down." But in reality, God says this to us, "You didn't let me down. You weren't holding me up." It's not us that holds God up. It's God that holds you up. Jesus said in John 10:29, "They're in my hand and no one can pluck them out." God will never let you go. No matter what happens, God keeps your future inheritance guaranteed. God will never leave you.

Say it with me again. I have an inheritance. And this is all true because at point four, I have a loving father. I have a loving... Say that out loud with me. I have a loving father. And this ties in perfectly to Father's Day, right? And again, think of the audience. I'm thinking Peter emphasizes this so much. Because again, we know this from history. There were families disowning their own children because of the children's Christian conversion. So we disown you. We cut you off from your inheritance and your identity and your family.

And maybe you haven't been disowned by your dad, but you've lost your dad through either abandonment or death. And on Father's Day, we've had all this Father's Day fall to all and it's great. We want to honor the dads. And sometimes Father's Day stings a little bit for you. And as most of you know, I can relate. This is the last picture that I'm aware of that we have of me with my father. I'm a little under four years old there. And this was shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer, which rapidly took his life. And I miss my dad on Father's Day.

I think of him teaching me how to shave when I was about that age. Giving me a little junior shaver kit. I remember him making a snowman for me when it snowed over in San Jose, one of those rare winters when it snowed. And I remember after he died, my wonderful, beautiful Swiss mom telling me, "René, your dad can't be with you anymore, but your heavenly Father will never leave you. And he is always with you all the time, no matter what, no matter where." What a difference that made.

And I think this is why Peter keeps emphasizing. You'll see all throughout his book, he keeps emphasizing God the Father. He says in each of these first three points, in the first point, he says, "God the Father knew you and chose you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy became our Father again to a living hope. God is reserved for his children, the priceless gift of eternal life to these people who were cut off often from families." He's saying, "You got a family, you got a dad." What a difference this makes.

In the God is book, I told the story of Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. They were married and in his autobiography, Time Bends, the famous playwright, Arthur Miller, he's the guy who wrote the famous play, Death of a Salesman. Well, he tells how during the filming of her last movie, The Misfits, he watched Marilyn descend into just the depths of despair. He was fearing for her life as he saw their growing estrangement and her increasing dependency on drugs.

And he says she even understood how much of her personal trauma was due to not having the love of a father in her life ever when she was a child. And then there's one night that he writes about it. Marilyn had convinced a doctor to give her yet another shot and she was sleeping and Miller says he was standing watching her. And here is what he writes. These are his own words. "I found myself straining to imagine hope. What if she were to awaken and I were able to say to her, 'God loves you, darling.' And what if she believed it?" Now listen to this tragic sentence. How I wished I still had my religion and she had hers.

He was a smart guy. He knew what a difference it would make if she believed I have God as my loving father. We think of these people as celebrities, but they were just real people with real issues just like you and me. And so I want to play the role that Arthur Miller wishes he could have played for Marilyn. I want to look at you in the eye and say to you, "You have a loving father." God the father loves you so much and he always will love you and there's nothing you can do to estrange or alienate him from your love. He has unconditional love for you. He is your relentlessly loving father. That can make such a difference in your life. Believe it. Cling to it.

Say this with me out loud again. Say, "I have a loving father." In fact, you know what? Look at your notes again. Just take them out and look at them. Because I want you to memorize these points. I want you to look at these four points again and I want you to say them out loud with me. Look at the first point. I have been chosen. Say that out loud with me. I have been chosen. Number two, I have a living hope. Three, I have an inheritance. Four, I have a loving father.

If you really internalize these things, no matter how life tests you, you will not lose your song. And that's what Peter means in verse 6 when he says, "In all of this," all that stuff we just recited, "you greatly rejoice." You're still singing. "Even though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." He's saying, "Keep that perspective." Verse 7, our last verse of the morning, "Your faith is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold, though your faith is far more precious than mere gold." Now people misunderstand this verse.

He doesn't mean test as in, "This is only a test." Covering is not just at the level of like a spelling test in school. Sometimes people say, "Life is just a test." That is not how Peter is using this word. He means test as in refining, the process of refining gold. You know how they refine gold? They heat it up. They put it under intense heat and as the gold gets hotter, the impurities are exposed and they're easy to just skim off. Don't miss this. "Filing all your trials can refine you like heat refines gold." And this is important because it doesn't matter what is causing the heat.

No matter if there's burning wood or burning charcoal or burning coal or whatever, heat can purify gold. It doesn't matter what's causing the heat. It could come from a good source like being on camp staff one summer or it could from an evil source. People are trying to make your life miserable. It doesn't matter what's heating up your world. He can still purify your faith. He can refine it and make it into gold. I was talking to Curtis Lemke who's right here in the big chair. Curtis has MS really bad. He's always here faithfully every single week when he can be.

And I was just chatting with him before the service because things are getting real hard for Curtis. And I said, "How's it going?" He didn't even know what I was talking about. He said, "I won't lie to you. It's hard. I wish I didn't have MS." But he said, "You know what?" He said, "I realize that if I had not gotten MS, I wouldn't have faith the way I have faith." He said, "I had very shallow faith before. And since I've gotten it, it's so deepened and enriched my faith." And he said, "In some ways, that makes me almost thankful for the MS." He had no idea I was going to be talking about this.

That's what I'm talking about. Even if it comes from a source that's not good, he's got MS. But that is heating up his world so that it purifies and refines his faith. And God has for Curtis an eternal inheritance that far outweighs anything he's experiencing here. And when Peter says it refines you like gold, he's saying it makes you like Jesus. And I just want to close by showing you an example. Not all of you know Curtis the way I do, but I want to show you another example of somebody refined like this through trial.

I showed you part of that interview earlier with the Rwandan refugee Immaculate. She's actually traveled back to Rwanda. She writes about it in that book. And she's visited a prison and she's personally forgiven one of the people who literally murdered her entire family. Now how is she forgiven the very person who persecuted her, made her into a refugee and killed all her family? I want you to watch this and hear her own words.

But what I feel is that just to have God as number one in your life is the greatest lesson really. And then everything else comes second, you know, because once you love him, once you get to understand his role in your life, truly sincerely, you forgive your love. You do everything else. I mean, everything would come out of that relationship with him. I think that's where he took me to understand. I think that's where he took me to understand through all of these trials.

Listen, when you get discouraged, you don't have to lose your song and here's your song. You remember, say it with me if you remember these four points. Number one, I have been chosen. What's number two? I have a living hope. Number three, I have an inheritance. And number four, I have a loving father. You know what, no one can take that away from you. No boss can take that away from you. No persecutor can take that away from you. No circumstances can ever take that away from you. And that's what leads to unquenchable hope.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, I know that there are many people in here struggling and feeling hopeless and in despair. And God, I pray that even just the beginning address part of the letter of 1 Peter here has begun to increase the hope level in people throughout this room. And especially, I want to pray for those who are going through those trials right now. God, keep them from doing anything rash that is negative. Keep them focused on you. Give them that worldview of hope.

And if there's anybody here who needs to turn their life over to Jesus, maybe for the first time and doesn't understand it all but says, "Man, that's the kind of worldview I want." I pray that they would make that spiritual step now and say, "Jesus, I don't even know what I'm doing, but I want to surrender my life to you because I want you to come into my life and transform this despair and purposelessness into a sense of forward momentum, a sense that the best is always yet to come. I receive that into my life now, Jesus, by your gift of grace. In your name I pray, amen.