Living with Daily Hope

Hope Rising. That is the name of the series that we began last weekend, Easter weekend. My name is René. I'm another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Good morning! It is great to have you here whether you're here for the first time or the thousandth time. It's super good to see you.

So in a book I wrote called "Flawed Follower" last year, I told a story about how sometimes I get really intimidated when I meet well-known authors and speakers. And just kind of a recap, if you haven't heard the story before, one time I was speaking at a conference in Palm Springs and it was kind of a big deal, people coming from all over the country, and I was just sort of one of the add-on speakers, right? There was a main, main speaker that everybody was really there to hear who will go remain nameless for the purpose of the story.

Well, I'm on my way to the main event. It's a big banquet at this gigantic fancy hotel and this great speaker is going to speak to us all. And I get into the elevator and standing right next to me in the elevator is the main speaker. It's just the two of us and I will call him for the sake of the story FCP, which stands for famous celebrity pastor. And I couldn't believe it. I'm in the elevator with FCP. I mean like I have books by FCP. I've seen FCP on TV. FCP is gonna speak to all of us at dinner. It's just me with this person. I've been following FCP for 20 years and I think if I don't say anything to him right now, I'm gonna regret it for the rest of my life.

But I'm so star-struck I can't think of anything to say. And so I thought, well he's about to speak so I will say good luck. But I thought that sounds weird. That sounds too unspiritual. Luck. And so I go, okay I'm gonna switch it to hope it goes well. But then I thought no that's not strong enough. It probably sounds like hope it goes well. Right? Probably won't. So I thought okay no I should probably say something about God because he's an FCP, a famous celebrity pastor. And he'll be impressed if I say something about God.

And now this all happens in like nanoseconds. Right? Good luck. No. Hope it goes well. No. Gotta get God in there. So then the elevator doors open and famous celebrity pastor is stepping out like of my life forever. And so this is my chance. I gotta see something quick. And all the options come jumbled out together. And I blurted out, good hope God. And he turns and looks at me like what? And I just kept repeating it. I just kept doubling down on it. Like if I keep saying it maybe it'll make sense. So I'm just blabbing. Good hope God. Good hope God. Good hope God. I just keep it's like someone stop me. Ding the doors close. The musak plays. And I am dying. Good hope God. What was I my chance to talk to this guy? And I said good hope God.

And then I realized oh this is my floor too. And so I press the open button and the door plan will slide open to reveal FCP is still standing there frozen. Still looking at me. And I thought I short-circuit at his brain. Right before he's supposed to talk I blew his mind. What did I do? So I just go click click click click click click click. Press the door close button again. And I just rode the elevator for about a half an hour in shame. You ever get star-struck when you meet people?

Now in my defense and in retrospect good hope, that's actually kind of catchy. And it turns out it's even in the Bible. Witness 2nd Thessalonians 2:16. Had I known I could have said good hope God. As Paul tells us in 2nd Thessalonians 2. But I didn't. So this could be the theme of our series though. Let's read this out loud together. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who by grace has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good word and deed. Amen.

Say good hope out loud. Good hope. Say it again. Good hope. That is what we hope to encourage and to fill you with during this series Hope Rising. Now as part of the series Laurie and I actually wrote a little book, a daily devotional book with 30 daily readings. I encourage you to pick this up. You can grab it in the lobby for free. This is a way for you to not just on Sunday mornings but every single day for a month. Just keep filling yourself. Every day has a prayer for hope, a scripture about hope, a story about hope, often some research about hope.

And speaking of research about hope, I'm in my car. I'm driving this week and I'm listening to a podcast. It's called Clinicians Roundtable. It's actually a podcast meant for medical professionals which I am not. But somehow you know how podcasts go. You go down a rabbit trail. And I'm listening to the Clinicians Roundtable and they're interviewing this guy, Dr. David Feldman. He's over at Santa Clara University and it turns out that he is like the nation's leading expert on the clinical medical effects of hope. I couldn't believe it. This guy has done research on hope. He's published in top academic journals. He's the author of five books about this.

And in this interview on Clinicians Roundtable, see you know I'm not a medical professional because I can't even say it. Clinicians Roundtable, he says, "Hundreds of studies have been done on this now that show that more hopeful people get this. They're less depressed, they're less anxious, they have greater self-esteem, they get better grades if they're students, they report less pain if they have hospital procedures, and the medical effects are correlated with so many things." Like he said, lower blood pressure, lower body mass index, lower cholesterol. They recover faster from surgery. He says, "Hope is the engine of life." But he says, "We're living in an era right now where hope is leaking out of the American psyche like air out of a punctured tire."

And he said, "If people only knew what the research says, that the best thing you could do for your health, for the country's health, for your family's health, is to build up your own hope and that it go on and be an agent of hope to the world." And that's why we did this series. That's why we wrote this book. What we're doing every single week in this series is we're looking at a different aspect of hope in the Bible. And what I want to talk about today very, very specifically is how do you live with daily hope? Like not just have hope that eventually one day God's gonna take you to heaven. We do have that hope, right? That God's going to bring us to be with him and that there will be the resurrection and God's going to restore all things. We're gonna talk about that next weekend.

But every single day of your life until then, how do you live with dynamic hope so it can have all of those amazing effects on you that David Feldman talked about that and that you can be an agent of hope to other people too? How do you have daily hope and not let the depressing news cycles suck all the hope out of you, right? This is important because hope is not going to just happen to you. You have to be disciplined. You can learn how to intentionally grow hope in you on the daily. Now how do you do that? This is going to be encouraging but also challenging for you and me. You ready for a challenge?

Let's do an overview of the Bible called Philippians today. Back in January you might remember we did a series on just one verse, Philippians 4:8. Now what I want to do is zoom out and look at the whole thing. You might remember that it was written by the Apostle Paul from a prison in Rome and he was there after he'd already spent two years in prison in Caesarea Philippi and then he endured a shipwreck and then he was bitten by a poisonous snake and then two more years in prison. During all of this he has a painful disease. It becomes increasingly obvious that he is probably going to be executed and yet if you look at this letter that he wrote to this church up north in Macedonia it just bubbles with a sense of hope.

Now pardon me, Paul himself says he had to learn this. He says I have had to learn how to be content in any and every circumstance including those horrible circumstances he is in. So what did he learn and what can you and I learn from observing how he lived with daily hope? Well I read through this whole letter several times and to me four keys to living with daily hope just bubble out of this and you and I can intentionally practice these four things and you can jot these down in the notes that you got when you came in today. So important.

Number one is foundational. Live expectantly. Live with a sense of daily expectation like expect good things to happen. Now you say expect good things to happen that's kind of what positive thinking manifestation. Let me explain what I mean by that. It's kind of like when you're stopped at a traffic light. You don't go man I'm gonna be stuck at this red light for the rest of my life. Now you expect that the light's going to turn green. That is what it feels like to live with daily hope. Just like Paul says here in chapter 1 verse 20 I live in eager expectation and hope.

Eager expectation by the way I love those two words say those with me. Eager expectation. We had a wonderful woman who worked in the office for many years, Liz Bishop, and she loved these words from Philippians 1 so much that she wrote them out on a piece of paper and she put them above the door so that every time she left she would see the words eager expectation above her door and step into her life every day with a sense of eager expectation daily that God was going to work in her life and so she'd always be ready to see the opportunities.

This was Paul. I live in eager expectation that I will always be ready to speak out boldly for Christ. Watch this. While I'm going through these trials here, not once I'm out of this stupid prison, while I'm going through these trials. Hope is not denying reality. Hope is living in reality with a positive expectation. Hope is kind of like a marathon runner, right? There's a realistic acceptance of the trials knowing that they're the path to victory. You could say hope is accepting difficulty and anticipating victory. Accepting difficulty anticipating victory.

In fact, hope in general is not about, you know, living in a fantasy world, living in denial. It's accepting the real world. Hope is learning how to live in the real world. Hope is not a fantasy. Hope is a strategy. Now you might have heard the phrase, "Hope is not a strategy." Political consultants are fond of using that phrase. Well that's true maybe if you're a politician and maybe if you think of hope as it just an emotion, but if you define hope biblically as living with purpose and expectation, then absolutely hope is a strategy because you're so much more likely to take steps that are going to lead somewhere good if you have hope that there that something's going to come of them, right?

Let's say you want to lose weight. Let's say you want to get in shape. Let's say you want to work out. If you have hope that you're going to change, that it's going to lead to something good, then you're going to take the steps on the daily. If you don't have any hope that's gonna do any good for you, you'll never do it even if you want it. You have to have hope. Now look how Paul expresses this, "For to me, living means opportunities for Christ." And dying, well that's better yet. He has hope about everything. Dying is better yet because then he'll be with Jesus. We're gonna talk about that next weekend.

But he says living, just being alive, means daily opportunities to do something great for God. Every day there's gonna be opportunities. Every day for you, every day you have an opportunity to encourage someone. That's for sure. Every day you have an opportunity to pray for someone. You may have the opportunity to do something good for somebody, to share the good news with somebody. So ask yourself this question honestly, "Am I expecting opportunities for God to work in my life today?"

The most memorable letter I got back in 2009 when I did a message on Daily Hope was from a woman who said, "This blew my mind because my whole life," she said, "I've been a Christian for decades, but my whole life I thought living with hope meant, yeah, I have hope of heaven someday." She said, "I never thought of hope in this way. I always thought of hope as well. Life stinks, but one day I'll get to heaven." Now that is part of the Christian hope, but she said, "No one has ever told me that part of hope is living with daily expectation." And she said, "That's completely changed my life."

One time I was driving home from work. I was living up at South Lake Tahoe, and it was a dark night. I was pastoring a church at South Lake Tahoe and also working another full-time job as a morning drive disc jockey at a radio station down the Arino, and I had to stay late to do some production work. And so I'm driving home, it's already late, and right in the darkest spot on Highway 50, the engine just conks out. So I get out of the car, nothing works. I find a public phone, remember those days, and I try to call somebody. Nobody picks up, I try three people, so that makes me frustrated. Now it's almost 9 p.m., and I start walking and after almost an hour of trudging, finally I see a light on in the distance. It's the roadside diner at Zephyr Cove.

Just as I get there, the woman running the restaurant sees me coming, looks at me through the glass door, shakes her head at me like this, turns off the neon open sign and locks the door. Clink! Like right as I'm one step away. Now I'm in a really bad mood, and I'm mad at her, and I run up and I slam on the door and beggar through the crack in the door. "Come on man, give me a break, my car broke down, can't I just wait inside for a tow truck?" And she says, peering at me, "Hey aren't you Pastor René?" And I said, "Why yes sister, I am." And she says, "I went to a funeral recently, and what you said about Jesus really stuck in my mind, and I've been thinking, I need to talk to that guy about Jesus. And with the restaurant closing right now, it looks like I've got the chance to do that. Come on in!"

Now I'd say that was a divine appointment. Now but let me let me ask you this. Do you think I would have been less stressed if I had known that there was some kind of a God moment waiting for me? If I had known God is going to somehow work even this out for good? If I had known that, would I have been less stressed? Of course, but guess what? That's a promise in Scripture. There's always a God moment. There's always something good that God is going to eventually bring out of everything. So a challenge, starting tomorrow every day, train yourself to live in eager expectation that something good like that is going to happen in your life, and then put yourself out there. Be prepared for God to use. That is foundational to living with a sense of daily hope and expectation.

Second, lean into your purpose, your purpose in life. Paul said many times, "My purpose in life is to be an ambassador. Be an ambassador of heaven. Give people a little sneak preview of what's going to be like, the new heaven and the new earth." So that means be a non-anxious presence and live out the gospel. Share the gospel in word and deed. So this is how Paul can say back in chapter 1 verse 12, "Look at this. This is incredible. Now I want you to know brothers that what has happened to me, what has happened to me, what is he talking about? All this stuff, all the stuff that we would have said was just to run a bad luck. Yeah, you know what has happened to me? Well, what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel, actually.

How? He says as a result it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I'm in chains for Christ. He says palace guard, not prison guard. That's because this was the most elite squadron of Roman soldiers. So this is what you did. You became one of the palace guards if you were sort of in training to be the elite of the elite in Rome because your primary duty was to guard the palace, like Caesar's palace. But then down the Palatine Hill where Caesar's palace was just a little walk up the forum was the Mamertime prison where they kept their really important prisoners. And so you'd be on a shift. You're guarding these prisoners and you'd be guarding Caesar's family on these on these shifts.

And these were the very guards that Paul was chained to. In other words, there was not a more strategic group for Paul to be chained to. Who was the captive audience? Not Paul. It was these palace guardsmen because they would be hearing the gospel from Paul and then there'd be up in Caesar's palace too. In fact, later in chapter 4 Paul says, "All the rest of God's people here send you greetings." Especially those in Caesar's household, members of Caesar's household that become Christians. How do you think they heard the gospel from the palace guards who had heard it from Paul? Because Paul was always living in his purpose, you see.

You know, one of the things I love about Twin Lakes Church is that I always see people living in their purpose. Like just this weekend. We held the Wonder Ball here at TLC. This is like a prom dance for our young people especially in the special needs community. About 180 signed up. They had a blast. Let me show you. We provided a free hair salon before the dance so they could get all made up, all staffed by volunteers. Monovista High School students and other teens volunteered too to cheer as people entered. Everybody got to dress up for this special night and once they got in there were flowers and there was food and there was dancing and everybody had a blast because they knew they were loved.

One young man named Tyler, as he was leaving, he said, "This was the best night of my life. I have never been invited to prom before." And I'd like to thank the whole team, you know, Nancy and Tammy and their whole team. Would you just thank them for me? Great job. But I want you to understand something. The reason we do this is that this is a preview of heaven. Do you understand? Because Jesus describes heaven as a feast where everyone is invited and there's just pure unconditional love and joy and laughter. And so this is meaningful because it's not just because it's kind, that is also meaningful, but because it's a core part of our purpose as an embassy of heaven on earth.

Like Paul says, chapter 1 verse 27, "Whatever happens, live as citizens of heaven conducting yourselves here in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ." In other words, your purpose is to show how up there looks like down here. That's a great purpose. And what's genius about this, watch this, if my purpose is to be an ambassador for Christ, I can do that anywhere under any circumstances. A lot of purposes in life you can't accomplish. If your purpose in life is to be an Olympic athlete, you know, you can't accomplish that if you're not in good shape. You can't accomplish that if you're in the hospital. This is a purpose that you can do in any time under any, I can do this in prison, like Paul, I can do this in the hospital, I can do this at the senior living center, I can do this if I'm rich, I can do this if I'm poor, I can do this if my car breaks down in the middle of Highway 50. This means your life always has purpose. It's bulletproof, even if you're unemployed, even if you're dying, because you can always be an ambassador for Jesus Christ.

So you live expectantly, you lean into your purpose on the daily. And then there's a third key, this may be the most difficult and challenging one these days. That just bubbles up here in Philippians and that's this linger on the positive. There's negative in life, of course, but you don't have to obsess on it. How about obsessing on the positive? Look at how Paul practices this. I want you to think this through. He's in prison. The Mamertime prison in Rome was subterranean, there were no windows, stone, dank, dark, there was nothing beautiful to look at, but look at his things he says, like chapter 1 verse 4. "I thank my God every time I remember you." So he has nothing beautiful to see, but he has beautiful things to think about.

Here's the way I imagine this. Here's an old man in a dark prison cell chained to a guard, no pictures on the wall, no flowers in the room, nothing beautiful to look at, and yet he still has a smile on his face, because he's thinking of the people in this Philippian church, who by the way were not all beautiful, groovy people. In Philippians 3, he has to exhort two prominent women in the church to stop their feud with each other, but Paul chooses to see the beauty of them, and he thanks God for them. He's got his eyes closed, and he's smiling, and the hard-bitten palace guardsman is wondering what this old man is smiling about, and a conversation starts. How about you? What do you linger on?

So I'm positive. Okay, how much time do you spend in your life thinking about the people you're grateful for, like Paul, or thinking about how grateful you are for the mercy of God in Christ? How much actual time per day versus the time you spend doom scrolling? Linger on the positive. Chapter 4:6, very famous verse, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God." Now, in everything really, well you can't give thanks for every tragedy, but you can give thanks in every tragedy.

One time, years and years ago now, I visited a church member named Anna at a local mobile home park. To paint the picture for you, Anna was about 60 when I visited. She'd had a stroke confined to a wheelchair in the small single wide. She could only use one hand and half her face, and I said, "Anna, how long ago was your stroke?" She said, "10 years ago when I was about 50 years old," and she told me her story. After the stroke, she had no insurance. She went bankrupt. She wound up in a convalescent home for people who were impoverished at just 50 years old. She showed me a picture of herself a few years before the stroke, beautiful woman in her mid 40s, who was then suddenly plunged into poverty and disability.

She said, "René, the woman next to me in the home was almost a hundred years old, had dementia." She screamed out at all hours of the day and night, just one word, "Chicken, chicken, chicken," and she said eventually, I told the nurse, "Please somebody take up a collection and get her some KFCs so she'll stop yelling," and after years of this, she said, "I have to get out of here or I'm gonna go insane," and she went up to the stroke center we have here up at De La Viega, finally learned to transfer herself from her bed to her wheelchair, and she said, "Once I had that down, I was free because I could move into my own place."

Now, I'm listening to Anna tell me all this and I have to confess I was thinking, "What a sad life, tough life," and I got up to leave and I said goodbye to her and she said, "You know, I have to tell you something René, this affliction is God's greatest blessing to me," and I smiled and said something perfunctory like, "Oh, that's that's beautiful Anna," and I went and left but she must have understood what was on my face because she calls out as I'm walking away, "Hey, hey, hey, come back, come back, because you don't believe me." She said, "This is my life's greatest blessing," and I said, "Is it Anna?" and she said, "René, I was a mule for drug pushers bringing up drugs from south of the border. I pushed drugs, used drugs," she said all I wanted to do was drugs. I sold my body for drugs, probably contributed to my stroke," and she said, "I realize most people look at me now and think what a waste, but if it weren't for this stroke my life would be a waste."

Because of this stroke I was forced to reconcile with God. Because of this stroke I found my faith again, and because of this stroke I am now being used by God daily. She said, "I pray for people every day on the TLC prayer list. I write notes to a couple of people every day on that list to encourage them." She said, "This is actually the best thing that ever happened to me because this saved me from a completely wasted life," and I thought, "What a clear thinker." But I want you to think of what she just said. What did she live with? Daily expectation, right? She lived with a clear sense of purpose and she lingered on the positive. That's what we're talking about here.

On that podcast they said that resilient hope clinically has been proven to all involve three things. A sense of expectation, clear goals, and a sense of agency that you can somehow do something to contribute to reaching those goals. You understand that's exactly what she had, that's exactly what Paul has, and that's exactly what you can have in Christ. And that's the last point, the foundation of it all. Live in Christ's power. Live in Christ's power. Hope is not something that you just talk yourself into. Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do everything through him who gives me strength." It's not just a mental game you play. You don't have to gin up hopeful feeling. It starts when you simply pray something like, "I don't understand all this, but Lord if you're real, come into my life and change me."

Listen, I believe that God brought you here today, I really do, to say there is hope. Don't give up. I'll close with this story about a week after I yelled, "Good hope, God!" at that FCP. I was speaking at another conference up at Tahoe and I told that story on myself. And a woman came up to me afterward. She said, "The first thing I have to say is I completely relate to so much of the trauma you experienced in childhood from other children." I said, "Why?" She said, "Your name is René, my name is Jeffrey." So we immediately bonded on that. But she said, "I don't have good hope." She said, "You talk about good hope?" She said, "For my whole life, my entire hope for my future was based on me, my cleverness, my performance, but I really let myself down."

She told me, "I have made destructive choices that have endangered my marriage. My husband has forgiven me, but I still really struggle with guilt. So first I need hope of God's forgiveness." And she said, "I need this soon because I am dying. I have cancer that is completely metastasized all through my body. The doctors have told me I will not live a year. René, what will happen to me when I die?" So we talked about God's forgiveness for her past in Christ. We talked about God's power and purpose in her present. And we talked about His promises for her future. And we prayed for her to place her hope in Jesus Christ.

Well, fast forward about a year later, after a morning service here at Twin Lakes Church, I looked out right about where Heidi and Dick Garwood are sitting, and I saw her husband with their children, but she wasn't with them. And when he came up to talk to me afterwards, his tears told me what had happened. Her cancer had claimed her life, but he was holding something. And he said, "I wanted to give this to you." It's something that Jeffrey made after her talk with you. He said, "I wanted you to know my wife was a changed woman during the last year of her life, and I think she would want you to have this. This is it. It's a ceramic cross that Jeffrey made. She painted on the bottom people dancing, representing the joy of heaven, and on the top the words, 'Good Hope.'

Her husband told me that during her last hours of life, she stared at this on the wall across from her bed as she slipped peacefully, as he put it, into the arms of Jesus, filled with hope. And I want to tell you that her hope can be your hope today. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me? I invite you to pray these words, "Lord, I want that kind of hopeful life. I don't understand it all, but as much as I understand, I want to place my trust fully in you, Jesus Christ, and choose to believe that you died for me on the cross and rose again, and I ask you to come into my life now and invigorate me. Give me a fresh start. Father, thank you for your word, and I pray that all of us would learn to be expectant, positive, hopeful people because of all these wonderful promises and the Holy Spirit power that you have given us, and we pray this in hope that we will change. In Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen.