How Hope Works | Hope and Doubt | Judah Smith hey Church home welcome back to another weekly service I'm so excited for the month of April I love this time of year I feel like I say that by the way every different season we're in but uh maybe I just find a reason for the season in every chapter of life but I do love April and uh there's a golf tournament in April that I love in Georgia and it's a beautiful time of year right now while we're filming this it is currently rain pain in outside which it will bring beautiful flowers and green grass it's uh I hope I actually really truly hope that you are having a wonderful beginning to your spring season now I say that and there are people in different parts of the world that it's not spring for you April is a different time of year but regardless I pray that April finds you well and hopeful and that is the subject I want to talk talk about this entire month uh with the climactic conclusion coming on Easter Sunday and we're going to talk about what hope is now if you're familiar with this context uh and this environment uh you would know that as a Jesus worshipper and a Jesus follower there are these three elements that are kind of primary and first and most important and 1 Corinthians chapter 13 outlines them there is what remains in all of the universe galaxies solar systems known and unknown faith hope and love and the writer there says the greatest of these is love I want to speak about the one right in the middle hope there is faith hope and love the greatest of these is love and so in my estimation every one of these presentations should be littered with love and I hope that this will be and we will speak about the definition of Love himself Jesus my superhero but I want to talk to you about how hope works and it's a simple observation that I've made just recently in my own life and that is that a lot of the conversations that I am involved in now you can imagine a lot of my conversations have to do with people's pain and their plight and their challenges and stuff that they're facing and there's a lot of prayer and there's a lot of uh insight and reflection um but with my friends there's a lot of just reflection on Sports and a lot of reflection on culture but I've notice an alarming Trend not only in my friends but in me that is that often times our conversations can digress to forms of hopelessness forms of assuming on the future that there will be increasing pain and problems I want to talk to you about hope now a lot of people have a tough time distinguishing between Faith and Hope in fact a lot of people use them as synonyms but in scripture they are actually two different Greek words Faith actually speaks of the idea of the awareness of God's presence his person his Essence in the present moment hope speaks of this idea of the expectation that tomorrow will be grand or great or good because God will be there and of course love is the essence Ence of who God is Faith is this idea that I'm aware that he's with me right now hope is this idea that I I believe he'll be with me tomorrow and love is the reality of his character and his Essence I want to talk to you about the future I want to talk to you about your tomorrow I want to talk to you about uh about the hour from now not the hour you're in but the hour from now and why is that important well because a lot of people by default in our humanness we assume on the hour to come we assume on tomorrow and often times our assumptions are not hopeful our assumptions are not optimistic our assumptions are not positive uh man the discussions right now on so many different aspects of culture in this country are not littered with hope you know it is it is a rare thing to have a coffee with a friend who's like I got to tell you I am so hopeful about fill in the blank it's usually I'm I'm discouraged I'm distraught it's frustrating I think you probably like me uh have a news app of some kind and the captions or the headlines or the titles that fill your Newsfeed are not by definition hopeful in fact in most cases If we're honest they're hopeless that seems to be what draws Us in we seem to don't get me wrong don't take an offense to this we seem to be bottom feeders by Nature we love The Sensational negativity on others some have argued perhaps it makes us feel better about our own plight our own pain and our own problems how does hope work so I'm dedicating the next four weeks or the whole month of April to discussing to um deliberating over this idea of how hope works for you and for me now if you're anticipating a collection of talks and sermons where I tell you all the ways you need to Hope more I got good news for you that's not where we're going in fact I think you're going to be encouraged to discover that hope Works in subtle significant ways that are already at work in your life and we'll talk about that um so we're going to start in John chapter 20 and this is what a lot of people like to call the Easter story the story of the Resurrection I'll start in verse one very early Sunday morning Before Sunrise Mary Magdalene made her way to the tomb and when she arrived she discovered that the stone that sealed the entrance of the Tomb had been moved away so she went running as fast as she could to go tell Peter and the other disciple the other disciple Being John who's writing this gospel the one Jesus loved she told them they've taken the Lord's body from the tomb and I don't know where he is and Peter and the other disciples jumped up and ran to the tomb to go see for themselves they started out together but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first he didn't enter the tomb but peaked in and saw only linen claws lying there but Peter came behind him and went all the way into the tomb he he too noticed the linen claws lying there but the barrel cloth that had been on jesus' head had been rolled up and placed separate from the other clothes it's a nod to folding your clothes I suppose then the other disciple who reached the tomb first went in and after one look he believed for until then they hadn't understood the scripture that prophesied that he was destined to rise from the dead puzzled Peter and the other disciples then left and went back to their homes I want to pick up on the word there in John 20 and verse 10 it's an interesting uh Greek word but it says puzzled Peter and John left and went back home puzzled now it's interesting because a couple of verses before this it says they believed there was Faith there was this idea that God is here God is present I I I I he's at work and then verse 10 says they were puzzled there was deliberation there were questions there were lingering thoughts that haunted them I want to start off for the next literally 10 minutes this collection of talks in April talking about the relationship between hope and doubt hope and doubt hope and doubt do you have doubts of course at the answer to that is no um you are from another planet and you're living amongst us or uh you are a drone for the rest of us the answer is emphatically yes do I have doubts what a a silly question what a silly ask of course I have doubts let's think about it for a second what do you do with your doubts do you just acknowledge them let them simmer let them surface as they will what's your plans with your doubts now I grew up in a religious environment I grew up in a Christian environment and I must say doubt was treated um with uh much chrin agitation annoyance frustration in fact I learned from a very young age that if I were to share my doubts it would not go well for me that I was not to tell anyone that I had doubts that that actually the smarter move in this environment was to tell everybody you had faith hope and love but God forbid you tell someone you have doubts well I just want to say on this broadcast right now broadcast is such a funny word I definitely feel 46 when I say broadcast but I just want to say on this recording I have doubts as I sit here right now I have doubts I have doubts about what God is doing in my family I have doubts about health challenges I have doubts about resources I have doubts about this community I have doubts about my friends I have doubts about my willingness to humble myself and be the husband that I need to be for my wife of 25 years if I'm really honest as I sit here I have more doubts than I have time to tell you and yet so many people that hold my office in position that are preachers lend you to believe that they have so few doubts and so little doubts but on the outset of April I want you to know I have a lot of doubts and I'm not sure what's going on in my soul these days if I have more doubts than ever or if I'm just more honest about the doubts I have I don't know if it's a help practice for us to sit here and perhaps while I'm naming my doubts you're thinking about your own but often times we we leave doubts undal with we just let them float we let them surface we let them appear we let them lead we let them infiltrate conversations these these doubts we have so perhaps by acknowledging some of these doubts we have um maybe we can get a little bit of understanding and guidance on how to live a life of Hope like if I asked you let me say it like this if I asked you do you want to live a life of Doubt or do you want to live a life of Hope no matter your religious persuasion or background or culture or continent or country if I just asked you straight up I wish I could say it in multiple languages you want to live life of Hope or you want to live a life of doubt I can't think of one human I've come across in the last decade who would choose a life of Doubt I'd like a life of cynicism doubt disgruntled frustration agitation hopelessness that is the life I want nearly everyone I've ever met in my whole life I think would answer emphatically I want a life of Hope here's the pressing question why don't we have lives that look more like hope why do our lives look more like doubt now you go I I live a life at Hope just investigate your conversations as I said previously look at your conversations do your conversations sound more like hope or do your conversations sound more like doubt let me say it like this do your habits and tendencies in cas ual conversation Trend towards hope or Trend towards doubt had a friend come over late at night a couple of nights ago and he said how are you sleeping which is things that older people ask each other and I said not not great actually and I usually sleep really really well as he was leaving my friend looked at me and said I know you're going to sleep well tonight I know it I was up till 3:30 in the morning had horrific nightmares woke up and didn't sleep well and I'm washing my face and I'm getting in the bathtub like I do every morning and I'm thinking to myself my friend said I was going to sleep well and I didn't and here's the conclusion I'd came to I'd rather be that friend I'd rather be the friend that says I think you're going to sleep well tonight and be wrong than the friend that says yeah it's probably going to take some time for you to get your sleep cycles right and to be honest you probably won't sleep good tonight and be right do your comments and conversations Trend toward hope or doubt now if you're like me when I say things like that you're like a little bit more towards doubt and so it is with all of us I got good news hope and doubt can live together in the same person I want to say that again hope and doubt can live together and do live together in the same person John 20:8 says they believed John 20:1 says puzzled they went home so which is it do they believe do they have a sense of hope or are they puzzled which is it it's both it's both in your life some would argue which one will you give into more let me make a couple observations in fact let me read Matthew 28 verse1 17 to you and then I'm going to give you through observations look what it says same story same story essentially same story Matthew 28:17 just different book the moment they saw him they worshiped him they saw Jesus they worshiped him resurrected Jesus but some still had lingering doubts they saw him they wow they worshiped him and but they still doubted three observations and hopefully for conversation for people who are watching this content with you right now in a space or place or room or a park number one hopelessness assum asses hopelessness assumes in a way I could preach all month about this one thought something we often times do not consider I shouldn't say that because you probably have but something I don't consider that is hopelessness assumes it knows hopelessness is steeped in actually self-sufficiency and arrogance hopelessness says I know you know why we're hopeless about tomorrow because we assume we know about tomorrow ah you ever heard anybody talk like this well it rain today it'll probably rain tomorrow I tell you one thing that I know about life there will be pain you're going to have pain all right my dad used to say no pain no pain some people say no pain no gain no pain no pain right and some people think of life as just like a succession of days of pain and problems and ah of course that's life life happens to us all hopelessness this this negativity this doubtful disposition it assumes that you know you don't know no one knows what tomorrow holds no one knows what the next hour of your life will hold hopelessness doubt wants to tell you a story that you know oh you're like this right now the proof is since you're like this right now you're always going to be like this you're always going to be like this you better just accept it no no no no no no don't accept hopelessness understand hopelessness is an assumption it's an assumption now you might say well it's an assumption based on life experiences yeah and life experiences are fickle just like the weather hopelessness is an assumption hopelessness assumes you know you're in control you call the shots you're the leader you're the captain you're the director you're the driver but you're not you didn't choose your birthday you didn't choose your background your ethnicity or the family you were in or the family you didn't have you didn't choose that it was Providence so hopelessness is actually baseless in so many ways hopelessness is certainly baseless if you think hope is baseless if you would say to me well you know these optimistic people who say well tomorrow's going to be a great day raining today it's GNA be sunny tomorrow you don't know that check the weather app look it's raining again it always does look the the same basis for which you live a life directed by doubt you could live a life directed by hope hopelessness assumes my second observation is Hope accepts hope accepts you can live through assumption or you can live through acceptance which do you want to live by you can live by assumption like you know this is how it's going to be or you can live by acceptance hope is not assumption or presumption hope is the acceptance that God is exactly who he says he is hopelessness is the assumption that you are exactly who you think you are and when I start to trust in my own knowledge and my own ability here's what I do know it is fragile fragmented broken incomplete insecure but hope is an acceptance that God is here today and he'll be there tomorrow I don't want to live a life of assumption I don't want to be a know-it-all in a smarty pants I want to be a person of Hope who accept that because God is who he says he is he's going to work for me he's going to work it out and he's going to be there tomorrow just like he's here today but lingering happens third observation lingering happens Matthew 28:17 says they're wild they worship Jesus they see him in physical visible form the resurrected Jesus but son ((music playing)) still had lingering doubts wow but some still had you know that's me and that's you lingering doubts my third observation maybe doesn't sound very hopeful but lingering happens it happens don't let preachers tell you different it happens it happens to all of us all of the sudden here's that little lingering you ever um my my my my friend has a a little sweet young boy that she nannies for and uh he has become such a source of Joy but he'll just linger to get my attention he'll just linger he'll just linger before Oh hey hey buddy hey he just lingers I remember as a young boy I just linger around my dad linger around um uh Star Andre Agy my favorite tennis player one time I was in a a CVS or a Walgreens and he was there and he was on the aisle looking for nyel for his kids and so I lingered on the same aisle lingering happens what is lingering it's this these these feelings of questions and doubts that just kind of linger around us you going to beat yourself up about that I I'm telling you you can believe in verse 8 and you can be puzzled in verse 10 you can worship in Matthew 87 and still have lingering doubt you know those lingering doubts will try to tell you that you're hopeless but those lingering doubts just lead you right back to trusting him and not yourself but when you're weak then you're strong and his power rests upon you let me pray for you God I thank you for kind of a reset here in April showing us how your hope works for us even in the middle of our doubts meet us now and I I actually pray specifically for people having discussions following this content guide those conversations and discussions if you're watching this recording if you're watching this message and you would like to accept the resurrected Jesus you feel the hope hope in Jesus that I'm talking about just say it out loud right now wherever you are in the world I believe in Jesus and so this Journey Begins you and him he's the love of my life he's the hope of my life he's the reason I'm here talking to you right now because he forgave me of all of my error my wrong and my sin congratulations on making that decision let us know on Pastor chat if we can help you in any way and please please these messages really go together if you get a chance in April to check out we're going to go hope and doubt which we just did then we're going to go hope and fear and then on Easter Sunday I'm going to preach a message called 8 Days Later 8 days later so check out the whole month of April Love You Church home talk to you soon when I cannot see when I can't take another step Lord would you carry me when I've lost my fight will you be my strength and will you set me a table in the presence of my enemies I shall not want I shall not one oh my soul's got a shepher in the valley I shall not yes sir I shall not I shall not oh my cups running over running over and I shall not I will lift my eyes to where my help comes from and I won't be afraid of the Shadow cuz I've seen the Sun know I will not stop when the way gets H cuz the queen only grows in the valley and that's where you I shall now come on I shall I shall not want I shall not want oh my soul's got a shepher in the valley Soul got AER in the valley I shall not I shall not I shall not want I shall not want I shall not want Oh My cups running over overs running over and over I shall now put your hands together together together and put your hands together I got everything that I need your goodness and your mercy this is our testimony say got everything that I need your goodness and your mercy this is our testimony so got everything that I need your goodness and your mercy this is our testimony I got everything that I need your goodness and your mercy this is our testimony sir got everything that I need your goodness and your mercy yes Lord I got goodness and I got Mercy Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah ((applause)) I got goodness and I got Mercy Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah I got goodness I got and I got Mercy I got Merc hallelujah hallelujah yes Lord Glory Hallelujah cuz the good sheer good he leads me to the water lead me to the hallelujah hallelujah yes Lord Glory Hallelujah and he ano anoints me with his hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah and now my cup is my cup is running over hallelujah hallelujah GL Hallelujah I won't feel feel we Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah and I will I will forever for ((applause)) ((music playing)) Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah song to sing say hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah my Hallelujah my Hallelujah I my Glory Hallelujah feel much better Glory Hallelujah everywhere goes higher Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah everybody clap clap CL your ((applause)) hands we got to song to sing it Glory ((music playing)) Glory Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah we give you glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah we give you glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah we give you glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah Glory Hallelujah I shall now want I shall now want ((applause)) oh my Souls got a shepher in the valley and I shall now ((music playing)) ((music playing)) ((music playing))