Hope For The Year
Dr. James Mayfield
January 11, 2004
Text: Romans 5:1-5 Today I want to talk about hope - hope for this new year we have just begun. As I see it, the greatest challenge to hope comes from our experiences of hard times, pain, heartache and suffering. Suffering is an equal opportunity employer. Accidents happen. People we love break our hearts as they make destructive choices. Not all babies are born hale and hearty. Illness comes. The economy goes into recession; jobs are lost and bills cannot be paid. Age brings deterioration of body and mind. Then, there is all that pain caused by cruel words and mean deeds. From an almost endless variety of causes, we humans experience heartache, pain, disappointment, suffering. It is not unusual for us to fall into self-pity in the midst of bad times. When suffering comes to us or to someone we dearly love, it is not unusual for us to become bitter. When our pain has been caused by the ignorance or selfishness or cruelty of someone else, it is not unusual for us to be resentful, and even long for revenge. In the passage we read today, Paul wrote we are blessed in suffering. What, in the name of God, was he talking about? Paul knew about suffering. In his second letter to the Corinthians, he wrote about having been imprisoned many times, five times receiving 39 lashes and three times being beaten with rods. Once he received a stoning. more than once he was shipwrecked. On his frequent journeys he was in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from Jews and Gentiles, and from false friends, He knew about hardship, hard work, sleepless nights, hunger and thirst. And through all this he was under constant pressure because of his concern for all the churches." Yet in the passage that was read, Paul wrote that in bad times we need not become bitter; the truth is we can become better. The difference is not toughness nor is it mere courage and persistence. The difference between becoming bitter and growing in spiritual depth to the point of being able to affirm God is able to use even our suffering for good, is the difference between being alone in our pain and trusting God and God's love even in the midst of pain. The difference is faith in God and faith in the grace of God. This is the heart of the matter: trusting God and believing God loves us. This is not merely saying God has tender feelings toward us and cries when we are hurting. To declare God loves us is to declare we are important to God. We matter to God. The lives of each of us matter, really matter. We have been placed in this creation with a purpose. Each of us is to make a positive difference. The question is: "Do we believe this?" Do we trust this is the truth? Do we really believe God loves us, and that this love revealed in Jesus, is to shape our living? Do we believe our living matters -- matters to God? Do we trust this to be true; do we have faith, do we believe? The less we believe God love us, the more likely it is for us to respond to bad times with bitterness, resentment and cynicism. It takes faith to believe in the love of God. It even takes faith to believe someone we can see and touch loves us. I cannot prove Rita loves me. A cynic could say her kind words and deeds are really just subtle ploys to manipulate me into doing what she wants. A cynic could say there is no such thing as love, that all our words and deeds of compassion are really motivated by self-interest, perhaps educated self-interest but self-interest none the less -- not love, only the facade of love. And it is true: there is finally no absolute, scientific proof beyond any doubt, that we are loved. It is only by faith, we know we are loved by our spouse, our children, our parents, our friends. And if it takes faith to believe we are loved by these we see and touch, how much more is faith required to believe we are loved by God. It is not as difficult to believe there is a God as it is to believe God really cares and confidently to rely on the grace of God. The truth is some of us not only have a hard time believing God loves us, we find it hard to believe anyone really loves us. Our basic problem is we see ourselves as unlovable. I have had to deal with a few people who found it almost impossible to believe anyone could love them. When I tried to express compassion or caring, their response was disbelief. It was not unusual for these people to test me, and when I passed one test, they gave me another and then another. Sometimes they used words or deeds to sort of "kick me in the shin" as if to say: "Now do you love me?" If somehow I saw through that and was able to offer more compassion, often, they would often kick me again. Finally when I walked away, refusing to play their sick game anymore, they would say in one way or another: "See, I told you. You did not love me." They saw themselves as unlovable and worked painfully hard to prove it so. As long as we see ourselves as unloveable, we are unable to receive love, no matter how much and how often love is offered. And as long as we are unable to receive love, we are crippled in our ability to love. Part of the human problem is that any of us who are in touch with the darker part of our being know that to some extent, we really do not deserve being loved, and to that extent we see ourselves as unlovable. Until we accept forgiveness for what needs forgiving, we are crippled and even paralyzed in our ability to accept love from anyone, including God. The truth of the matter is that until we are able to accept forgiveness we cannot even love ourselves. And when we are unable to love ourselves, we are crippled, even paralyzed, in our ability to love others. Until we accept forgiveness, we are unable to receive love or to give it. So, how is this cycle broken? How are we healed, made whole, so that we are able to receive and give love? Paul says it is a gift - a gift of grace. Its the gift of God's Holy Spirit pouring God's love into our hearts that enables us to embrace the forgiveness we need. All we have to do is trust this to be true. This is what Paul was talking about when he wrote we are justified by faith. To break the cycle, all we have to do is take the leap of faith and live trusting what God has revealed through Jesus: namely, that God loves us, even me and even you; and therefore it is true: we are loveable; we are worth loving. This we embrace by faith, by simply and profoundly trusting it really is true. And when we do, we are released from defensiveness and able to give of ourselves for others. Accepting love, knowing we are loved, we are able to love. And it is in loving that our living makes the kind of difference God created us to make. It is in living lives marked by love that we fulfill our God given purpose in life. This is what we see in Jesus. Even on the cross, especially on the cross, God worked through the suffering love of Jesus in a way that made a difference for the whole world. And it is through our love that we make the difference God intends. Even in bad times, perhaps most eloquently in bad times, our living matters and makes a difference. This is what we have learned through Christ. And it is this faith, this trusting what has been revealed in Jesus, especially Christ on the cross, that enables us to deal with anything life throws at us. Our problems are not magically solved. The reality of whatever is causing us to suffer is no more removed from us, than the cross was from Jesus. But by the grace of God, we know this cross, whatever it is, is not the last word about life nor is it the last word about our lives. And so, by the grace of God, we face whatever we have to face with hope, hope that is rooted in faith, faith in the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. God in all times and especially in the bad times, give us faith so that we can live in hope. Amen. God, all too often the storms we must sail through as individuals, families or as nations are storms of our own making - the byproduct of our sinfulness as persons, families and nations. God, we need the healing that comes only through your redeeming grace; we need forgiveness and transformation. And even as we ask, we remember that in Christ you are already offering us the grace we need. Enable us, O God, to accept your amazing grace. Help us accept it and allow it to heal our sin-sick souls as persons and as a battle-scarred world. Makes us whole, and in making us whole, give us peace. Transform us by your redeeming grace so that we live as you intend us to live. Heal our hurts; replace our resentment with compassion, our selfishness with love, our doubt with faith, and our despair with hope. Make us sensitive to those in need, and set us to doing what we know we ought to be doing. All this we pray in the name of the one who was teaching us how to live when he taught us to pray: "Our Father ...." Pastoral
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