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I think one of the great temptations for our soul is to become cynical. Have you ever met someone who was deeply cynical? They do not believe that anything is going to work out. They think that all life is futile. Why are we like that? Why would we choose that point of view, rather than a more positive, hopeful point of view?

Part of the reason is because we are managing disappointment. But here is the thing: a cynic would never say that they are insecure about how things go; they say, we are realists. Cynical people are the opposite of vulnerable because they say I do not want to be disappointed. So, I am just going to have this sort of rough exterior painted as realism. The last thing we want to be is naïve, to be caught hoping and be wrong somehow.

I know that there are those in the congregation dealing with difficulties, and it is easy to say in the face of the hardships, what is the point! But in God we hold fast to what is good, and there is always hope with God.

 Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.”

Often we use the word hope in a way that is not entirely Biblical. We use the word to say things like, “I hope I get a good grade on the test.” Or “I hope this works out with that guy or girl.” But what we mean when we say “hope” is the belief that it will not work out. This is not the Biblical “hope” that Paul is talking about here in Romans 5. This kind of “hope” is something more concrete; it is something certain. This is a triumphant, boasting hope. Paul is talking about placing our hope in the glory of God. That is something entirely different. We have, Paul says, in the end a heart saturated by the love of God. Oh, but do we?

We have it, these things exist, they have been bought for you by God. They have been accomplished through the work of the cross. We have them, but do we seize them?

Let us start with the peace of God. There is still an ancient war that rages between two kingdoms. The kingdom of this world and the Kingdom of God. We cannot have peace with both. In other words, you will either be at war with God! OR you will be at war with the kingdom of this world.

I thought about Siegfried and Roy; they had worked with tigers for over 40 years. These two guys had worked with these tigers since they were cubs; they called this “affection conditioning.” They would even take these tigers, when they were cubs, and let them sleep in their beds. And the hope was that these little tiger cubs would imprint on them.

They had this act on stage where a tiger would come out with no barriers between them and the audience. But on a tragic day in October 4, 2003, one of those 450-pound tigers decided they wanted to eat an audience member. Horn with his chain and stick commanded the tiger to stop. He pulls on the chain, the chain breaks. By the way the chain never was holding the tiger back.

Then heroically, Roy Horn goes and stands in front of the tiger and protects the audience member. And he starts hitting the tiger on the head with his stick, and the tiger just decided that he was not going to listen anymore. The tiger jumps up in one motion and takes Horn by the throat and walks off the stage with this limp rag doll of a man.

We think that we can make peace with this world, but we cannot. Because in the end the thing which we thought would give us what we wanted ends up devouring us. You cannot tame a tiger, you only think you can. If you want to try and make peace with this world, in the end it will hate you anyway. But, if you allow God to make peace with you, you will receive the amazing gift of peace with God, and He will give you Himself and pour out eternal life onto you.

The second idea is that suffering produces something other than despair. During WWII, the U.S. Army was forced to retreat from the Philippines. Some of their soldiers were left behind and became prisoners of the Japanese. The men called themselves “ghosts,” souls unseen by their nation, and sent on the infamous Battan Death March. They were forced to walk over seventy miles, knowing that those who were slow or weak would be bayoneted by their captors. Those who made it through the march spent the next three years in a hellish prisoner of war camp where many more died.

By early 1945, only 513 men were still alive in the prison camp, but they were giving up hope. The U.S. Army was on its way back to the Philippines, but the POW’s had heard the frightening news that prisoners were being executed as the Japanese retreated from the advancing U.S. Army. Their wavering hope was, however, met by one of the most magnificent rescues of wartime history.

In an astonishing feat, 120 U.S. soldiers and two hundred Filipino Guerrillas outflanked 8,000 Japanese soldiers to rescue the POWs. Alvie Robbins was one of those rescuers; in his book “Ghost Soldiers” he describes how he found a prisoner muttering in a darken corner of his barracks, tears coursing down his face. “I thought we’d been forgotten.” “No, you’re not forgotten,” Robbins said softly, “you’re heroes and we’ve come for you.”

Often in life we can start to give up hope to feel that God has forgotten us, abandoned us to dark and hurtful experiences. But the cross of Christ reminds us, “No, you’re not forgotten.” Jesus says, “I’ve come for you.”

Paul talks about suffering and as you read this you can see how Paul puts a natural progression to it. Paul is saying we have peace with God through faith. You can almost hear his critics say, “Really! Then why do you suffer like you do? Explain the pain to me. If the Christian life is so difficult, why would you even join?” So, Paul says, “Hope is the end result for all of us as we pursue Jesus.” The critics ask, “Why do we suffer?” Paul has an answer! “We suffer because it teaches us to endure.” “Okay, why do we need to ENDURE?”

“So, that we gain character! A kind of inner STRENGTH.”

“Okay why do we need character?”

“So, that we might find hope in the Glory of God.”

“And why do we need hope?”

“So that we are not put to SHAME!”

When we face trauma and when we go through difficulties we give it to God and we grow from it. We become healthier and stronger through time. And then the character transforms itself into a rock of solid hope.

If you are suffering, if you are going through something really hard right now, the message for you is to let hope manifest itself in that. The danger in the middle of suffering is to feel that it is all for nothing.

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

For those of us who have had the love of God poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, God wants to pour His grace over all areas of our lives. Pour grace on your pain, your abuse, your confusion, your doubts, and your sins. There is nothing that you have done, thought, said, or experienced, that is not meant to be touched by the love of God. You see, Jesus entered our world so that we might have hope. So that we might find a way from destruction and give us hope and everlasting life. The world says there is no hope. But in Jesus, He says that there is in Me all the hope you will ever need.

Until Next Week When We Meet at the P.E.W

(Pastor’s Encouragement Weekly)

Pastor Joel