The holidays bring joy for some and crushing loneliness for others. You might be scrolling through perfect family photos while sitting alone with your regrets. Maybe you thought this year would be different but the same patterns keep repeating. The struggle is real and pretending otherwise doesn’t help. What you need isn’t another pep talk or religious platitude. You need someone who can actually do something about your past, stand with you in your present mess, and guarantee your future.
Jesus addresses the past, present, and future
Before your worst mistake happened, grace was already at work. That’s the power of an eternal God who exists outside time. Your past doesn’t define your future because Jesus was there before it happened and he’s already past it. The present feels overwhelming because you’re trying to walk through it alone, but Psalm 23 promises he’s close beside you in the valley. And your future? God prepared good works in advance for you to do. You were created on purpose and for a purpose. The pain you’ve survived becomes the platform for helping others find hope.
One life, one choice, eternal impact
You don’t get a respawn button in life. This is it. Someday you will meet God and that moment will either be the most hope-filled experience of eternity or the most terrifying. Jesus came at Christmas not to condemn you but to offer you living hope through his resurrection. Your inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. The question isn’t whether you deserve it (you don’t, none of us do) but whether you’ll accept it. Stop treating Jesus like Santa Claus with a naughty list. He’s offering you hope that never ends.
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Episode Summary:
Struggling to hold onto hope this Christmas? You’re not alone. Daron shares a raw, honest message about finding unshakeable hope when your past haunts you, your present feels overwhelming, and your future looks uncertain.
This is the third episode in our Season of Sermons series, featuring powerful Christmas messages to awaken purpose and ignite hope during the holiday season and beyond.
Key Takeaways:
- Why Jesus is more than just our cosmic Santa Claus
- How God’s grace actually predates every failure in your past
- The danger of spiritual bypassing and emotional numbing
- What it means is that Jesus is eternal and present with you now
- Why heaven will be full of sinful people just like us
- The truth about hope for your future that’s already prepared
Episode Resources:
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Libsyn
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
What’s up podcast community, Daron Earlewine here with you and we have got a treat for you. It is the holiday season of sermons coming your way. We’ve put together a group of sermons I’ve given over the past couple of years and chopped them up, got them all produced, looking pretty, sounding great, ready for you to enjoy them and hopefully stokes some Christmas cheer for you.
I hope you enjoy these sermons. I hope they encourage you. I hope they awaken you. I hope they equip you to become who you were born to be. And so this season and every holiday season after that, I hope that all the content we put out here on the Daron Earlewine Podcast continues to inspire you and awaken you to become who God’s created you to be. And remember that you were created on purpose, for a purpose. You have a God who is so near you’re not far, and He’s for you, not against you. So hope you enjoy these holiday season of sermons and appreciate you downloading this episode at the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Created on purpose and for purpose.
Safe to say the kids are way cuter lighting the candle than I am. Anyway, welcome to Advent 2023 here at Mercy Road. We don’t always do, you know, more liturgical kind of traditional look at the holidays. Last year because we were led by the Grinch himself, but we pushed through and persevered this year. Ken wanted to do something called Boxing Day or something. I was like, hey, you’re not in Canada anymore. Just kidding, that’s a bad Canada joke, I apologize Ken. Anyway, moving on.
We are gonna have a lot of fun and I’m excited about where this series is gonna take us as we walk through. And I think what we should think about Christmas is, I think too often in life we get a little confused at like where Jesus stops and Santa Claus starts, right? When it comes to Christmas, because I love Christmas. My family, we’re full bore into the whole Christmas deal. Our house has been decorated since November 4th. And that’s honest, that wasn’t a joke, so thanks for not laughing.
But it’s weird, because we wanna know who Jesus is, but it’s like, is that Jesus, or is that Santa? And sometimes I think we really try to treat Jesus like Santa, because he’s kind of like he’s kind of our cosmic Santa Claus in some of the ways that we pray, you know what I mean? Like if I’m good enough this year, I’ll send up some prayers and Jesus will slide down the chimney and give me what I want in life, right? And it’s like, you know, Santa’s out there, he’s got a list, he checks it twice, you know, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. And if you’re naughty, you get coal. And then with Jesus, we’re kind of like, right? I mean, he’s the same, right? He’s got a list, he checks it twice. And then if you’re naughty, you just go to hell.
Right, that’s the way it works, right? No, like Jesus doesn’t have a list and check it twice to see who’s naughty or nice, and if you’re naughty, you go to hell, and if you’re nice, you go to heaven. The bottom line is, heaven’s going to be full of a lot of sinful people just like you and me. Right, like you don’t go to heaven because you’re perfect, you go to heaven because you’re forgiven. You go to heaven because you found the hope of the grace of Jesus.
Hope. Hope. It’s a powerful, powerful thing. We’re gonna talk about that this morning.
The desire for us in this series is that we would come to know who Jesus is in a powerful way where he’s not just like a figment of our imagination. He’s not just some kind of historical character in the Bible, but we know him for who he is. And so today we’re gonna talk about the fact that he is hope.
And the cool thing about when somebody is really known for something, it’s basically you got like a one word association with them. See, I’ll prove it to you, check this out, okay? If we’re talking about basketball, he is the goat. There we go, it’s very simple, okay? This is a great game show. Here’s another one, all right? We’re going with the music, okay? King of rock and roll. King of pop.
See, this is good, we should do it all day long. Forget the sermon, we’re playing this game, okay? But when we say Jesus, like what would we say?
I love those, right? What I would love for us is to get to the point in our life where it’s not something we just say because we know it’s the right answer at church, but we say, you know what? Here’s the deal. When I think of Jesus, here’s what I know. He is hope. He is hope.
And last night, this made it into the first sermon introduction, and so it’s gonna make it into second service introduction, even though it didn’t make it in the notes. Last night, I was tired, real tired. Stayed up too late on Friday night. Yesterday I got to recoup, got to go to bed early. Early for me is 10. So I got to 10 o’clock and I was like, done with this day. When you get in bed, and have you ever done this before where you’re so tired and you lay down and it feels so good to be in your bed and then you can’t fall asleep? This was me last night.
I was so angry because I got there and I thought, I was like, you know when you could feel it, you’re almost asleep and then all of a sudden your brain turns on and something pops in your brain and you get a little energy thinking about that thing and you go, no, no, no, no, no, no, do not think about that thing, stop, no thoughts, just sleep. So I’m laying there, I can’t go to sleep, I roll over and I look and the clock says 11:13. I laid down at 10. I’ve been laying there for an hour and 13 minutes. So I text my wife.
Like she’s gonna do anything about it, right? I can’t go to sleep, this sucks. She’s like, okay. And so I can’t go to sleep, but here’s what the thing that got me, I couldn’t go to sleep. I started thinking about this. I started thinking about this sermon. And the cool thing was I wrote this sermon weeks ago, because I had to use it on my podcast. So if you like this sermon, you want to hear it again, it’s coming out next week in the podcast. But so I didn’t have to prep much this week and I was like getting ready to, you know, kind of went through yesterday, okay, I got it out, we’re gonna have a great time tomorrow morning. And then what hit me last night, I couldn’t go to sleep, is I started thinking about how powerful hope is.
And what I couldn’t get myself to stop thinking about is that probably in statistically, there’s someone here today that is barely holding on to hope.
Holidays are difficult. Supposed to be the hap-hap happiest time of the year. And if you’re fighting through depression, anxiety, loneliness, unforgiveness, bitterness, your grasp on hope may be loosening. So I thought, man God, I really need your help tomorrow because I’m gonna say what you’ve given me to say and we’re gonna let the word of God speak, but I just really want you to show up God. And actually, if the sermon could just be what it is that you are hope.
And so if you’re here this morning, I’ve been thinking and praying for you since last night and our whole team has that you would not leave today without experiencing an encounter with who Jesus is. And he would become your hope because he is hope.
Heavenly Father, I just ask that you would bring the word alive to our hearts and our minds. Father, I pray for somebody right now that is losing their grip on hope. I pray they would encounter you in a powerful way this morning and you would sustain them. You would strengthen them. You would empower them with your presence, with your truth, with your hope. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Here’s your three points of your sermon if you want them real quick and you want to go watch the Colts game. It’s this: he is the past, he is the present, he is the future. That’s where we’re going. He is the past, he is the present, and he is the future because he is hope.
Do you remember going on a road trip prior to GPS, anybody? Yeah, right? If you don’t understand road trips before GPS, you don’t understand the need of hope, okay? And if you’re going on a trip without GPS back in the day, what would bring you hope is someone who had already been there before. If you knew someone who had been there before and they could give you directions, you had all the hope in the world you were gonna get there, even if it got a little dicey, because do you remember directions before GPS? Now here’s what you’re gonna do, okay?
You’re gonna go up there and you’re gonna get up exit 59. After exit 59, you’re gonna take a right. You’re gonna go down about three quarters of a mile, you’re gonna see a red barn. At that red barn, you’re gonna hang a left. Okay, go down that left, go down, you probably go down two, two and a half, maybe three miles, about three miles, whatever. You’re gonna get to a bridge. Go over the bridge, okay, but if you get to the creek, you’ve gone too far. Hang a right before the creek at the white barn, where the second house on the left. Now hopefully you wrote all that down.
And you probably got it wrong, and at some point you went right when you’re supposed to go left, and your wife was like, can’t you listen to anything? Not that she would sound like that if she said it, but impossibly, I’m just saying, it’s there. Anyway, so you’re driving, even if you got lost a little bit, at least when you had somebody who had been there before, it gave you a sense of hope. We’re gonna get there. Now, that’s not necessary when you have GPS, right? GPS not only do you know everything that you’re doing, it actually sometimes updates it to make it faster. You know when you’re gonna get there, how it’s gonna happen. There’s no need for hope with GPS, but there used to be. And I really wish that my life came equipped with GPS.
That’d be really great, wouldn’t it? Like you are where you are now, and you’re looking back to maybe where you’ve come from and thinking about maybe where you’re going, and you’re just kind of waiting for the direction button to be pushed. If there’s things back here that have broken trust, that have not turned out the way they could have or they should have. And it’s my fault or it’s their fault or it’s our fault, but there’s pain and then there’s fear and uncertainty. It can be tough to live with hope. The great thing about Jesus is that he is in the past so he can actually take us to where we’re going.
Jesus is the past because Jesus is eternal. This is something we don’t think about enough, I don’t think, and if we did, it would bring us greater hope as we look into our past. As Jesus is being announced that he’s arriving in Matthew chapter two, he’s actually already arrived. Matthew chapter two goes like this: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born King of the Jews. We saw his star when it rose and we have come to worship him.
When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. In Bethlehem in Judea they replied, for this is what the prophet has written.
But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. That passage, verse six there, is actually quoted from Micah chapter two. It’s a book of the Old Testament. And it was a prophecy given about Jesus over 700 years before he showed up. There is a line there in Micah two that is omitted from the Matthew passage and it says this, it says, in the King James, yet out of thee shall come forth unto me, that is to be a ruler Israel whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting.
Jesus speaks to his eternalness actually in John chapter eight when he says this: If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My father whom you claim as your God is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad. You’re not yet 50 years old, they said to him. And you have seen Abraham?
Very truly I tell you, Jesus answered, before Abraham was born, I am. Jesus quoting what Yahweh, what the Father said to Abraham, I am that I am. Jesus can take care of our past because he’s already been there. He is hope because he is eternal. Why does this matter? Why does it matter? Well, here’s the deal.
For me, if I’m gonna find hope from my past, I need to have someone who’s been there, but more than that, I need someone who can do something with it. I need someone who can actually forgive what’s in my past. I need someone who can actually redeem what’s in my past. I need someone who can actually make sense of what I went through in my past in light of where I’m going in my future. Because if I don’t, I’m going to lose hope. Here’s the good news. Jesus is hope. Jesus can do something about your past.
It tells us in 2 Timothy 1 that God has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we’ve done, but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time. Before the beginning of time, God’s grace was already given to us. Think about that. Before whatever happened in your past that you’re still stuck in, that you can’t get past, that you think can’t be forgiven, that you think can’t be redeemed, that keeps you in a place of thinking, my life is just going to be the same as it’s always been, whatever that is, before it happened, grace was already at work in your life.
So you mean that God’s not all hung up on that, Daron, and he’s already past it? I mean, this is hard to get your mind around, but God was already past it before it happened because His grace predates the failure. So you’re saying that I could trust him with that because he already somehow forgave it before it happened? I don’t know how it’s gonna make sense to your brain, but what I want you to know is it means that God has the power to do great things with your past.
But it’s now being revealed through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Here’s what we need to do with our past. I love this. Psalm 18, 20 through 24 says this: God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. Now I’m alert to God’s ways. I don’t take God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works. I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together and I’m watching my step. God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.
Some of you that are losing your grip on hope because you don’t want to open the book of your past to his eyes. He can’t know about this. This is something so shameful. It’s so, I’m disappointed. There’s people like me can’t do that in the future. And if you’re broken like me, that can’t be the thing. And God says, no, listen, I was there. I forgave that. I can redeem that. If you could just open the pages of your book, of your heart to my eyes, you will see that I can do something about your past. I can redeem it. I can weave it together. I can restore you. I am hope.
What about now though? What about now? Because you might be in a place where you feel like you’re walking through a hopeless, like, valley of the shadow of death. You’re like, Daron, I’m really not caught up in some past thing. I’m just saying, right now is really looking bleak. Like we tried to go to counseling this year, I thought it was gonna get better, but I don’t know, man. I don’t know if we make it, will the marriage through the end of the year. I don’t have hope for where we are in the present. You know what, I don’t know, man, we try to do some things, we cut back on the spending, but I don’t know if the company’s gonna make it through the next year. We may have to file bankruptcy. I’m just kinda losing hope that this could, you know, here’s the deal. I’ve been trying to get help, but I can’t stop using. I’m starting to lose hope.
We just did Thanksgiving and they still didn’t come and have family Thanksgiving with us. I’ve been praying and asking God to bring restoration and healing to other relationships in our family, but I’m just starting to lose hope. What do I do now?
One thing you could do is you could deny that it’s a struggle. You could deny that this is really happening. And I’ve seen Christians do this. It’s a term they call spiritual bypassing. It’s not healthy. It’s where instead of dealing with what is and meeting those fears and those struggles and the realness of emotions in the battle of faith, we just kind of quote a scripture over it and act like it’s not happening. We spiritually bypass the pain we’re going through.
And what happens is it starts to cause us to disassociate from what’s real. And when that happens, it makes it very difficult for us to show up and be present in love. So it’s not denying, hey, you’re going through some tough things here, are you okay? You know, praise the Lord, this is good, I’m great, couldn’t be happier. Like, I don’t think you are, because you look like a mess, right? It’s not denying. We can deal with what’s there. It’s not numbing. Some of us have tried that.
Right? What I’m going to do is, since I’m not too sure about hope, what I’m going to do is I’m going to numb myself by never getting my hopes up again. Right, so if I just take the expectation that life’s ever gonna be much better than it is, then I won’t be disappointed. So I’ve just gone ahead and taken the top part off, just decided to numb. Except then what you’re discovering is that you can’t selectively numb your emotions. So what’s started to happen is you’re not feeling the highs or the lows, you’ve just started to barely exist.
You can’t numb, but here’s I think what you can do. I think you can declare what is true. You know, I feel this and this is real and this is hard and I would not choose this off the menu of life. And you know what? I’m not gonna numb out whether it be with this distraction or with addiction or whatever it may, I’m not gonna numb it. I’m not gonna deny it. But what I’m gonna say is I’m going to declare that in this moment, walking through this valley of shadow of death, barely holding on to hope, Jesus is hope because he’s present.
I’m not walking through this alone. I never have, I never will. He is good, he is hope, and I will declare who he is in the midst of what I don’t know. There’s power in that.
Even though I walk through the valley of death, I will not be afraid for you are close beside me, guarding, guiding all the way. Jesus says in John 10, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He’s with you in this present moment. You are not alone. He is your hope.
What about the future? What about the future? When I don’t know what the future holds, what I need is I need someone who creates it and is faithful in doing so. And that’s the power of who Jesus is because in Jesus, we don’t just have a set of beliefs. We don’t just have stuff that we memorize and say, and we stand up sometimes and we sit down and we do some hand signals and we do some stuff and we have these rote religious things we do that somehow we hope make God happy with us so that at the end of the day, there’s more good deeds than bad deeds so he doesn’t send us to hell. That’s called religion. And Jesus is not that.
He’s not playing that game. He is actually alive and he’s real. And because of his birth at Christmas, his death and resurrection on Easter, he is alive today and actually offers himself in his spirit to guide and direct your life. He is alive and he is hope and he is inviting you to walk into the future that he already has planned to create through the purposes that he created in your life. You are actually created on purpose and for a purpose.
What about that past stuff there and how was that ever a part of, I don’t know exactly how your story worked out, but what I know is he was in that, forgiving that and ready to restore that and he actually wants to weave pieces of what you’ve done and gone through and that he’s redeemed to actually set you forth in the future to live with a passion and a purpose that understands the empathy and the pain and the strength of what it takes for somebody to get through that.
And because he’s alive and he’s well and he’s been in the past and the present and the future, you can trust that process. And even the most painful thing, you’ll say, you know what, I have hope in your life and the future because I’ve seen what he’s done to redeem it in me and I know he can do it in you. And that’s how in the future, not only is he hope, but your life becomes hope to the hopeless that you get to walk with.
I can get through the divorce, yes you can, let me tell you how you do it. I don’t know if I can get past the addiction, yes you can, I can tell you how to do it. I don’t know if I can get past the abuse, yes you can, let me show you how you do it. Whatever the thing is, what happens is because he was with you and he walked with it, now he says, here’s the option, here’s the thing we get to do. Now you are now our messenger of my hope. And as you walk with others, you walk them into a future to discover the purpose for which God placed them on earth.
Word of God says it like this, Ephesians 2:8, for it was by grace you’ve been saved through faith and this is not from yourself, it’s a gift of God. Not by work so no one can boast. You didn’t do it. You didn’t make Santa’s list. He checked it twice and you were still bad, right? You were getting coal every Christmas. Why? Because everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And guess what? You probably did it quite a few times this week. Or maybe you had a great week and you were like, I was really on fire this week. Greatest, most spiritual, perfect Jesus week ever, right?
Well, that’s just a list of the things you didn’t do wrong. Like, how about we take a list of the things you could have done right that you didn’t? You ever think of that? Don’t. It’s depressing. So whether it was like I nailed it or oh yeah, I haven’t even thought about all the potential things I could do with Jesus because I don’t think about Jesus or his stuff very much because most of time I’m thinking about me, making a list, checking it, and seeing that his name and his blood is on the list, not your performance.
And so he says, this grace is a gift from God, not by works, so no one can boast, for we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. It’s waiting on you to do it. The hope for your future, it’s already a setup. He’s waiting for you to walk into it with him because he’s created you on purpose and for purpose for that process.
Another scripture, this is a good one. God says in Jeremiah 29:11, for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, right? Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope in the future.
You know, interesting thing about this life is, you only get one of them. You know that? You get one of these lives and guess what? You’re currently living your one life. This is it. And when you’re 17 or 18, it seems like it’s like, I got all the time in the world. I don’t know about you and I’m probably, if you’re older than me, I’m 45 at this point. There’s times now I’m like, wait a second, right? Like it’s like, what am I gonna do when I grow up? And then I realized, wait, I’m 45 years old. And most people’s books, that’s grown up time, okay?
Now I’m guessing if you’re 65, you’re like, let me tell you what 65 is like, Daron. But what I begin to realize more and more is this is it. And I love video games. Still at 45, told somebody that this weekend, proud of it, okay? Come at me, I don’t care, I love video games, okay? And I love games that have like a respawn feature. Where you get into the mission, you’re not very good at that mission, and the boss comes and kills you, and it was like whoop, and you’re back. You’re playing the level again, respawn.
I wish there was a respawn button in life. Wouldn’t that be great? Get done with that conversation with your husband or wife. You’re like, respawn. Take all those words back. Whatever it is, you have these times you can, but you don’t get a respawn. This is it. And here’s what I know about your future and mine. Someday, this life will end.
And in that moment, you will meet God. And if He is your hope, that moment is going to be the most hope-filled, amazing moment of your existence. And it will never stop. But if you live this whole life and you don’t know him, that moment will be terrifying because you will still exist for eternity. The question is, will you experience the hope of eternity for eternity or will you experience the loneliness of separation from the God of love?
Now here’s the amazing thing is that Jesus says it like this in the Bible. He says, God so loved the world that he gave his only son. This is Christmas. This is the Christmas story. For God so loved the world he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Eternal hope.
The amazing thing about Jesus is he is hope. But you know what? He is so loving. He will never force you to believe and follow Him in your life. He respects your decision to choose whatever you want. In fact, the rest of that passage says that God didn’t send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, but to save it. So Jesus isn’t coming at Advent, at Christmas, to condemn you, what he’s doing, he’s coming to say, here’s the deal, I am hope and I want you to experience hope that never ever ends. But you gotta choose it.
The word of God says in 1 Peter 1:3 through 4, he, speaking of Jesus, right, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.
As you step into a relationship with Jesus, you are born again, your spirit comes to life, and from that point, you have a hope in the future that is imperishable, that is undefiled, that is unfading, because you know that you have hope for eternity. So where are you at this morning?
Just stand up, let’s pray. I want to give you an opportunity, we’re gonna pray. We’re gonna end the service with a great song of hope. But I wonder where you’re at this morning. My guess is that we fall into a few categories this morning. Because somebody, you may be here and you’re like, Daron, when you were talking about the hope for the past stuff, man, that is me. I feel like my life is somehow attached to like this bungee cord of regret and I run after something and all of sudden I just get ripped back to where I was before and that’s how my whole life feels and I need to be set free from this idea that I’m just a repeat of my past and I need hope for the future.
And God, I just want to pray right now. As we close our eyes, as we bow our heads in your presence, Father, for somebody that’s stuck in that right now, and they are starting to lose their grip on hope. But I pray for their strength. I pray that they would experience you in ways they never have. That they would know that you are their hope.
If maybe that’s you just say with your head bowed, your eyes closed, say, Daron, that’s me. Could you guys at the church, could the staff, could you pray this week for me? Because I need hope from my past. Everybody throw your hand up real quick. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
What about the present? Maybe some of you are right here today, you say, Daron, could you guys on staff this week, could you pray? Because I’m in a moment right now, I feel like I’m walking through the valley of a shadow of death and I’m starting to lose my grip on hope and I need Jesus to be near me and with me right now. So I need hope for my present. Put your hand up right now so we can know. Yeah, I see you there, yeah. In the back, thank you, put your hands down.
Is there anybody here today who’s saying, Daron, you’re talking about this and I want eternal hope. If I’m going to meet God this week, I want it to be the most overjoyed, hopeful, loving experience of my life. And Daron, I’ve been hiding from God because I thought he was like Santa Claus. And I know I’ve got a lot of things on the naughty list. But if it’s true, if he actually is hope, if he has actually invited me into a relationship where I would never, ever know lack of hope in my future. I want His grace. I want His love. I want to start a connection, a relationship with Jesus. If that’s you, just toss your hand up so we can pray for you today. Anybody? Good.
Let’s pray. Lord, we pray for each one of these needs. We need your hope. And I’m so grateful this morning that that is who you are. So God, whether it’s about the past, whether it’s the present, whether it’s the future, I pray that through the relationships with other people, that through our connection to the truth of your word, through times of worship, through times of contemplation, prayer, through every means necessary, Father, we would experience you in a new and powerful way where we would know at the beginning and the end of every day that you are our hope. We love you. We ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen.