South Africa 2011-2012

The longer I attend Gates of Praise, the more great sermons I hear. Sometimes the message seems especially relevant for where I am at that particular moment. Two Sundays ago and last Sunday I heard a sermon like that. It was on hope, something I think we all need more of. There were a few main points, four explained on one Sunday and four the next Sunday:

1 Get excited when you find an area of your life that needs hope.
God is fully able to breathe life into hopeless situations (ie situations that look hopeless to our eyes). The facts might make a situation look hopeless, but God's truth is greater than the facts.

2. The belief that we can't change is a bigger problem than whatever problem we're facing.

3. Change in our beliefs comes from intimacy with God. The more intimacy we have, the fewer situations we find ourselves in that seem impossible because the more aware we are of the Holy Spirit's guidance.

4. Don't lose focus on God.
Along with this was the idea that even when nothing seems to be happening in our lives despite our prayers, God is working behind the scenes. The speaker used the GPS analogy of how God simply "recalculates" when we go off track. We will never be so lost or so far off track that God can't get us back to where we need to be.

5. Don't leave Christ's body and separate yourself. If you got hurt in the Body, you must heal in the Body. (For example, if your hand is hurt, don't cut it of to let it heal apart from your arm!)

6. Be with real friends; people who bring out the best in you.

7. Use faith to get a word from God (this is best done, of course, by reading the Word).

8. Give honor/praise in the area you were tempted to question His faithfulness in. If God proves His faithfulness in one area, never again can you doubt His faithfulness in that area! 

Excited about needing more hope? I often find myself feeling depressed when I comprehend how incapable I seem to be of fixing a dead area of my life on my own. But when this happens, God probably needs to become bigger so that the problem can become smaller. I'm also not entirely convinced about #2; or maybe it's just so counter-intuitive that it is in fact the truth. My rational self (which I think is growing stronger lately, probably due to reading Atlas Shrugged) would like to believe that the problem is the problem, and can I really be blamed for not seeing potential where God does? So, not sure about that one.

Those of you who know me well know that I have a hard time accepting the doctrine that Christians are supposed to be the happiest people around. I don't think following God is supposed to be easy, and I think happiness is much too slippery to be our natural, expected state of being for the majority of our lives. But the idea that Christians should have more hope than others, defined in this sermon as "a confident expectation of good from God that demands an action in the present", is right on. If we don't have such hope; that God is good, even in painful or difficult situations, how can we be said to have a strong faith? If the problems of our present moment consume our consciousness, how big is our God anyway?

Both parts of this sermon made me think for a long time afterwards, and they also gave me greater energy to go back into the world with greater focus. Some good sermons have the opposite effect; that of making you want to stay in church longer so that you don't have to face the world. It's great when a sermon can have the former effect.