An Act of Love

A new year has just arrived and you may be thankful that 2008 has passed. Then you wake up January 1, 2009 to find new cause to not like 2009 already. The past year you may have spent battling challenge after challenge and as 2008 was drawing to a close you may have been hoping that when 2009 arrived, the constant challenges in life you faced would stop. When you wake up on that first day of 2009, you experience car troubles requiring repairs from a part that usually does not break and you don't have the money to take it in for repairs. A couple days later, your glasses break at a place you have never seen them break before. The earpiece slides off the bracket as you bend down to pick something up. Thoughts start running through your head. “How come this keeps happening to me?” “What did I do to deserve this life?” “Will things ever change?” There are these along with countless other thoughts.

Would you be feeling utterly hopeless? You may not have experienced this scenario but I'm sure there may be a story you could share that brought you to the same point. What did you do about it? Did you keep fighting or did you end up throwing your hands in the air and saying I give up?

Hope Exists

There is hope. I would like to walk you through a period of 3 years when different people felt hopeless and met with someone who not only lived on this earth but was the focus of hope to many.

Before sharing the stories, first consider this. “What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word hope?” Could it be the hope of finding someone special to share your life with? Could it be the hope that things will change from what they currently are? Could it be the end of feeling frustrated and enjoying life once again? Could it be restored health or the restoration of a broken relationship? Maybe you have a question of your own that you can add to this list. Bottom line is the first thing we think of when we hear the word hope is the desire to see a change in our present situation.

Hope can be best defined as the substance that gives us our faith (Hebrews 11:1). Romans 8:24-25 presents a different perspective to why hope is a part of our lives because without hope what does one have to look forward to in this life. We would just exist. Romans tells it like this, “For we are saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.” And I know the times I have eagerly waited to see something or someone change and persevered until that change came, there was much rejoicing and joy in my life. It doesn't mean that it was very easy living with those hopes. Some periods were very challenging and downright a battle everyday to keep any hope alive that I would see what I hoped for. We all have persevered at some point and saw the blessing in the end.

Without hope, a person would have no reason for living. Without hope, a person would feel like things cannot possibly ever change. Without hope, there is nothing to look forward to. Without hope, we would all feel doomed.

3 Year Journey

There is a man who brought and continues to bring many people hope. That man also happens to be the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The main reason Jesus was sent to earth to become a man was to be the conduit between those who felt hopeless in this world to the new experience of hope regained and lived.

So not only do we have hope for new life, Jesus has given us a reason to have hope from those things that seem to want to destroy our lives. These are the people who are key witnesses to hope received and would love for you to know there experience of being utterly hopeless in their given situation to being extremely grateful for the hope they received when they had their encounter with Jesus Christ whom they knew by faith could bring the hope they desired to a reality.

The first encounter happened when Jesus turned water into wine. It would not have looked good for any wedding of that day to have run out of wine over the course of the wedding celebration. This was a desperate moment and Mary, Jesus' mother, knew to approach Jesus to help. She put her faith and hope in Jesus knowing only He could prevent the embarrassment to this family that would come from running out of wine. (John 2:1-11)

Shortly after that, the son of a nobleman was deathly ill and the nobleman implored Jesus to come and heal his son. Jesus chose to send the man on his way telling him his son would be well. But before that Jesus told the man that people will only believe if they see signs and wonders. To a degree that is true because those signs, wonders and miracles are the same ones that give us hope in our situation when we have seen it happen in the lives of others. So Jesus wanted to make certain that people knew that these signs and wonders would be the means to give people hope that they had not had. (John 4:46-54)

I am going to spare you the details of every story but I would like to give them to you so that you could read them all for yourself. There was the healing of a leper (Matthew 8:2-4, Mark 1:40-42, Luke 5:12-13), the healing of a paralytic (Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:2-12, Luke 5:18-26), the healing of the man by the pool of Bethesda (John 5:2-9), the healing of a man with a withered hand (Matthew 12:9-13, Mark 3:1-5, Luke 6:6-10), a centurion's servant who was healed (Matthew 8:5-13, Luke 7:2-10), a widow's son raised to life (Luke 7:12-16), a sick woman healed (Matthew 9:20-22, Mark 5:25-34, Luke 8:43-48), Jarius' daughter raised from the dead (Matthew 9:18-19, 23-26, Mark 5:22-24, 35-43, Luke 8:41-42, 49-56), a blind man and dumb man healed (Matthew 9:27-34), the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:15-21, Mark 6:35-44, Luke 9:12-17, John 6:5-14), the daughter of a Canaanite woman healed (Matthew 15:22-28, Mark 7:25-30), a deaf and dumb man healed (Mark 7:32-37), the feeding of the four thousand (Matthew 15:32-38, Mark 8:1-9), a blind man healed at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26), the healing of the demoniac son (Matthew 7:14-21, Mark 9:14-29, Luke 9:37-42), the healing of the ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19), another blind man healed (John 9:1-41), the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-46), a woman healed of her illness (Luke 13:10-17), a man with dropsy healed (Luke 14:1-6), and the healing of two blind men (Matthew 20:29-34, Mark 10:46-52, Luke 18:35-43). There were many more but these are some of the key stories that will provide hope when you need it in your situation. These stories are lessons for us in knowing who to turn to in times of despair when we desire for nothing more than hope. This refers to none other than Jesus Christ.

Final Thoughts

The scenario I presented at the beginning is a real story. It has been my experience. But the one thing that gave me hope was having seen Jesus work in my life in the past and knowing He could do the same again. If you remember the story of the Good Samaritan, God brought a man along that had the heart to help a fellow man and when we can know God will bring someone into our lives to help us in our times of crisis and despair, the rejoicing can take place even before the hope is seen.

As it turned out God sent two Good Samaritans into my life to help repair the car and a roll of tape to temporarily allow me to use my glasses to see. It was the know-how and the means turned brought the hope in these two situations into a reality of another testimony of hope received.

Are you in need of a Good Samaritan to come into your life right now? If so, God will provide. And who knows, God may use you to be the Good Samaritan in someone else's life. Are you ready to accept that challenge like these two men who took time out of their lives to help me get my car repaired? Better yet, are you ready to accept the lifestyle Jesus represented of being ready and willing to be there for those who came to Him with a need and helping to meet their need? We are not Jesus who can meet every need but the ones we can meet, do we meet them? Just helping someone in need has a way of reminding us of that same hope we may be looking for and is enough to help continue to strive through the current despair in life by helping another in need. This is what TRUE LOVE is all about.

If you are looking for answers to have hope in your life once again, feel free to send me your question and I will look at addressing that topic in future publications.

Contact John at: John_03_16_Bates@yahoo.com