Question today, ‘what are you HOPING for?’
Slightly different to last week’s question of ‘what are you THANKFUL for,’ today we’re looking at what we’re HOPING for, we could say a bit of a shift here from looking back to looking forward…
In one of my previous jobs I was a youth worker, working with young people who were coming to the end of school and having to seriously think about what’s next.
The program I would run through with these young people was called ‘Better Pathways,’ and it focused on young people who had learning difficulties or disability. As you can imagine there was always a lot going on for these guys!
To do this program we would use some ‘tools,’ some tools of the trade you could say. These tools were exercises designed to get to the core of what really mattered to these young people, helping them to think meaningfully not only about what they wanted to do next but how they could get there. I’ve found these ‘tools’ very helpful beyond that job, I’ve used them myself and they are great resources for really nutting out what you want to do and how, what really matters to you and who really matters to you. If you’d like to know more about that please ask me about it!
I mention this today because there’s one tool in this toolkit called ‘Hopes and Fears’ > this exercise is simply asking and writing down what are your hopes, and what are your fears.
Sounds simple, but I can tell you it can actually be like pulling teeth to actually get some meaningful answers and make progress when you’re working with people who literally had never been asked these sorts of questions in their life, let alone thought about what their hopes and fears were!
At times it was like I was speaking a different language to these young people, but there were also times where something would come out that would open up a whole new pathway for them as well.
So we can use this tool on ourselves as a whole today, what are our HOPES and what are our FEARS? I wonder what comes to mind for you there…
Some HOPES we might have as we look forward:
- Good health, health and wellbeing for our family and friends, comfort and security
- That the cost of living would go down a bit please, that would be nice!
- Maybe it’s people we love coming to know Jesus, I wonder what else you might add…
What about FEARS, this one might cut a bit deep of we really think about it:
- We might fear bad health, health issues, loss of ability to do things we used to be able to do
- We might be fearful about the state of the world, the state of the church, the state of relationships in our life, how people are going around us
I wonder how you heard our first reading today (Isaiah 65), talking about ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ > are you HOPEFUL about that or FEARFUL about that? Maybe a bit of both!
Interesting when we look at our second reading today, we hear about ‘idleness,’ ‘busybodies’ and ‘disruptive’ people there >
Are we FEARFUL about this idleness??
Do we feel guilty or defensive if we think about idleness, or maybe we feel judgmental and we start pointing the finger at others? Interesting…
As Jesus teaches in many different places, we should always point the finger at ourselves first before anyone else shouldn’t we! Get the log out of our own eye, not becoming contradictory or hypocritical when we start judging others for the very things we do ourselves. We should be fearful about idleness, because it is exactly what Paul is warning against here today (2 Thessalonians 3).
Being idle here is to be undisciplined, to walk an undisciplined life. And guess what, this is another rare word in the bible! Been good at spotting those lately, this word is only found here in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. Maybe this was a particular issue for them, but it’s definitely an issue for all of us as well.
‘Living an undisciplined life’… But what does that really mean, what would a disciplined life look like?
In this passage Paul talks about being undisciplined as in not paying for what you eat, he says ‘the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’ Sounds a bit heavy-handed maybe, and Paul cites himself as an example to follow which might seem a bit big-headed too! Keep away from those who are ‘idle and disruptive’ he says, those who are undisciplined.
If we stop there we might take away a picture of what to do and what not do according to Paul, and we might start to think we’re not like those undisciplined people, we are disciplined and we do the right things and we ‘never tire of doing what is good.’ But unfortunately that’s not the full picture, it’s not that simple! And we all get tired don’t we!
To believe that about ourselves is to change the spelling of the word IDLE here to another word that sounds the same but is spelt differently… IDOL.
We actually become IDLE, turning ourselves into our own IDOL > what works for me, what suits me, what I need above everything else type thinking.
Another example here of how important it is to avoid taking the bible out of context, not isolating different passages as if that’s all there is but looking to the rest of magnitude of God’s word to seek deeper wisdom and understanding from our good and gracious God.
As God’s people, as followers of Jesus, we are NOT called to be IDLE. To sit still, like hopping in the car and turning the engine on but not going anywhere!!
We’re called to shift into gear, we’re called to move! Not by our own strength or ability but by the strength of our God, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
If we sit back and point the finger, if we think we’re doing pretty good > we need to think again.
That’s exactly the type of thinking that separates us from God, that puts us closer to Pharisee than to disciple. That is to take the law without the gospel > we need both. We need God’s love, and we need to show love to others. Package deal!
We could be happy with how much we’ve got, how much fuel we’ve got sitting in the tank. But then we’re just IDLE, we become our own IDOLS.
What we need to do is to burn that fuel! Get moving, pour out the love that was first given to us! This is the call on our hearts, this is the purpose of being and doing church together!
Two people who embody the sharing of the love that was first given us are of course our very own milestone-birthday people from last week!
If you’re looking for an example of what it is to share and to live out of God’s love, we’ve got two incredible examples among us. This is NOT about being perfect or always getting it right – as both of these people will tell you – but it is about going after God’s own heart, seeking to know him and to help others know him – and over many many years! This is not a short term deal, this goes with us for life! How thankful we are for the examples we have to follow, absolute blessings among us.
So we might need a bit of courage, a bit of confidence, to get moving > especially when it would be a whole lot easier to sit in the car – or leave it parked in the garage – than to actually go somewhere…
In our gospel reading today (Luke 21:17-19) we can see something to HOPE for, to HOPE in > hope which gives us courage to act, confidence in who our God is and who he says we are, to listen intently to God’s word and to pray for and move towards living out of the love that was first given us.
Jesus says 3 things in 3 verses here:
Everyone will hate you because of me.
Ok, not going to be easy, not going to be nice. An acknowledgment of the significant challenge of following Jesus, he gets it.
But not a hair of your head will perish.
[I always struggle with these verses because my hair has perished!] But he is with us, he goes with us. He walks alongside us and even carries us when we need it. We might be hated by others but we are loved more than we know by our God. He is our shield, our protector, our provider. He is there for us, he always has been and always will be.
Stand firm, and you will win life.
Now the part where we get moving, we step out in faith, we hold tight to God’s promises and trust in him with all our heart, mind, body and soul. Not standing firm in our own ability and not being IDLE, but living out of the victory he has already won for us so others might know it too.
Standing firm doesn’t mean standing still, it means knowing God goes with you as you move, as you live, as you love, as you serve! Standing in his grace, grounded in his grace as we move, as we grow, as we change, as we learn more about him and help others on the same journey.
So we’re nearly at the end of another church year, a good time to be encouraged, to be reminded of God’s presence, to reflect on his work in your life…
Also a good time to remember what we’re HOPING for, what we’re HOPING in, the HOPE that we have to guide us and keep us.
Little ad for Advent and Christmas here: Stay tuned! Because what we’re desperately HOPING for and what we desperately NEED is on his way //
Tom Kitson 