Fighting For Hope

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word, providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. I want to dig right into Scripture today, kind of share with you what God's laid on my heart. We are in a series called Three Remain, Faith, Hope, and Love. I'm going to start off just entering into this with a story.

On September 9, 1965, James Stockdale was flying a mission over Vietnam. His plane was struck by enemy fire. He ejected and parachuted into a small city where he was taken and beaten and taken in as a prisoner of war. He would spend the next seven and a half years of his life in prison. As a senior naval officer, Stockdale was routinely tortured, denied medical treatment, and would spend day after day in a witteless concrete cell that was three feet by nine feet.

How do you survive something like that? How do you go through a situation like that? In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins shares a little bit of James Stockdale's story. And I love what Stockdale says. He says this, I never lost faith in the end of the story.

I never lost faith in the end of the story. Isn't that like a perfect definition of hope, never losing faith in the end of the story? Because we, as believers, we as people who believe, we believe in the end of the story. We don't just believe in happily ever after. We believe in happily forever after.

We believe that he who began a good work will carry it to completion. We are people who believe that the best is yet to come. We are people that believe that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has conceived the things that God has for us. We believe in the end of the story. But let's be honest about this.

Let's just be brutally honest for a second. It's hard to hold on to heaven when you feel like you are in hell. And so many times that's where we feel and where we're stuck. Let's go back to Stockdale's story. He said this, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into a defining event of my life.

And in retrospect, I would not trade it. And what's interesting here, when Jim Collins asked Stockdale, he said, who didn't make it out? Who were the people that didn't make it out? And James said, oh, that's easy, the optimists. I'm like, wow.

They were the ones who said, we're going to make it out by Christmas, and then Christmas would come. Oh, we'll make it out by Easter, and then Easter would come. We're going to make it out by Thanksgiving and on and on, and that would come. And they ended up dying of a broken heart. And that's when James Stockdale shared a fascinating philosophy with Jim Collins.

He said, you must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which we can't afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of the current reality, whatever they might be. Wow. Jim Collins calls this the Stockdale paradox. So confront the brutal facts, but never lose faith. Confront the facts that there is trouble, there is pain, there is hurt, and we go through those things.

We go through that journey, but we never lose hope. It sounds something like what Jesus said in the book of John. He said, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. The key there is overcome.

He says, you're going to have trouble, but I have overcome. So this week we're continuing this series, Three Remain. Last week we talked about faith. Next week we're going to talk about love, the greatest commandment. And of all these things, love remains, right?

But this week I want to talk about hope. I love how somebody said this. They said, love is our calling card. Love is our calling card, and faith is our credit card. But hope is our greeting card.

Is it not? The Bible says that we are prisoners of hope. That it is who we are. It's the message we bring. We bring hope.

And Romans 5, 1, if you'll turn with me there, we're going to dig into what this means and how to live out hope and how to fight for hope. So if you have your Bibles, you can turn there. It will also be up on the screen. It's in your notes. And it says this in Romans 5, beginning with verse 1, And therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into the grace in which we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

And not only that, but we also glory in success? No. Tribulations. Tribulations. Knowing that tribulation produces what?

Perseverance. And perseverance, character. And character, hope. I remember playing football in high school. And I had the most brutal football coach, I think, of our county.

He was really tough. He started us off real early. And, I mean, early in the summer, we would be running. We would be wearing full gear. We would just be getting prepared for football season.

And, man, it was just such a brutal time, especially being a young kid and being out of shape, you know, after you come off of the spring and everything. And I remember the heat in the air and the humidity in the air and the guys on the sidelines throwing up. And, you know, just all of that stuff was happening. And the coaches in our face, come on, come on, you know, cursing at us, doing all kinds of things to us. And I just remember that.

But there was a motto that he had, and many of you are familiar with this motto, blood, sweat, tears. Well, let me see you then. You take your money out by your shoulders. And even if, you know, I think, we don't have to get tickets to the stars. Blood, sweat, tears.

And he always said, blood, sweat, tears. This is what's going to make you strong. Blood, sweat, tears. Keep going. Blood, sweat, tears.

You're going to be so better on the other side. Love, sweat, tears. And the common goal for all of us was to be strong so that when we entered into football season, we were ready to win the game. Blood, sweat, tears. Often, we're in moments of blood, sweat, tears.

But how do we get stronger? Stronger resistance training. We had a great season. The year before we had not so a great season. That's probably why he was brutal to us.

So how do you get stronger? Resistance training. But how do you grow as a person? And this is what I want to get to. How do you grow as a Christian?

How do you grow as a believer? How do you grow as a person? How do you grow with hope? Adversity. Adversity.

And there are things you have to overcome to become the person that God has destined you to be. I wish I could tell you that there was a way to circumvent this. To circumvent this and get around this and just kind of go through life and everything's okay. But adversity will come. And the first step in cultivating hope in our life is suffering.

The scripture says that suffering produces perseverance. It's not easy and it's not fun. And we all experience it. We all have seasons where we find ourselves in places that we don't want to be. It's just reality.

But as we're in those seasons, I want to share with you three things real quick that will help you through adversity. Or will help you through those times of perseverance. Perseverance. The first one is, this too shall pass. First point, this too shall pass.

George Foreman in his autobiography shares a story about an elderly woman who was asked for favorite memory verse or verse in the Bible. And there are a lot of good choices, right? I mean, we all have our favorite verses. We might have, you know, all things work together for the good of those who love him or called according to his purpose. Especially when we're dealing with perseverance.

Or I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. You know, that's a really good one when you're trying to get through some times. But she said her favorite verse was, and it came to pass. It came to pass. That's not even a verse.

That's like a saying, you know, like the time will come or the time came when this happened. And then she explained, she said, I know that whatever a trial, whenever a trial comes, it doesn't come to stay. It comes to pass. Comes to pass. We can confront the brutal facts, right?

That trials are going to come, but they come to pass. I thought that was really cool. Ecclesiastes says this, there is a time for everything, a season for everything under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die and a time to plant and to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to tear down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. And I think we like half that list because we want to laugh, but we don't want to cry, right? We want to dance, but we don't want to mourn.

But that's just not reality. There are seasons. And that's just not life if we don't go through those seasons. But there's some good news. The Bible says God makes everything beautiful in His time.

But it's in His time. It's not our time. There's this psychological term, a phenomenon called, and I know some of you probably know where I'm going with this. It's called effective forecasting. It's projecting your current feelings into the distant future.

So the idea is when people are in the middle of tough times, and you've seen it and I've seen it, they feel like they're always going to be in it. Like it's never ending. I'm never going to get out of this. This is going to last forever. And you've probably met people or been that person.

And man, is this ever going to end? Am I ever going to get through this? But the truth is, it will. And maybe you've been heartbroken. Maybe you've been depressed.

Maybe you've gone through something. And I remember back in my first relationship with a girl and how she broke up with me and how devastating it was. And it felt like months. Just a few months felt like years when you're like 17 years old or whatever. You think, oh, I'm never going to get through this.

It's just painful. And how is life ever going to get better? But it does. As a side note, yeah, thank you. Thank you for finishing that.

And I met Miranda, so I have a wonderful wife and everything's great, you know. But as a side note, we have to be careful to let people process it in their timeline, okay? So when people are mourning or people are hurting or people are going through it, through grief, we have to give them an opportunity to go through the process of grief. Oswald Chambers says it like this, let God be as original with others as He is with you. So let's not tell people just to get over it, you know.

And I think we do that a lot. Like, just get over it. It's okay. From your perspective, it might be okay. And we know it's going to be okay.

It's eventually going to be okay. But we need, just as a side note, we need to let people process it in their own time. So I'm not at all minimizing whatever your pain is or the experience that someone has. But psychologists tell us that there is a tendency to feel like the way we feel right now is going to last forever. But it won't.

We can get through it. I love Job's situation. You know, I don't think Job ever thought that he would experience joy again because, I mean, he lost everything. But the Bible says God blessed him the second part of his life more than the first. I mean, he just blessed him.

Now let's not glance over the details. Job had dreams for his life, I'm sure. At the very beginning, I'm sure Job thought, man, you know, I'm going to have a blessed life. I'm serving the Lord. I've got a wonderful wife.

I've got kids. And he dreamed of growing old with his wife and his family around him. So it's not like his life turned out the way he planned and maybe even the way he wanted it. But I'll tell you this, God brought joy back to Job's life. And he wants to bring joy back to your life.

He gave him another family. What I'm getting at here is that life happens in seasons. There's a season for everything. There are seasons that are better and there are seasons that are worse. But I also think there are seasons where we need time to suffer and mourn so that we can process difficult emotions so that we can be stronger.

You've probably heard the saying, if every day was a good day, there would be no good days, right? Right? There would be no good days. Days, you know, so we need to take hold of the bad, you know, work through the bad days, but realize that there's good days ahead. The second point I want to make is, it's okay not to be okay.

It's okay not to be okay. Let's not fake it till we make it. Let's be honest when we are not okay. There are seasons when you're not going to be able to overcome something by yourself. Even Moses needed Aaron and her to hold up his staff, right?

There's times you're going to need people to hold you up. A counselor once told me, I've never met a married couple who didn't need counseling. Everybody needs counseling. Everybody needs help. Everybody has times where they struggle.

And my fear is that sometimes people think that they have it all together, or they need to get it all together before they enter into church, or they find God. Oh, I'm going to get my life right, and then I'll come to church. I'll get my life right, and then I'll talk to God. But it doesn't work like that. It's just like saying I have to get well before I go to the hospital, right?

And that just sounds silly. Jesus even said, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, it's the sick, right? And He comes to heal people and to restore them from their brokenness. And if you keep things hidden, if you're not okay with being not okay and being honest, the brutal honesty that we need to have, then we're just going to get sicker. We're going to cover it up, and then we get sicker, and we get more bitter and more defeated.

It's okay not to be okay. You want freedom? This is how you do it. You come together. You open up.

You share. And this is a place where it's okay to not be okay. This is a house. This is a church where it's okay not to be okay and to be honest. And God surrounds us with people that can love us and help us and walk us through these difficult situations.

And that's what the church is for. That's what other believers are for. That's why we come together. That's why we minister to each other. That's why we do small groups.

That's why we fellowship together. That's why we grow deeper together in relationship. I love how James puts it. He says, Is anyone of you suffering? He should pray.

Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises, right? That's what we do together. If anyone of you is sick, he should call on the elders of the church and pray over them and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord, right? And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick.

We do that together. The Lord will raise him up and if he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess. And I love this last part. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be, fill in the blank, healed.

So that you may be healed. It's okay to be not okay. And then I'm going to say that the obstacle is the way. That's the third point. The obstacle is the way.

We want to go around suffering, but it produces perseverance. We want to go around trials, but James says consider it pure joy when you go through trials. We want to go around conflict, but the Bible says iron sharpens iron, right? We want to go around death, but the only way to find resurrection is through death, right? Resurrection is waiting on the other side.

You have to go through these things. The obstacle is the way, and I think the cross of Jesus Christ is emblematic of this. In the first century, it was a symbol of torture. It was a symbol of death. How does it become a symbol of forgiveness?

Jesus walked it out. Jesus went through the pain. Jesus went through the trial. Jesus went through the adversity, and he walked through it. The obstacle is the way.

Listen, God is going to turn that suffering into perseverance, and I believe that you are going to become a better person, a stronger person, a more powerful person. You're going to grow deeper, and there's going to be a lot of pruning in the process. There's going to be a lot of refining like gold in the process, and there's a lot of things that are going to be taken out of you like it's just going to sweat right out of you, and it's going to go through a process. It's going to go through a fire. But I think you come out on the other side even better, so much better and more like Christ.

And that's our goal is to grow deeper in him and become more like him. And he is never going to leave you nor forsake you in the process. Did you know that? He's with you walking through the fire. And the next part of this verse of Scripture.

So suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces charisma? No. It produces character. And I think that's probably the way we should be looking at it, that we should be people who we could be charismatic people, but charisma doesn't get you through. It's character.

And I think at the end of the day, it is character that really counts. When God looks at us, I think it's character that really counts. In David Brooks' book, The Road to Character, he makes a distinction between two kinds of virtues. Resume virtues and eulogy virtues. Resume virtues and eulogy virtues.

Resume virtues are skills that you need to make a living. It's like the things you do now and what you're building up and the material things. But eulogy virtues, get this, are virtues you need to make a life. Those are the things that get talked about at your funeral. I think sometimes we get a little too consumed in the resume virtues of life rather than the eulogy virtues of life.

And I just think sometimes that when you're going through a tough season, maybe God is doing something in your life, and I'm not saying he's causing it, but I'm saying that he can make all things, even bad things, work together for the good of those who love him. And that's what he's doing. He's bringing you through these things to make beautiful things out of them. And what happened to you, I bet, it breaks God's heart when you go through things like that. But he wants to take you to a place where redemption is and recycle your purpose.

He's got a purpose for you, and he wants to redeem that purpose. And God does not waste suffering. He doesn't. If you're going through suffering, he's not wasting that. He's refining you.

He's making you pure. So I want to ask you two questions, or give you two questions that I usually ask when I'm going through hard work. When I feel like I'm flatlining spiritually, yes, pastors flatline spiritually at times, and when I feel relationally disconnected, perhaps you're feeling that right now, just relationally disconnected and just not connected to God because of maybe something you're going through, you're going through a tough time. The first question I would ask is, is there a lesson that God is trying to teach me in this process? It's not that complicated.

It's basically, what is God really trying to teach me in this process? And I think God uses life as a curriculum. We're in a classroom. Life is a classroom where He's continually teaching us some great lessons. And we need to take these lessons and learn from them, but so many times people don't learn their lessons.

We all know those people who've been following Christ for 25 years and they don't have 25 years of experience because they have one year of experience repeated 25 times, right? They just keep going through the same process. Because they aren't learning their lesson, they aren't picking up on what God's trying to teach them through the processes of tough times and suffering. What can I learn through this, God? We need to ask God, OK, what am I learning through this?

I want to learn. I want to grow closer to you. I want to know more about who you are. And through this process, I'm leaning into you and I'm discovering why I'm going through this. Is there a lesson that God is trying to teach me?

And the second thing is what character is God trying to cultivate in my life? What kind of character? Is He building my character? If you need more patience, He's going to make you annoyed with some things, right? If you're in a situation where you need to grow, He's going to do some things to kind of bring some resistance in there.

That resistance training is going to take place in your life. He's going to put you in places to get you to the next level so that you can be more aligned with the destiny that He has for you. The reason you were created. Your integrity is your destiny. Your integrity is your legacy.

And He's creating character in you. So suffering produces perseverance and perseverance produces character. And then character produces hope. I love what Job says when he hits rock bottom. He says, I've lost everything.

But he says, though He slay me, though He kill me, I will hope in Him. David, when he's running as a fugitive, he says this, I will pitch my tent in the land of hope, right? Romans 4 says, against all hope, Abraham, in hope, believed so and became a father of many nations. In fact, it even said this, and then it says, without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, meaning he was a dead man. He thought he was passing from this world.

He was like, God, take me. But in the process, he was fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised. He knew the promises that God had given him. And even in death, even at the brick of death, he was looking towards the promises that God, I am fully persuaded that God had the power to do whatever he has promised. 2 Timothy 1.

12 says, I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him until that day. Yeah. Isn't that beautiful? Where is your hope? Is the question.

I love the imagery of an anchor in the Bible. Our hope being an anchor. Hebrews 6.19 says it like this, we have this hope as an anchor for our soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf.

Now, when we think about an anchor, we think of something we toss on the side of the boat into a water to keep us stable so that we don't drift. But I think it's fascinating that this particular piece of scripture, the context of it, and if you're familiar with nautical language and you're a boat person, you probably understand this principle of kedging. Kedging is a nautical term used when you take an anchor, an object, and throw it against a rock to help pull your boat. Or there's rocky ground or there's soil or there's soil or what have you and you throw it on the ground or you catch it against a rock or what have you to help you pull through a narrow place or a strait that is congested or could cause damage. And the imagery here is that our anchor is hope.

And our hope is the end of the story where we see Jesus and he's ripped the veil. So life is like this. We have this anchor. We have this anchor. And this anchor, we're continually throwing that anchor.

Here comes the rock. Here comes the trouble. Here comes my trouble in my marriage. Here comes the depression. Here comes all these things that I'm dealing with and I'm throwing my anchor out.

And I'm catching it on to something and I'm pulling it through. And I'm catching it on to hope. I'm catching it on to promise. I'm catching it on to the love of Jesus Christ that he has for me. I have that promise ahead of me and I'm pulling my ship.

I'm pulling my life. And I'm maneuvering through that narrow strait, that journey called life, towards hope. He is an anchor for our soul. His name is Jesus. And he is our anchor.

When trouble comes, he can be our anchor. Here, Dan and Jamie Butler, Jamie currently serves in the U.S. House of Representatives. And they have an amazing story.

It's been on People Magazine, CNN, Fox News. It's been all over the place. But both are Christians. They're believers. And they've given more details to the back story and Christian speaking engagements.

And they were pregnant with their first child. I think it happened back in about 2013. And pretty excited because the day came when they would get their sonogram. And they would know what the gender of the baby was. And they started their routine checkups.

And they discovered something that no parent should have to discover. And they discovered something that no parent should have to discover. Something went terribly wrong, and it was the baby had Potter's Syndrome. It's a rare disease in which a lack of amniotic fluid inhabits the lung development of a child, so the lungs don't develop. So Jamie's baby had the most severe sort of Potter's bilateral kidney failure.

I mean, it was the worst there is, and she was told that she had to terminate a pregnancy because there's no hope for the baby. 100% there would not be any hope for this child to be born. So what do you do in a situation where the doctors give you no hope? Your baby's disease is 100% fatal. Your child, there's no exceptions to this rule.

It's going to happen. The doctors have determined, what do you do in that? But while the doctor was telling them about this bad news, Jamie felt the baby kick in her. And she said that was a sign from God. She felt that that was a sign from God that she was, no matter what happened, no matter what the end result was, that I'm going to carry this child through full term.

In spite of 100% fatality rate, they decided to give it a go. And Dan shares more about the story. And in fact, he shares, Dan, the father of this child. He says what we were doing, we were praying and we were seeking God. And the story of David came up.

You know, David had just had an affair with Sheba and he was picking the pieces up of his life. And there was a child. His child was born and it was it was sick and they didn't think it was going to make it. So David, David pleaded with the Lord for his child's life. In fact, 2 Samuel 12, 16 says David contended with the Lord for his child.

He contended with the Lord. So obviously, David's story doesn't have a fairytale ending. The child passes away. And but but for them, they they felt like we're going to contend for this child. We're going to have a David moment where we're going to contend for this child.

So Dan said, I know it was a strange strip scripture to draw inspiration from. But we contended because he said this and I love this. I don't want to rob God of an opportunity for a miracle. I don't want to take that opportunity from God. They were living in the shadow of the valley of death, but they were contending and they were pitching their tents on the land of hope.

And on July the 11th, 2013, their baby was is born two months premature weighing at two pounds, 12 ounces. But here's the amazing thing. She let out a cry. Babies with lungs that aren't developed don't cry. It was a miracle.

And you can look up their story. And the diagnosis, I mean, it's it's all over the place. The child is still alive today. Praise Jesus. A miracle took place.

The only known case. What do you do when you get that kind of diagnosis? What do you do when you feel like you're you're at your wits end or or there's nowhere else to go? Or you feel like it's 100 percent, 100 percent not going to happen the way that that God has has said it or or that you feel like it should be. What do you do?

You contend. You contend with God. And that is what hope is. Contending for what you believe in is harder than conceding to what you're afraid of. But it's the only option we have in faith.

And that's what hope is. So the question is, where have you given up on God? I can't promise you you're going to get the happy ending. I can't tell you where this is going to go. But have you given up on God?

Have you given up on contending for whatever that thing is? And I know we have an eternity to look forward to. But here's what I believe. There's a season when you need to contend. There's a season when you need to contend for your marriage.

There's a season when you need to contend for your family. There's a season where you need to contend for for whatever situation you're going through. You need to contend. If you're in poor health, you need to contend. If you've got a loved one that's in poor health, you need to contend for that person.

Because that's what hope is. Hope is contending. Going through the process. Going through the pain because we know that there's hope on the other side. And there's ways we can do this.

Two things real quick. One is we have some incredible people even here in our church that contend with you. They can pray with you. And they want to pray with you. And they're excited to pray with you.

You don't have to do it alone. You don't have to hide. It's okay to be not okay. You've got to be able to come to the altar. You've got to be able to come to somebody in church.

You've got to be able to pray and contend. And people want to contend with you. And then I want you to know that as you are contending, God is contending with you. In fact, He was contending for you before you woke up this morning. Did you know that?

He's been with you all along. He contends with you. I want to share a story with you in closing. His name is Jim Corbett. And there was a guy named John L.

Sullivan. He was one of the greatest boxers in history. He was the last heavyweight champion to bare knuckle box. That was a good while ago. And the first heavyweight champion to do glove boxing.

He held the title for a decade. And he was undefeated until September 7, 1892, when he met a boxer named Gentleman Jim Corbett. Corbett did what no one had ever done before. He not only went 21 rounds with John L. Sullivan, not only did he defeat John L.

Sullivan, he knocked him out and he won the heavyweight championship of the world. And by the way, he gave his prize money to the church. The bout against Sullivan is the most famous fight, but it is the bout before the bout that just tells you a little bit about Jim Corbett, who Jim Corbett was. On May 21, 1891, Corbett fought his crosstown rival. It was a guy named Peter Black Prince Jackson.

In that day, Sullivan, who was the famous fighter, wouldn't fight, wouldn't fight this man because he was black. But Corbett said, I'll fight him. And he was actually the heavyweight champion of Australia. And they worked at two different athletic clubs in San Francisco. So they met in this match and they fought for 61 rounds.

61 rounds. Who goes for 61 rounds of fighting? And it ended in a no contest. 61 rounds, no contest. I mean, I'll tell you who fights that long.

A guy with this life motto. And he says this. He said, fight one more round. Fight one more round. That was his motto.

And he said this, he said, When your arms are so tired that you can't hardly lift your hands and you can't keep your guard up fairly, fight one more round. When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you're so tired you wish your opponent would just clock you once and you just fall to the ground, what do you do? You fight one more round. Remembering that man who fights one more round is never whipped. Fight one more round.

I wonder if this is what Paul had in mind when he says, stand on the promises of God. You need to stand. Stand. Stand. Fight one more round.

Some of you are going through some difficult situations. Can I tell you, fight one more round. When you're black and blue, fight one more round. When you're beat up and you're suffering, fight one more round. The failure is not an option.

Failure is not getting knocked down. It's staying down. You're going to get knocked down. OK, you're going to fall. Things are going to happen.

We're going to go through life. We're going to go through struggles. We're going to. But there's victory on the other side. Can you hear me?

Do you listen? Are you listening to me? There is hope that we can we can anchor to. We can pull that anchor past those situations. We can navigate them and it hurts, but we're going to fight one more round.

And God, hope is is coming back out of a corner after sixty one rounds. That's what hope is. So let's confront the brutal facts. It's not going to be easy or fun. I'm not saying that that is going to be crystal clear.

But the Bible says that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance produces character and character produces hope. Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. And this is kind of one of my life verses. I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you.

And not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. God's got hope. God's got a future for you. Amen.

Let's pray. Father, in the name of Jesus, thank you for hope. Thank you that you've made a way. Thank you that when we were yet sinners, you made a place for us. Thank you, God, for that.

We rejoice, Lord. Even in pain, even in hurt, even in difficult situations. We have hope and we can anchor on that hope, Lord Jesus, and we are so thankful for that. God, I pray that you, by the spirit of the living God, if anybody is dealing with difficult situations or questioning themselves. Maybe they're depressed.

Maybe they're going through major difficulties in their life. Maybe they're going through pain. Maybe it's physical pain, Lord Jesus. I pray in the name of Jesus now that you would begin to touch their bodies, touch their hearts. But in the process of us praying and contending for those things, Lord, we realize that we have hope.

We have hope for a future. We have hope that one day everything is going to be OK. It's not the end. It's just the beginning. This is just a piece of eternity, Lord.

For some people here today, eternity has not started. In fact, death is waiting for them. So today, in the name of Jesus, I ask that your spirit move across the people right now. Just begin to touch hearts and touch lives. And as I pray, God, and as we're in that spirit of worship with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, as if just every heart just seek him right now in his presence.

If you're here today and you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, we want to give you that opportunity. Is this your day? Are you struggling with hopelessness? Because we have an anchor. We can get through the suffering.

But do you have that anchor? That is available for you today. You can have it. It's yours. Because Jesus, in his love, he loves you.

In fact, in fact, he's quite fond of you. He loves you a lot. And today may be your day. You need that hope. If that's you.

If you would just lift your hand and say, Pastor, just pray for me. I'm not going to ask you to come to the front. I'm just asking you to be a bold statement and say, Hey, Lord, I'm in today. I'm ready to give my life to you. I'm ready.

My heart is yours today. I'm tired of trying to do it myself. I'm tired of doing it hopelessly. With no hope, no anchor, no end of the game. Anyone?

If you would pray with me this prayer. Father, in the name of Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God. I believe I am dead in my sin without you. Today, I believe that you died on the cross so that my sins could be covered. That I am hopeless without you.

That I find hope with you today. Come into my life. Come into my heart. Give praise and glory to you today. In your name.

And welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word, providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message.