[2023.4.7] The Basin: The Harvest Of Hope

A little thought today on harvesting hope. Harvesting hope, specifically harvesting hope from hardships, harvesting hope from heartbreaks. This is Good Friday. I'm preparing a message to share, short message to share tonight at our Good Friday services. And it landed me in the thought that I shared a few weeks ago on Help me fail. That's what I plan to preach tonight. And I think it could be a full sermon for sure. But in order to contain it, I'm just going to take us to the Passover, where Jesus is sharing with his disciples how he must suffer. Where he's sharing with his disciples how their faith at the moment when he needs them the most is going to falter. And specifically with Peter, that Peter is going to be sifted by Satan. And Peter denies him three times. And, you know, Jesus looks at Peter and that scene is still yet to come because at this point, they're still sitting at the table. And Peter can't believe that he has the potential in that moment to fail Jesus in such a spectacular way. And so when Jesus says, simon Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith would not fail. And when you have returned, strengthen your brothers. Well, Peter's response is, I'm not going to fail. Don't worry about it. Jesus is like, yeah, you are. Rooster isn't going to even crow three times and you won't even want to act like you. You know me. We all have things in our past that when we look back, how could I have done that? Why did I do that? What was I thinking? And I think the enemy loves to keep us in a state where we fail, don't move forward. And then actually, in the process of evaluating it, make ourselves worse. Rather than getting better, rather than learning from our losses, we become limited by them. Because now we take into ourselves the fact that, well, what kind of person denies Jesus? What kind of person ruins a relationship? What kind of person explodes in anger? What kind of person fails their kid like that? What kind of person gives into that temptation when they know how low it makes them go? Or kind of person would do that? And Jesus has a very different view of failure. When he speaks to Peter, he starts speaking about the fruit of his failure before it's even happened. Now think about this. This is the amazing thing about the spirit of Christ in you, the Holy Spirit in you. Say, the Holy Spirit is in me. Because you're not sitting at a table with Jesus today, but you have the presence of Jesus in you through the person of the Holy Spirit. And here's what he does. He says, I'm praying about the failure that you haven't even had yet. The failure is still in your future. And I'm praying that something could come from it that will strengthen others. This, to me, makes me glad that I have a really big, really smart, really good God. Great enough to see all the ways that I'm going to fail in the future and good enough to say, I'm going to use that too for my glory. So now let's go to Romans chapter five, as we talk about harvesting hope. Harvesting hope, you say. Man, I don't really think there's much hope in this situation for my dad to get better. They've only given him six months to live. I don't think there's very much hope for this relationship to turn around. We've tried everything, and I'm really not interested in the relationship continuing. So now we need a better understanding of hope. And so we go to Romans for an explicit little breakdown of this. Verse 5, Romans 5. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Yeah, that's wonderful if you have hope, but I don't have hope. Now back up to verse three, where he talks about boasting in the hope of the glory of God or rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God. I wrote a song about that, by the way, one time at Chunks House on Amy's little Baby Taylor acoustic guitar. Your hope does not disappoint. And nothing can harm me, for thou art beside me and I rejoice in the hope of the glory of God that won't disappoint. That's verse two. We boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, we also boast in the hope. Excuse me. We also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces. Ah, produce, produce. Suffering produces. You rejoice in suffering. No, I rejoice in suffering. Say it different. Yeah, I don't rejoice for the suffering. I rejoice in the suffering because I know that in the suffering. Watch what happens. Perseverance is produced. Verse 4. In perseverance, character is produced. How do I become the person that I want to be, that my kids need me to be, that my church needs me to be, that my wife needs me to be? I persevere. What do I persevere through? The hard stuff. The heartbreaks, the hopeless feelings. You know, you make hope a habit, right? You make hope a habit. Write that down. Make hope a habit, not a feeling. Go. Okay, this suffering, it hurts. Can I change it? If I can, I want to. I don't want to suffer more than I have to. Nobody does. At least you shouldn't get that checked out. If you do, that's a condition. That's not character. That's a problem. But look, if you glory in your sufferings, if you glory in your sufferings, that doesn't mean you seek to suffer more for needless reason. It means you accept that certain parts of your day are going to suck. Certain parts of your life are going to suck. Certain parts, from a human perspective are not going to be your preference, but they can produce perseverance, teach you how to show up and do it anyway. Teach you how to push through and stand there and plant your feet and just be who God called you to be in hard situations. And if you do that enough, if you persevere enough, you get character. And character produces hope. Verse 4 says, and hope does not put us to shame. So you become the kind of person who doesn't have to be ashamed. You become the kind of person that can own your mistakes. You become the kind of person that can endure hardness like a good soldier. Paul says elsewhere. And that's what Jesus was teaching Peter to be right. You're going to make a mistake. You're going to fail. This wasn't a little mistake either. This was a complete disassociation from his identity with Jesus at the pivotal moment of his ministry. You would think this would overshadow everything that Peter had done. You know, you let me borrow your boat three years ago and you trolled me around the Sea of Galilee. But if you let me down at my lowest moment, I'm not sure I'm going to pray for you. I'm not sure I want to use you. I'm not sure I even want to talk to you again. But Jesus is like, I'm already praying about the pothole that you're going to hit. I'm already praying about the pitfall that you're going to go through. I'm not just redeeming the mistakes that you have made because Peter made a lot. I'm redeeming the things you hadn't even done yet that you didn't even know to think, to ask me to redeem. How good is the grace of God? How great is the name of Christ, how amazing is our hope in him that he says, I am going to work out of the problems, the suffering, the Heartbreaks. Whether it is something that you did, whether it's a difficult thing you're going through, that you're persevering through, I want you to harvest hope from that. Hope that I know what's in you. Hope that I know how I want to use you. Hope that I know the plans I have for you to give you a future. God's saying that to you today. What a beautiful point of view on Good Friday to know that on that Passover meal, as Jesus shared with his disciples in his last moments on earth, he says, simon. Simon, That's Peter's old name, right? Yeah, because he's still Simon. But that doesn't mean he can't be Peter. But that means in the process of failing Jesus, there's something that God is going to bring forth that means in the process of everything you didn't get right this week, this year, everything you haven't gotten right in your life, God is still good and he can bring something greater forth out of it. But you've got to look forward in hope and go, all right, from this God will. From this God will. From this God will. That's the habit of hope. To me, the habit of hope isn't like nothing bad is going to happen. I declare it. I declare it. I declare it. I believe it. I believe it. Say it three times, rub your belly. The habit of hope is going. From this God will, because in this God is. Maybe say that a few times. From this God will. Because in this God is. Jesus is with you at the table of your mistakes today. His grace is with you at the table of your trouble today. He is an ever present help in the time of trouble. I just want to give you this word today because, like Peter, you're not going to get it, all right? You might really blow it. But even if you really blow it, he knows what you can be on the other side of it. I speak to hopeless people today. I speak to broken hearts. I speak to really hard situations today. Nothing gets harder than the cross. Nothing gets harder than the crucifixion of Jesus, what he endured for us, the wrath of God that was placed on him. Not just the physical brutality of it, but the spiritual separation. When he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Oh, there would never be another moment in human history that would be as heartbreaking as the one who was holy and knew no sin becoming sin that we might become. Ah, there's the hope, the righteousness of God. Now, if out of that God can bring a Harvest of salvation to the world. Can he not bring something hopeful out of your broken heart today? I know that he can get in the habit rather than saying, I failed, so I can't go forward. No, I failed. And going forward, I will change it. Because Jesus is in it with me and he's praying for me. What does that mean, that Jesus is praying for me? The Bible says we have a great high priest who liveth ever to make intercession for us in accordance with the will of God. That means that even right now, God is aligning everything that you got right, everything you got wrong, and moving it toward the purpose that he has for your life. Can you receive that today? I know it's hard, but receive it. And just look for those gleanings. Look for those glimpses. Look for those evidences. You'll find them. You'll find them. They're all around great things that God has done, great things that he still can do. Amazing moments that are still yours for the taking. Like a friend named Eric in our church who lost his mom this week. And as he texted me about it, he began to harvest hope out of the loss of his mom. I thought it was beautiful because he made the decision in that perspective to go, no, God did not heal her. But I am harvesting from this the great memories and the appreciation for the years that I had with her. Because dying is a part of living. And I thought that was powerful how he chose to see it. And isn't that what Good Friday teaches us? Like the song that Phil Wickham just released? And I'm so thankful he let me be a part of writing some of that song with him. Boy, I tell you, he killed this song where he said, Friday's good because Sunday's coming. There's a harvest ahead. There's a harvest ahead. There's a harvest ahead. I'm saying this not in a hollow way, just to hype you up. This is not hype. This is hope. To believe that everything is in his hands, just put it in his hands today and watch what he does. You're in his hands. Your life is in his hands. Your times are in his hands. Your future is in his hands. Go forward knowing today that his hope does not disappoint. And the shame is broken by the blood of Jesus Christ shed for you. This is the message of Good Friday. Receive it now. Receive the hope of the Holy Spirit. Thank you for watching. Make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a single video or live stream and share this video with a friend. And don't forget, you can join me live every Sunday. Thanks again for watching.