Hope Challenged People

December 24, 2013

“There are three things that will last — faith, hope, and love…”  (1Corinthians 13:13)

When Paul tells us there are three things that will endure, have you ever wondered why one of them is hope?  The other two are love and faith: love will last because God is love, and faith is the way we know God.  But why is hope one of the three?

Hope is the conviction that something good exists in this world and we are going to experience it.  God plants hope in the hearts of people and it keeps them going.  While studying psychology in college we analyzed the 25,000 suicides in 1952.  Psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and sociologists determined that those people committed suicide because they lost hope.  That same year a man committed suicide by jumping off the top of my dormitory which was located where Hope Street ended in front of the Los Angeles Public Library.  The newspaper reported that he jumped to his death at the end of Hope Street.  That accentuated what we learned in the classroom, big time!

Tonight is Christmas Eve.  Millions of people will gather in families and extended families to celebrate, but many millions more will be alone.  Pastors and those who work with people know that life is unspeakably sad and millions are hope-challenged because they have experienced nothing good.

In his famous carol Philips Brooks wrote that the hopes and fears of all the years were met in Bethlehem when Christ was born.  God intersected human history that night but what the Bible calls the blessed hope of the church and the only hope for the world is that God is going to do that again when Christ returns.

Are you guilty of criminal negligence because you are not sharing that hope with hope-challenged people?

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward

The Greatest Thing in the World

November 8, 2013

“There are three things that last — faith, hope, and love — and the greatest of these is love.”  (1 Corinthians 13:13)

What is the greatest thing in the world?  The Apostle Paul sifts his answer down to three things:  hope, faith and love.  Hope is the conviction that there can be good in life.  God plants hope in the hearts of human beings. People sometimes commit suicide because they lose that conviction.

On the positive side, hope gives birth to faith, and faith is one of the greatest things because faith brings us to God.  However, when Paul compares these two great concepts with love, without hesitation he concludes that love is the greatest thing in the world.  This is true because love is not something that brings us to something that brings us to God.  When we experience the special love Paul describes we are in the Presence of God.  There is a particular quality of love that is God and God is a particular quality of love.

To acquaint us with that specific quality of love, in the middle of this chapter he passes this quality of love through the “prism” of his Holy Spirit inspired intellect.  It comes out on the other side as a cluster of 15 virtues. All these virtues of love are others-centered, unselfish ways of expressing unconditional love. If you study these virtues you will find in them a cross section of the love that is God–and is the greatest thing in the world.

One reason Paul presents these three concepts as the greatest things is that they are the things that last.  Love is the greatest of the three because one day we will no longer need hope and faith when throughout all eternity we will love.

Therefore, pursue the greatest thing in the world – love.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward

Temporal and Eternal

July 16, 2013

“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you,  the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”    (John 17:3)

To appreciate eternal values we must define these two words.  The word “eternal” literally means “that which was, that which is, and that which always shall be.”  The word “temporal” relates to that which is temporary.

Jesus made it clear that we have eternal life because we are related to the true God and the One Whom He has sent.  They are eternal and we have eternal life because we are related to them.  We must also make the observation that the words “eternal life” are referring to a quality of life as well as a quantity of life.

The word “value” also needs to be defined.  The dictionaries tell us “a value is that quality of any certain thing by which it is determined by us to be more or less important, useful, profitable and therefore desirable.” When we bring these two concepts together we should realize we are discussing what is more or less important, useful, profitable and therefore desirable in this life and in the life to come.

A second eternal value is that the eternal is a greater value than the temporal.  The Apostle Paul wrote: If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable (1 Corinthians 15:19 NKJV).  Paul so highly valued the eternal he sacrificed his life here for the rewards he was sure awaited him in eternity.  If there were no eternal dimension he should be pitied.

Do you value the eternal more than the temporal?

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward

A question for New Year’s Eve

December 30, 2011

“Where have you come from, and where are you going?” (Genesis 16:8)

 The last days of the year are a good time for reflection and resolution.  Have you ever had a year that was so bad you could not live with the idea of another year of the same?  Are you there now? If you are, you could be ready to hear the question quoted above that God likes to ask people from time to time.

This is the consummate question of direction.  It implies that if we do not have a crisis that changes things, we are going where we have come from.

Sometimes we are the thing that needs to change. Jeremiah actually mocks us for trying to change ourselves: “Why do you gad about so much to change your ways? …  Can the Ethiopian change the color of his skin or the leopard its spots?  Then may you also do good, who are accustomed to doing evil” (Jeremiah 2:36; 13:23).

There is a big difference between trying to change ourselves and being changed by God.  Unless we are changed by God, or God changes what only He can change, we’re trapped in a cycle of going where we have come from.

With great spiritual discernment David asked God to create in him a new heart and God answered that prayer for him (Psalm 51:10).  God can do that today.  We’re not doomed to that cycle of going where we have come from.  We can be changed and God can change the things that must change so we will not go where we have come from next year.

Confess that you can’t change yourself or your circumstances, but believe God can as you enter the New Year… then watch at God work in 2012.

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward

Christmas Negligence

December 6, 2011

“But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)

 After the Angel Gabriel visited the priest Zechariah he went to the village of Nazareth to a peasant girl named Mary.  When he told her she was going to be the mother of God she responded in three ways.  The Scripture states very clearly that she believed and praised God (Luke 1:45-55).  As we might well imagine, we read that she was so filled with awe the first person to question the virgin birth was the virgin. She showed us that honest inquiry is not the sign of a weak faith.  And the verse above tells us that she kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

When the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles tell us about the Christmas that shall be when Jesus Christ comes back again, they tell us that His coming is the only hope of the world and the blessed hope of the church.  Hope is the conviction that something good exists in this world and we are going to experience it.  Somewhere close to thirty thousand people in America take their life every year because they no longer believe in something good.  In other words, they end their life when they lose hope.

Some believers are so awed by the miracle of the Second Coming they ask questions and experience a “paralysis of analysis” which is followed by much pondering in their hearts.  When we realize that we have a message of hope to tell people without hope about the Christmas that shall be, we simply must share that good news.  It is almost criminal negligence to have this hope and not share it with people who have no hope.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward

Next Entries »