Get Your Hopes Up

Get Your Hopes Up

How many of you grew up being told “don’t get your hopes up”? You had been planning, asking, and or hoping for something you really wanted. Maybe it was a trip to summer camp, or a new bicycle. Maybe you wanted to go to a Christian school or play in the band. Maybe you just wanted to have more time with your dad. How often, after expressing your desire for things such as these, were you told, “don’t get your hopes up”?

I was. I was told that many, many times. I believe that these negations proved to play a major role in some of the problems I faced as a young adult. Why do I believe that? It’s because all that I had been dreaming of or hoping for had been smudged out, instantly.

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Proverbs 13:12 (NLT)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.

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Late in my early thirties, after being married for ten years, having three children, and owning my own business, my life took a serious turn for the worse. I found myself poured into a mold that did not line up with what I had hoped for in life. My life had been deferred down the broad and common road.

Divorce, alcoholism, loss of business, cocaine addiction, crack addiction, homelessness and hopelessness led me straight into an eight month Christian rehab. Christ changed my life during those eight months, and I praise him for that. But that’s not exactly what I am here to talk about today. What I want to talk about are the effects I witnessed as a result of hopes deferred. Mine were quite obvious.

During these eight months I lived in a huge Victorian home with thirty other addicts, victims of abuse, drunkards, criminals, and the like. Sounds like a rough bunch, I know. Many times they would not stay through the entire program and others would come in their place. For many, the call of the world was too great for them to endure. But many others did endure. During this period I got to know, personally, many different types of people, from many different walks of life. And you know what I discovered? Each and every one of them had hidden gifts and talents. They were not addicts. They were people. They were people who's hopes had been deferred.

As I got to know each of them better, and eventually did some one-on-one counseling, I was able to glimpse into a portion of their childhood and recognize a hope once had. That hope, tragically, had been buried deep with layers upon layers of rejection, disappointment, and resentment. Hope deferred.

But as with myself, once these people sat under the Word long enough to realize the amazing love God has for them, and once they understood who they were in Christ, a majority of those childhood hopes were brought back into a foreseeable vision. Hope restored.

In preparing for this little lesson, I searched through the New Living Translation and found 189 verses which contain the word hope. Certainly I am not going to list all of those here. But I have got to tell you how encouraging it was reading through those verses. If you have found some pain buried deep within your heart, perhaps it is directly related to some lost hope. I exhort you to look up some verses that pertain to hope. God’s Word is health and healing to our souls.

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PUT YOUR HOPE IN JESUS

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I could not list each and every verse that spoke to me this morning, but here are a few that I really want to share:

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Psalm 10:17

Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will hear their cries and comfort them.

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Psalm 25:5
Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me.
All day long I put my hope in you.

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Psalm 42:11
Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—my Savior and my God!

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Psalm 78:7
So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands.

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Proverbs 24:14

In the same way, wisdom is sweet to your soul. If you find it, you will have a bright future, and your hopes will not be cut short.

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Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

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Acts 2:26
No wonder my heart is glad, and my tongue shouts his praises!
My body rests in hope.

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Romans 5:5

And this hope will not lead to disappointment.
For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the
Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

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Romans 15:13

I pray that God, the source of hope,
will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him.
Then you will overflow with confident hope
through the power of the Holy Spirit.

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Hebrews 6:19

This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary.

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Hebrews 10:23
Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm,
for God can be trusted to keep his promise.

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Hebrews 11:1
Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen;
it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

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Your parents loved you. And maybe they did tell you not to get your hopes up on occasion. But our parents could not teach us what they did not know.

Jesus not only knows the answer, He is the answer.
And today Jesus has something that he’s been dying to tell you, literally:

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GET YOUR HOPES UP

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I love you brothers and sisters,

Michael

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