July 29, 2018 Sermon Stories of Hope: Jonah First Scripture Reading: Jonah 1:1-4 1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah set out to […]
You – we – do want to know God desires to work through us. But, that’s gonna requires something from US. We’ve got to listen for what God wants to do through us, we’ve got to listen for God’s hopeful voice, God’s hopeful vision.
Y’all, our hope should have NOTHING to do with our circumstance. Rather, our hope should have EVERYTHING to do with our trust in God and God’s assurance that God is at work through us, that God will continue to be at work through us, that God will fill these seats again if we trust and listen for what God calls us to do individually and collectively.
And y’all, these things Jesus offered so long ago when the bad stuff happened, they are STILL what Jesus offers you and I today.
Y’all, it’s time for us, God’s people, to dream some dreams. It’s time for us to see some visions. It’s time for us to move from an existence that can best be described using words like “darkness” and “despair” to an existence that can best be described using words like “bright” and “hopeful” and “amazing” and “new”. It’s time to start realizing that when we listen to and follow God’s will, anything, absolutely ANYTHING, is possible…even things beyond our wildest imagination.
Y’all, a big, HUGE reason that we can experience the party called faith that is the Kingdom of God…a big, HUGE reason we can experience ANYTHING at all as a party after we experience pain and loss and suffering is exactly because there is hope in God.
Folks, we live in a time in which people are searching for hope. They can experience philosophical and political disagreements anywhere they go in our society. They can experience people selfishly demanding their own way anywhere else in society. They can experience stingy, exclusionary behavior anywhere else they go in society.
What they can’t get anywhere else, what they should be getting HERE, what they will flock here to receive, is the gospel of hope, the gospel of Jesus Christ, that reminds them that what they do MATTERS in the big picture.