Endurance and Hope

The message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday morning, August 14, 2022.  The Bible verses used are Romans 15:4-13/

            Hope.  The expectation and desire that something will happen.  But not just anything.  Something good.  Something we really want.  Hope is a belief that things are going to get better.  No matter how things may look now, even when it seems like things have hit rock bottom, hope is a belief that somehow, in some way, things will get better again.

            We hope for many things throughout our lives.  When we’re little kids, we hope we’ll get the toy or game we want.  As we get older, we hope we’ll have friends who care about us.  We hope we’ll succeed in our chosen profession.  We hope we’ll fall in love and have someone to share our life with.  As we get still older, we hope we’ll stay healthy and be able to continue to have satisfying lives and be able to make a contribution to society.

            Hope is very important to our Christian faith as well.  In fact, in First Corinthians we read that hope is one of the three most important things, along with faith and love, that God has given us.  We sometimes refer to God as a God of hope.  Hope is very important to us in our lives and in our faith.

            But the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, does not refer to God as a God of hope.  Hope is involved with God, certainly.  But listen to how Paul describes God.  He describes God as a God of endurance and encouragement.

            Endurance and encouragement.  That’s how we get hope, according to Paul.  He tells us that everything that was written in the past, all the words of the prophets, all the words of the law, everything that appears in the scriptures, was written to teach us.  And it was written to teach us endurance.

            Do you ever think of the Bible that way?  Do you ever think of God’s Word as having been written to teach us endurance?  That’s what Paul says.

            But when you think about it, it does kind of make sense.  Because endurance is one of the things that helps us keep our faith.  We could not have faith if it was not for endurance.

            Because the truth is that life throws a lot of hard things at us.  You don’t need me to tell you that.  Everyone here has experienced plenty of hard things.  Things that discourage us.  Things that knock us down.  And it can happen in all kinds of ways.  It can be material setbacks.  It can be health setbacks.  It can be things that damage our reputation.  It can be things that cause us to lose friends and feel alone.  Sometimes it might be our own fault, but sometimes it’s not.  You know, they say everything happens for a reason, and maybe that’s so, but there are plenty of things that happen that I’ll be darned if I can figure out what the reason might be.  And I suspect that’s true for you sometimes, too.

            And when those things happen, we make a decision.  We either continue to believe, we continue to have faith, or we don’t.  And that’s why the Bible was written to teach us endurance.  It was written to give us examples to follow.  It was written to give us guidelines and rules to live by.  And it was written to show us and tell us that, no matter how bad things get, God will always be there.  And God will, eventually, make things get better.  If we did not have those examples, if we did not have those guidelines, if we did not have those rules, if all we had to rely on was ourselves and our own ability to hang on to faith, we’d never make it.  It’s those examples and guidelines and rules that were set down in the Bible that give us the ability to hold on through those tough times.  The Bible was, indeed, written to teach us endurance.

            Paul says it's the encouragement that those passages provide that gives us that hope.  Think about all the people, all the great heroes in the Bible, who had times when things went against them.  Joseph--the Old Testament Joseph--was sold into slavery in a foreign country.  Job loses everything for no apparent reason.  Daniel was thrown into a den of lions just for worshiping God.  Jesus himself was killed even though he had done nothing wrong.  

But God never left them.  God stayed with them, and God saw them through their bad times.  Joseph eventually became the number two man to the great Pharaoh and saved his people from starvation.  Job kept his faith and got everything back and more besides.  Daniel not only survived the lions’ den but was able to bring many people to faith.  And of course, Jesus rose again, conquering death itself.  All those people, and many others, endured.  They kept their faith no matter how bad things got.  Their endurance teaches us to endure.  Their endurance encourages us to stay strong in our faith in bad times, too.  And that encouragement gives us hope, again, that things are going to get better if we just stay faithful to God.

But is that all we get?  Just this vague hope that somehow, sometime, in some way, things are going to get better if we just stay faithful to God?

No.  We get more than that.  Because remember what we said hope is at the start of this message.  Hope is not just some vague wish.  It’s an expectation.  It’s confidence.  It’s trust.  We trust that our faith in God will be rewarded.  We are confident of that.  We expect that.  We don’t just wish that things will get better.  We know things will get better.  We know that because we know we can trust God.

Now, as we’ve said before, that does not mean we’ll get everything we want.  Things will get better, but maybe not in the way we wanted or expected.  In fact, it’s my experience that God quite often acts in ways that never even would have occurred to us.  But of course, God’s ways are always better than our ways.  And sometimes I think that God enjoys surprising us, making things work out for the best, but in a totally different way than we ever would have thought of.

And as we’ve also said before, we don’t know when things are going to happen.  That’s another way endurance comes into this.  We’d love it if God worked on our time schedule, but of course God never does.  But again, God’s time is always better than our timing.  And again, I think God enjoys surprising us, making things happen at a time we were not expecting.

But what we get from this endurance and encouragement is more than just hope.  If, because of that endurance and encouragement, we really do trust God, what happens?  Paul says it this way:  “The God of hope [will] fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

What an awesome thing!  If you and I trust God, if we truly trust God, we will be filled with joy and peace.  If you and I trust God, if we truly trust God, we will overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s not always easy to have that much trust in God.  But again, that’s why the Bible was written.  We have all these examples of people who held onto their trust in God, even when it was not easy.  All these examples of people who endured in the faith, and whose endurance was ultimately rewarded.  We’re shown that endurance to encourage us in our faith.

But we have other examples, too.  I suspect we all know people who had or have a strong faith, who held onto that faith no matter how many times life knocked them down.  Their endurance is an example to us as well.  And that endurance can encourage us in our faith.

But we also have the example of our own lives.  As I said earlier, I know that everyone here has gone through some hard things in your lives.  Think about the times that those things happened, and yet you remained strong in your faith.  Think about the times you endured, despite everything.

What happened as a result?  How did things work out?  In some cases, of course, things have not worked out yet.  You’re still waiting to see how things are going to work out.  But the things that have worked out, what happened?  Do you feel like it was worth it?  Do you feel like your endurance was rewarded?

I suspect the answer is yes, or you would not be here.  And the result of that endurance can give you encouragement that it will happen again.  Whatever it is that you’re still waiting to see how it works out, be encouraged.  Know that God has been there for you before.  And let that knowledge encourage you to know that God is there for you now, too, and will see you through whatever you’re going through.

The endurance taught in the Scriptures, in the lives of people we know, and in our own lives gives us encouragement.  That encouragement gives us hope.  May that hope fill us with the joy and peace that comes from trusting God.