Where Do You Place Your Hope?

     This weekend I was asked to teach third, and fourth-grade kids about Hope from a Bible passage found in 1 Thessalonians 4.  This particular passage is commonly used to encourage Christians about the hope we have in Jesus Christ, which leads us home after we pass away.

It is an interesting passage to teach to young people whose thoughts are often far from death.  As we age, it is more common to contemplate death as we have much more experience with losing loved ones.  In the Thessalonian passage, believers concerned themselves with the location of their loved ones once they died.  These early believers thought Jesus was returning soon, so they were perplexed by why Christians were dying before his return as Paul taught that Jesus conquered death.  It was customary for Paul to write letters to encourage the churches that were planted during his three missionary trips, and the book of first Thessalonians represented one of his many letters called epistles.

     The children in my Sunday School room were given activity sheets to color, which would reveal the hidden word ‘hope’ when they used various colored pencils to fill in shapes according to instructions given.  We talked about what hopes they had for their futures.  As with any Sunday School setting, you can guess they were trying to give me the Biblical response.  I encouraged them by steering them gently into conversations about their upcoming school year.  Did they have hopes for a specific teacher?  Did they hope that certain classmates would be assigned the same classroom?  Did they hope that certain activities would occur during their summer break from school?  If we are truthful regarding the things we hope for, it is more likely that we will see that we are possibly more ‘earth-bound’ when defining our hope for the future, and less likely to think about heavenly aspirations.  It is not until we place our thoughts intentionally on eternity that we lift our sights beyond the here and now with the understanding that this life is but a vapor in comparison to the forever we’ve been promised.  If it weren’t for tremendous persecution, the Thessalonians might not have sought comfort from Paul regarding their future hope in salvation.  They feared death, which is to be fully human.

     I am many decades removed from the age of eight and nine-year-olds, so I needed to consider how to share this passage with them.  I shared with them that I had been given three exposures to the topic of death this week, which was highly outside the normal thoughts I entertain.  I told them that because of this, I found it easy to relate to what the Thessalonians must have felt.

     My first exposure to death was when I was encouraging a friend who is about my age, whose mother is very ill.  My friend is greatly comforted by her mother’s faith example.  My friend credits her mother with much fruitfulness for God’s Kingdom.  Her mother is suffering greatly, so death would bring relief to her tired body.  This kind of death gives us hope for their future even when we know that we will miss them greatly.  We also have hope that we will rejoin them someday in heaven and have a great reunion.

     My second exposure wasn’t so lovely.  I learned of an acquaintance who after battling a rapid decline in health had passed away in his early forties.  It is very difficult to learn about the death of someone so young, but what was even more tragic was concerns for his ultimate destination.  He had been in an accident as a young man which caused him to struggle with his faith.  His relationship with God had been shattered because of the accident.  He had drifted away from his devotion to God suffering possibly due to the faulty logic that bad things shouldn't happen to good people.  His family, deeply concerned for his salvation, had spent much time while his body grew weaker to reason with him about God’s ways.  I am not aware of his ultimate decision but know that even if he returned to God before his final breath that God would be faithful to him.  My daily Bible passage that I read just before teaching these young kids was in James 5:19-20 which says, “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wanderings will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”  It is of utmost importance that we consider our responsibility as Christians as we relate to this verse.  What is the loving response we are to have as we invest ourselves in the life of others?

     My third exposure came to me as a history lesson and how I would choose to look at future opportunities to speak about the plan of salvation.  A few weeks ago, I was traveling with my family in northern Michigan.  We found ourselves in Traverse City, where we have many fond memories of prior excursions.  While talking about memories, I found myself pondering memories of traveling there on business in the late 1990s.  Two of my past co-workers were from that area, and I was thinking about all the great people I use to know.  One of these co-workers surfaced on my Facebook feed last week.  I had just been speaking to my husband about this young man who had been in his early twenties but now in his mid-to-late thirties appeared to be married.  I was happy for him.  Through God’s providence, I would make another connection to a co-worker whom I had been much closer with, we shared office space and had traveled extensively together while installing software at maybe thirty or forty locations.  I had also been great friends with his wife, who worked for the same company.  We had invited them to our wedding reception seventeen years ago.  When life takes on a new direction, it is easy to have old ties drift off our radar.  Rather than connect to my office mate, I decided to connect with his lovely wife.  I searched throughout Facebook but could not locate her.  She was nowhere to be found until I saw this post, dated September 2018, “She passed away yesterday."

     As I continued to read, my heart lodged in my throat.  My friend had suffered for four years with a debilitating condition that removed her from a normal life before she passed away.  I read of the impact my co-worker had made on his family through his devotion to her through illness and death.  Instantly I found myself saddened by the news and then anxious.  The anxiety that welled up inside of me was due to my uncertainty.  Had she given her life over to Christ?  I was comforted by a few memories but dumbfounded by the recognition of how little regard I had given to conversations about faith, even when I professed to be a Christian.  As this story suggests, I considered my failure, not of neglecting a friendship, but in avoiding critical conversations.  Who do we know where we have not invested in knowing the state of their beliefs?

     With these three exposures, (1) death of a faith-filled-Christian, (2) death of a back-sliding believer, and (3) death with an uncertain outcome, it seems worthy of consideration the fruitfulness of my journey.  For this, the Bible says Christians will be judged.

     This morning my daily reading took me to a Bible passage found in 1 Peter 1, where Peter is writing to the exiled Christians living away from their homeland, much like us living here on earth.  He said, ‘Therefore, prepare your minds for action, be sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.’  You can find this passage in 1 Peter 1:13.  I have paraphrased the verb tense of this passage for personalization.  This passage jumped off the page for my consideration.  It doesn’t matter whether a passage begins with “Therefore,” however if it does, it is worth investigating its meaning.  So I asked myself these two questions, (1) What does it mean to prepare my mind for action? And (2) How should I interpret the word 'sober-minded?'  

     I often investigate the meaning of passages by reviewing what skilled Bible teachers, like John Piper (Desiring God), have to say.  I was thankful for clarity because I am certain that it will impact my future actions and conversations.  To the first question, What does it mean to prepare my mind for action, I was doing just that in my investigation.  When we look at how to apply the Truth of Scriptures to our lives, we are preparing our minds for action.   This action helps to secure our confidence (hope) in the gift of grace that God has provided for us through his Son, Jesus Christ.  To the second question, How should I interpret the word 'sober-minded,' I discovered that this is not limited to the consumption of alcohol that dulls our senses but to all mind-numbing activities.   How often do I find myself veggie-out in front of a screen because I am bored or tired?  John (Piper) says that any activity which promotes a numbing effect that distracts us from our calling to share the gospel should be under consideration.  When I think of the time I’ve wasted or the opposite extreme, being too busy, either side of this equation, I miss God’s best.  Both fall outside the nature of sober-mindedness. 

     So was I able to teach the kids in Sunday School about hope?  After gathering many thoughts about hope, we focused on our ultimate hope to spend eternity with Jesus.   We talked about whether we had people in our lives who didn’t know our Savior.  We spoke about what it meant to be a Christian.  We agreed that we all had people in our lives where we felt uncertain about their faith in Jesus Christ.  We asked questions about what it meant to be an encourager.  We thought about some ways a young person might be an encourager.  We reviewed the plan of Salvation; we saw how the apostle Paul wrote letters to believers and responded with love.  Last we talked about putting our hope on God’s promises and how we should focus on eternity.  I felt blessed by the opportunity to share this message of Hope with young people.

     If you have interest in reading what John Piper has to say about 1 Peter 1:13, you can find this article entitled “Girding the Mind to Guard your Hope” on the Desiring God website.  It is dated November 1993.  Truths found in God’s Scripture never are outdated. 

    

QUESTION:

1.  Review the passage found in James 5:19-20?  Does anyone’s name come to mind that you need to talk to about the hope for eternity?

2.  Who do you know where a gospel conversation would bring clarity to understanding their beliefs, bringing you less anxiety in their death?

3. What does “setting your hope on grace” found in 1 Peter 1:13 mean to you?  Have you been setting hope in something different? (Your Faith or Works?)  It is not about what we do, but what God has done on our behalf.