Category: Blessed Hope

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The Nearness of Our Blessed Hope

My dear sister,

As I sit in the comfort of my home with my cup of coffee in hand, thinking of you and watching the news of the world, my heart wells up in gratitude to the Lord for our safety from violent persecutions simply because we profess to be Christ-followers. Certainly there have been times in my own life when my love for Jesus has caused discomfort in those who do not love Him, even scorn and disdain, but never to the point of physical harm or the State coming to take me away. I know that in our own USA there are those whose families have ostracized them, there are small businesses which have been shut down, there are lawsuits against organizations who refuse to compromise their core beliefs.  These are hurtful and serious situations, the outcome of many still unknown.  Our first amendment rights seem to be in jeopardy over various issues including homosexual ‘marriages’ abortion ‘rights’, and transgender ‘rights’. At present, none of these are resulting in torture and death to those in opposition, but they certainly are an oppression of serious noteworthiness…Which brings me back to the world news…

It is with horror that we hear of our brothers and sisters and children being beheaded, crucified, set on fire, or drowned. I do not mean to minimize in any way our own trials, diseases, disappointments, and deep losses of various kinds, but in our trials perspective is always beneficial.

I think of Hebrews 11 with its list of pilgrims and sufferers and martyrs. Though they had many promises of the coming of Christ, they never saw, here on earth, the fulfillment of those promises, yet “they all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth…Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection…of whom the world was not worthy.”

I think of the apostles, all put to death except the exiled, beloved John. I think of the believers through the centuries who suffered simply because they loved the Lord Jesus and would not deny their love. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” (Revelation 12:11)

There are Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego–refusing to obey the Kings edicts, knowing death must follow, unless God… And Luther’s brave stand before the Diet of Worms. Get a copy of Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs”, read with horror and awe, and think long and hard about the test of faithfulness.

Sweet sister, when we get bogged down by the things in our own lives, let us ask God to remind us of the big old world out there filled with so much evil and imposed suffering and unimaginable abuse and persecution in the name of false gods against those who love our Lord Jesus.
Many of our brothers and sisters are experiencing sheer terror at this moment. They are despairing of life itself yet they are clinging to God, our Father. My heart cries out to Him on their behalf.

Pray with me.

O, our God, our hearts ache and cry out to You for all those in this world who are being or will be persecuted simply because they are faithful to Jesus Christ. Please prepare all of your children for a day of possible persecution by strengthening us in our trust in You, Your Word, and in Your goodness now, so that no matter what, we would remain faithful to You, by Your grace. May we all have “persecution grace” and not shrink from living boldly for Christ in every circumstance. In our own strength we would crumble. In Your strength we can do whatever You call us to do. May we have thoughts of those who have gone on before and be prepared to “leap for joy because great is our reward in heaven” (Luke 6:23) and “rejoice that we would be counted worthy to suffer shame for His name” (Acts 6:41 ).

For those who are suffering now, physically, emotionally, spiritually–for dear unknown friends– please sustain, lift up, surround, give courage, take away doubts, misgivings, wavering, fear and dread and terror…Comfort, build up, remind of Your goodness, Your love, Your nearness, Your face, Your heaven.  May there be rejoicing and songs of praise coming from their lips–for the joy set before them. Please remind them that their suffering brings great eternal reward. It is not in vain. Remind them that I Peter  1:6-7 tells them that their faithful response in their sufferings validates their faith in God “even though tested by fire” that it “may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Remind them and us that the more we suffer for Him, the greater our capacity to glorify Him. That is a very great reward.

Lord Jesus, You who were persecuted and suffered–You who were tempted in all points as we are (yet without sin), please let your nearness be known to these precious children of Yours, keeping them faithful, not denying the Lord Who bought them, even in the face of death.

‘Thou art my protecting arm,
fortress, refuge, shield, buckler.
Fight for me and my foes must flee;
Uphold me and I cannot fall;
Strengthen me and I stand unmoved, unmovable,
Equip me and I shall receive no wound;
Stand by me and Satan will depart;
Anoint my lips with a song of salvation and I shall shout Thy victory.’ (From Valley of Vision)
Amen.

In the midst of all pain and suffering Jesus says, “Surely I am coming quickly.” He will make everything right. He will wipe away all tears. He will take away our anxieties and terrors and our sin forever.  Let us say with John,  “Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

Look up, my friend, He IS coming again.

Cherry

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Hope From The Darkest Time in History

Dear sister,

Many dear friends of mine have been suffering from depression lately. Not just a time of feeling blue, but deep soul-rending pain that leaves them questioning their very existence. Weeping with them and praying for them is in sharp contrast to the new life of spring surrounding us—flowers blooming, leaves returning, sunshine beckoning.

Palm Sunday has just passed, the remembrance of the joyful day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (fulfilling the prophecy from Zechariah 9:9) and people lined up to greet Him with shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9) Jesus said if they hadn’t, “the very stones would cry out.” (Luke 19:40) And Easter is next, the most hopeful event in all of history. He is risen. But between those Sundays of celebration, we have a very dark week.

On Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper Jesus had with His Apostles, where He washed their feet and instituted the Lord’s Supper. We know His heart must have been heavy as He warned them how Judas would betray Him and Peter would deny Him. And then He went to the garden of Gethsemane, where He asked His friends to watch with Him because “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38). He went a little farther on and fell on His face (Matthew 26:39) praying if it were possible to be delivered from what His Father had asked Him to do. He returned to His friends, who hadn’t even stayed awake while He was dealing with such torment, and then left them and prayed the same thing again… and then came back and found them sleeping again, and left and prayed the same thing again. The Son of God, who had chosen to come from the full glorious presence of His Father in heaven to live a sinless life for 33 years on sinful earth was about to face the full wrath of the Lord for all the sins of each of His people. What sorrow, what dread! He was under such emotional strain that He began to sweat blood (Luke 22:44). Traditionally at the end of the Maundy Thursday service church leaders strip the vestments from the front of the church and the congregation files out in silence, commemorating Judas’ betrayal and how the soldiers stripped Jesus once they’d captured Him.

As we pass into Good Friday we remember the torture He endured, His death by crucifixion, and His burial. While He hung on the cross, the whole land was dark for three hours in the middle of the day (Mark 15:33). Traditionally churches hold a Tenebrae service to commemorate this darkness, gradually lowering the lights until the sanctuary is dark, as it would have been outdoors while our Savior was dying. When Jesus died, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.” (Matthew 27:51) The Messiah had just been crucified. He was dead, and His followers had to bury Him.

It must have been hard to cling to what Jesus had told them, that He would be raised on the third day (Matthew 16:21). He was dead. They’d seen Him breathe His last, touched His body, prepared Him for burial, and laid Him to rest. They went away to mourn together as the Sabbath approached.

But we know the rest of the story! On the third day the tomb was empty. He has risen, He is alive! Death no longer has dominion over Him (Romans 6:9). Later “He parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51) and “After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3). Not only is Jesus alive, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-6). This is unfathomable mercy, grace upon grace.

Theologian Dr. R.C. Sproul and composer Jeff Lippencott collaborated to write a number of hymns in a project now known as Glory to the Holy One. One of the songs is No More the Grave, about Christ’s victory over death. Listen to it sung at Saint Andrew’s Chapel during the debut concert and rejoice with the refrain:

No more the grave can yield its sting,
No more is death our foe.
Our souls can now with gladness sing,
Now gone all curse and woe!

I pray as you travel through this week that you “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-19)

Serving the risen Lord Jesus Christ with you,

Sarah

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Hope While Moving

Dear sister,

I am exhausted. My roommate and I are moving soon. Of course we’ve done that before, but not for three years. There are so many logistics to work through. And this time, for the first time, it involves not only purging and cleaning and packing and scheduling and changing addresses and setting up utilities but searching home listings and finding a realtor and a mortgage broker and getting an inspection and an appraisal and signing a never-ending stream of paperwork.

But I said just yesterday that even all this is a reminder of grace. We knew we had a tight time limit for finding a house. In our price range everything was moving quickly—like within a few days of coming on the market kind of quickly. And our lease on our current apartment ends on a certain day. So we researched for months, watching things come on the market and get sold, but there was a one-week window to both find and get in contract on a house.

So what happened? That.

I wasn’t even worried about any of that part of it, to be honest. Every time I move God just sets it up. I never know exactly where I’m going until the moment I need to know, and then the best option is presented right before I have to make a decision. Every. Time. I kept reminding my roommate God would work it out, and He did.

So why am I worried all these tasks won’t get done? They will. They always do. This is my 18th move. I know what I’m doing, and I know how to get it done even amidst running my business and volunteering at a national conference for several days and painting the entire interior of the new place before we move in. Everything that needs to get done will be done (Philippians 4:19, Matthew 6:26).

We hear all the time—on commercials, even from our financial advisors—that “past performance is no guarantee of future performance”. Except with God, it is. He reminds us over and over in Scripture that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that He brought His people out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land. He promised a Savior, and He sent His own Son to live a perfect life, be tortured, and die on a cross for our sins. He gave us all of His Word to remind us of everything He’s done. He will not abandon us now.

1 Peter 1:3-7: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

My prayer for you this week is that “the tested genuineness of your faith” will “result in praise and glory and honor” (1 Peter 1:7) to the Lord who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8). He who holds the stars in the sky holds your circumstances in His hands. Cling to hope, sister; cling to Him.

Praising Him with you,

Sarah

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Joy in Dark Times

Dear sister,

One of our homeschool mom’s stood in front of our group with tears in her eyes as she recounted her time spent comforting her friend whose husband was killed in a helicopter crash off the shores of Hawaii. She described how his extra boots stood watch at the door and how the mechanical smell of the uniforms he left behind laced the house. The widow and her four children grieved deeply, asked why loudly, and some became silent as they turned inward sadly. They were used to having him absent for long spells, but contemplating him never coming home tore their hearts.

Two days later, I listened to an Indian women give her testimony of how her husband broke her neck and spine, smashed her head on railroad tracks, and pulled her sari so hard it stripped her naked in the streets. She managed to run away only to face the condemnation from women who told her she should have stayed with her husband. She told of her reoccurring blackouts as a result of years of beatings and how she was threatened by the mafia to stop trying to free their slave labor children or else.

Both women cried out to God saying that He must have made a mistake! How could this God they loved, allow this guttural sorrow and pain to his child and then say He is the comforter of the widow, father to the fatherless, and head lifter of the broken? As they were sharing this part of the story, through their tears something remarkable appeared: A smile. Not one that declared madness or hilarity, but one that revealed the hope they had that the scripture was true and their hope secure in Christ. This God declares that He will bind up the brokenhearted, never leave or forsake His children, is able to catch all the burdens we throw at Him, and wipes all our tears away forever. The widow clings to the knowledge that she will dance with her husband again in heaven while the abused knows vengeance is the Lord’s. Because of this, she now rescues those from the slavery and bondage she knew well.

After hearing the testimony of the widow’s friend, my daughter declared she wanted to watch “Inside Out”. As I saw Joy and Sadness try and help Riley out of her newfound pain, I realized the cartoon explained to me something simple: sometimes we need sadness to bring joy. We do not realize the pain of sorrow often alerts us (and others) of our need for encouragement and help. Our emotional marbles cannot be parsed. They are not simply red, blue, yellow, green, or purple. They are often mixed. These women experienced this in their own lives; the body of Christ came in their deepest need to sit, listen, pray, and be the hope they needed when they had little. And joy came in the morning.

Now what does this all mean for us sisters? Oh sister, there can be joy in the sorrow when our faith is grounded on the foundation of the Word. The Bible’s narrative is true. There is sin in the world and bad things happen because of the curse of Eden. This world will never be perfect again until Christ returns and takes us home (which is our Blessed Hope). Yet, from the beginning, God promised a deliverer and rescuer to come to save those who trust in Him. The Old Testament points to the coming One, the gospels reveal this Messiah, while the Letters tell us how to live in light of what Christ did on the cross. Christ endured the suffering of the cross for the joy of our salvation. He is our example of going through pain with a solid, sturdy, joy of trusting and obeying His Father. He had joy in His suffering.

What about us sisters? What are we grounded in? Will we have joy when sorrow and pain knock us off our feet? Will this deep joy come from our knowledge of the Word and it’s hope of a Savior? The assured hope that we serve a Savior that was abandoned, spat on, hated, and cursed, yet trusted that His Father had Him and would never forsake Him? That He found joy in the trial of even death itself? Like these sweet, broken women, feed yourself on the truth of the Word so when storms rage, you too can break into a confident smile because you are loved, will never be forsaken, and that joy comes in the morning because his mercies are new every morning and His faithfulness is great.  Our hope comes with joy!

Joyfully Yours,

Colleen

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Hope Through Love

Dear sister,

I didn’t think it would be like this. Me sitting on the kitchen floor, head in my hands, and tears filling them up while my 4 ½ year old sits on her bed in timeout, my 19-month old girl is in timeout in her crib (screaming) for refusing to pick up her socks she threw down, and my 19-month old boy crying because he doesn’t want to play. Maybe if this was the first time an episode like this had happened it would be different, but this was the latest in a line of defiance by one or all of them. Let me fill you in a little bit, friend.

We have waited 4 years to finally be paired with boy/girl twins, less than two years old, from Ethiopia. God, our Creator, answered this prayer for our family with (the impossible according to human government and agencies) 18-month boy/girl twins. Yet here they are, fully Craigs now, adopted by us on Thanksgiving Day! They were brought to their forever home a week before Christmas. Although we have longed for this day for years, they have been shaken out of all they have ever known. They have been dropped into our culture, climate, and conversations with no warnings or expectations. Yet, I expected them to bond quickly and to love learning their new environment. That has not been the case. Food is refused, fits are thrown, and cries are constant refrains. My heart aches. I lost site of God’s sweet answer of years of prayers and my thankfulness waned as my guilt rose for this loss of gratitude.

In the midst of this, my oldest refuses to do her 30 minute school work each day and has learned to tell us “No! I don’t love you!” Awesome (said with sarcasm of course). And finally, we are moving from our home of 5 years in Okinawa, Japan to Puerto Rico in less than two months. This is the longest place I have lived since high school. My husband and I have fought and said hurtful things to each other in this adjustment and I have gotten shingles where the sun doesn’t shine, ringworm, and some other unknown rash.

So there I was on the kitchen floor just hours before writing this. Where is my hope in this dark time? What can encourage my sad and broken soul that aches for sin to be eradicated in my own life and my kids? I needed a lifeline. I contacted my faithful friend who reminded me that Satan is a jerk and he is defeated and I don’t need to listen to his lies. My heavenly Father adopted me out of His abounding love when I willingly disobeyed him defiantly. Jesus became fully man to take on my blatant defiance, disobedience, and lying and then died for it. Died for it! He loved me so much; He died for my screaming defiance and hatred of Him. How can I not love and forgive my kids when their account is so small? How can I not love my husband when he hurts me, when I hurt the Creator of the Universe with my words and deeds every day? And then Jesus conquered death! He rose again, dusted off my sin that covered me and clothed me with His righteousness. Now I am right before God because of the Father’s abounding love of me. The guilt I feel for not being good enough, thankful enough, or loving enough is true! I could never be good enough…which is why Jesus’ love at the cross is so sweet, and the hope that it provides is so immense.

Phew. I needed that. My tears are still close to my eyes, but I can face this next minute knowing I am forgiven and right before God. I can love my kids and husband because I have been chosen and adopted with all the rights of my daddy. I can rest knowing that God loves me first and has cast judgment of my sin into the depths of the sea the moment I trusted Christ. Thank you Jesus for your abounding love! Spirit, help me remember this truth when I don’t feel it.