Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 9: How You Can Have Hope When All Seems Hopeless
70 Plays3 years ago
Mentioned in this episode:
Meaningful Traditions for the Easter Season:
Lent and Easter Ideas for Christian Families
Connect with Ruth here:
Connect with Pat here:
Please share Rootlike Faith with your friends!
This podcast is produced and edited by Angie Elkins Media, Inc.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Root Like Faith
00:00:02
Speaker
Hi, I'm Ruth Schwank and I'm so thrilled you're listening in with us at Root Like Faith. It is our deepest desire to encourage and equip men and women to be rooted in God's Word, transformed by the love of Jesus and moved by His mission in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more important.
Finding Hope in Easter
00:00:20
Speaker
On today's episode of Root Like Faith, we are celebrating, we're celebrating the end of this season of Lent with celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. And we are going to answer the question, how can we have hope in a hopeless world? All right, friend, let's go.
00:00:41
Speaker
Well, today we're wrapping up our series on Lent and really focusing on Easter. This is like a time to celebrate. This coming Sunday, April 4th is Resurrection Sunday. And so we're talking about how the resurrection of Jesus resurrects us to new life. And I just love that. Yes, and amen.
00:01:02
Speaker
This is like the Super Bowl for Christian. This is like the Sunday of Sundays. Yes, the Sunday of all Sundays. It is. Just go in with great enthusiasm, unknown to mankind as Coach Harbaugh often says here, coach of University of Michigan. Yes. I'm sure he's listening. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Oh, I just love that. We have such hope and we celebrate it.
00:01:24
Speaker
this Sunday for Easter.
Easter Traditions
00:01:27
Speaker
But let's start, okay, let's start with talking about some of our favorite Easter memories or traditions. I can't remember. Honestly, I don't have any. No, you can't say that because I can't remember anything. Oh my goodness. Well, I know my sisters listen to the podcast, so if they remember anything from Easter, please tell me. They're probably gonna be calling you. Call me. But I remember more around Christmas than I do Easter. Now we have lots of them from when our kids were younger.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so obviously I didn't grow up in a Christian home, so as far as Easter goes, yeah, I remember going to my grandparents' house for a nice meal, but we weren't going to church to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Now, there are things that I can remember from, you know, as the kids have grown up, and I don't feel like I'm the best at traditions. Like, people go all out. I see parents go all out, and I'm like, oh, I wish I could do that.
00:02:23
Speaker
Um, but there's one thing that this is not like a meaningful tradition. This is just fun because I do think it's fun to celebrate it in all different ways. One thing I've done, and this is the tip of the year for parents, because this will last you all the way from when they're little to when they're teenagers, even honestly, when they're adults is, you know, Easter egg hunts are a big deal, you know, around Easter.
00:02:45
Speaker
And so we always get those little plastic eggs. Well, when they were little, you could put like a penny or quarter in it and I hide them all over the house instead of candy. It's money and it's all over the house and they go find them and they think that's so fun. Well, guess what? When they're teenagers, they still think it's fun. You put a dollar in each one or whatever. It just costs us a lot more now.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'd like to do that. Go find some eggs with some money. But that's obviously a fun, silly Easter tradition. But we've done that. We also obviously always have meaningful devotion. We talk about the resurrection of Jesus. We have a
00:03:23
Speaker
a meal together, but there's meaningful traditions. I'll be sure I put some in the show notes, but I think of one that comes to mind are these, they're called resurrection rolls. Okay, talk to me. I know. Talk to me. They sound so good. Have you ever made these? Honey, no I haven't. I didn't think so, but I like them. But I always think that I should.
00:03:48
Speaker
Listen, this could be our Easter. This is real motherhood. I have always seen other moms making these resurrection rolls with their kids. And I think, Oh, that's so sweet. And so like the point is, but I, and then I don't make them. I don't know why, but I don't, but it's such a good idea. So you make these rolls and when they bite into them, they're hollowed out on the inside, which is obviously like
00:04:11
Speaker
The empty tomb. The empty tomb. I love it. So that's the resurrection. I'm all in, honey. If you needed my approval, I approve. I don't think I'm going to make them. I'm sorry, honey. But somebody listening might want to. So yeah, that's all that comes to mind when I think about Easter traditions and memories.
Death and Resurrection: A Source of Hope
00:04:28
Speaker
I think that's why we're in this series on Lent and dying to live because there are so many rich activities or traditions that are attached to this preparation period leading into Easter. Of course, Easter is this Sunday and it is a time now for us to turn our attention as we look at the death of Jesus and now the resurrection of Jesus. We just live in a culture where there's so much despair.
00:04:50
Speaker
And we have, or at least a lot of people have rejected God, they suppress the truth about him. And when you do that, you're left without real hope. And you can't erase the search for divinity from the human heart. Everybody is looking for perfection. Everybody is searching for God. And yet when you take him out of the picture,
00:05:13
Speaker
and you reject Him or suppress the truth, you can't get away from the reality of needing God and wanting God. You still long for Him. And so you begin to put your hope and you look for other things to bring meaning and purpose. And yet at some point, those are all horizontal. All those things at some point, they let us down, they deteriorate. And so we're really talking about that theme today as we've been talking about Lent and dying to sin, all the stuff that's dead and dying.
00:05:40
Speaker
We'll talk a little bit about death here in a moment, but really what we're talking about is ultimately the hope that we have because death has been defeated. Yeah, and we all need that reminder, right? I mean, whether you're listening and you're following Christ and you know about the resurrection of Jesus, we all need the reminder that we can have hope, why we can have hope and how we can have hope. And maybe you're listening and you need that hope. You've never experienced that hope. And that's here for you today as well.
00:06:10
Speaker
So as we talk about hope, I feel like the place to start is the place none of us like to talk about or think about. And that is in death because without, I mean, without death, you don't have the new life. So let's talk about death.
00:06:26
Speaker
You know, Lent always begins with the confession that we come from dust and we'll return to dust. So it's very common, you know, if you've been in an Ash Wednesday service and you know you've heard that verse, Genesis chapter three, verse 19, read or spoken over you that we have come from the dust and we'll return to the dust. That's a very,
00:06:43
Speaker
sober thought and yet there's great wisdom in that of remembering our frailty, the brevity of life, that death is entered into the world because of that first sin, that sin brings separation, it brings physical death, it brings spiritual death, a separation from God. And yeah, most people don't want to think about that.
00:07:06
Speaker
We'll do everything we can to distract ourselves, to sort of insulate ourselves from the reality of our own mortality. We distract ourselves, we try to be busy or entertain ourselves to avoid the topic. And I really think that one of the scariest things when we think about death
00:07:22
Speaker
One of the scariest things about death is that we don't like the thought of being alone or that perception of being alone or separated from those that we love the most. And so one of the things that is so scary to us as human beings is the perception that death brings aloneness and separation.
00:07:42
Speaker
And yet when we think about the work of Jesus and what He's accomplished for us, He has entered into that place that we perceive to be a lowness and separation, and He's conquered it. And so this time of the year, we're remembering that every predator in life has been defeated by the death and resurrection of Jesus. I love that. He's defeated sin, He's defeated death, and He's defeated our spiritual enemy, the devil.
00:08:06
Speaker
And so there's nothing left in life to truly fear. And so we can have hope. And it doesn't mean that we should read, I mean, death is a great evil. The scriptures say in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 26, that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. And so- So it is our enemy, yes. The scriptures describe death as a great enemy, but it's an enemy that is weak and has been defeated. You know, Hebrews chapter two, verse 15,
00:08:32
Speaker
or starting verse 14 says this, since the children have flesh and blood, and here the writers talking about us, since the children have flesh and blood, he too, Jesus shared in their humanities so that by his death, he might break the power of him who holds the power of death. That is the devil. And free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. I mean, we live in a culture
00:08:56
Speaker
And honestly, there's a lot of Christians who live in slavery to their fear of death. And yet the scriptures remind us to hold on to the truth that Jesus has conquered death. He's destroyed him who holds the power of death, the devil, and freed us to live in joy and hope and peace because Jesus has entered into that place that we perceive to be the end, to be a place of aloneness and separation. And he's filled it with his life and he's been raised by the Father.
00:09:23
Speaker
And he promises that we'll follow in his wake someday when we take our last breath. Amen, honey. Jeez, I feel like I just need to say amen. But what a picture that is of us being in slavery by our fear of death. And I think, you know, God is offering us freedom in that. We don't have to live in slavery over our fear of death.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that that's where, again, Easter is this great celebration that Jesus has been crucified, that our sin was that serious, that it cost him his life, that he went to the cross and he was pinned there to the cross out of obedience to the Father, but he was also pinned there to the cross out of his love for us.
The Impact of Jesus' Sacrifice
00:10:03
Speaker
And we said this last time that grace is
00:10:06
Speaker
It's free to the person who receives it, but it's costly to the one who gives it. And so this time of the year, we're remembering the real cost of God's grace, that Jesus really did suffer a painful, bloody, brutal death because of our sin. We put him there, and yet we're the recipients of that sacrificial love and outpouring of his grace.
00:10:26
Speaker
And as a result of that, we now are filled with hope. I love what Romans chapter five, verse five says, where Paul says, you know, we've been justified. In verse one, he says we've been justified by what Jesus has done for us. You know, by our faith in Jesus, we've been justified. We have peace with God. And then he goes on to verse five to say that hope will not disappoint us because the
00:10:48
Speaker
the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. We ought to be a hope-filled people because of what Jesus has done for us. I love, can I share one other quick story before we move on? I know you're going to read 1 Peter. We're all juiced up.
00:11:03
Speaker
Again, this is the Sunday of all Sundays. That's right. This is Easter. This is what we've been moving towards in the Lenten season. All these episodes leading up to Easter. There's a great story and I'll share it really quickly. No, you don't have to share it quickly. I was just kidding. My father passed away in a car accident in November of 2010.
00:11:26
Speaker
And then my mom passed away in November of 2012 and I remember sitting at his graveside with my mom and my sisters were there and we were all seated there in the front row. And there is something so powerful and so humbling and scary as well. Sitting just several feet from that grave where my father's body was gonna be lowered and just right after that service.
00:11:51
Speaker
And there I was with my mom, and they enjoyed 49 years of marriage. And I'll never know what it was like. I didn't know what it was like for my mom to sit there and to experience that. I can only imagine. But I remember sitting next to her, along with my sisters, and at some point during that part of the service, I remember just leaning over to my mom and telling her, thank God the grave is empty. It's so powerful.
00:12:18
Speaker
And that's what we're celebrating. That's what we're remembering that we bring all of our pain. We bring all of our sorrow. We bring the real loss that we've experienced. We don't minimize that. That's no small thing, but we bring all of those sufferings, all of that pain, all of those longings. We come into Easter Sunday. We come into that service and we bring those sorrows to the feet of Jesus, remembering
00:12:42
Speaker
that He swallowed that up by His death and resurrection. We bring our little sufferings, as some people say, and we bring them to the great suffering of Jesus on the cross, and we surrender those to Him. And we remember that all is not lost, that there is great hope, there is a great reward for us one day when we take our last breath, that we are a hope-filled people.
00:13:04
Speaker
because of what Jesus has accomplished for us. I love that, that's so good. So as we talk about hope, we want to answer the question, what is hope? And I think, I love 1 Peter 1, three through eight.
00:13:19
Speaker
that says praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
00:13:36
Speaker
This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. That's the death we were talking about.
00:13:54
Speaker
These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy." I love that. An inexpressible, you're filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. Now I'm ready to say amen.
00:14:24
Speaker
That's right. I mean, we say, I mean, that's such a powerful passage. You know, as you're reading that, I literally, I'm over here, I'm like, I need to bring, I need to get a Kleenex. And so I just, every time that passage is, we just read this passage as a church a couple of weeks ago at our Maple Campus here at Grace Bible Church in Ann Arbor. And I was literally in tears when we got done with that. This passage in particular,
00:14:46
Speaker
was one of my favorite passages to go to early on in my diagnosis. I remember sitting over at the Rogel Cancer Center at U of M and pulling that up in my YouVersion app and reading over this passage just again and again. I just love that. We've been given this new birth into a living hope. It's not a dead hope. It's a hope that is alive
00:15:06
Speaker
And it will not disappoint us as we talked about in Romans chapter five. And the reason we have this hope is because it's through what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us. And I love that, you know, in verse four, where where Peter says that we have this inheritance, we have this future.
00:15:22
Speaker
that can never perish. It doesn't spoil or fade. You just think about everything in life from your house, from the thing that you just bought a week ago or like everything is in decay. Your body is breaking down. My body is breaking down. And everything is in some way spoiling or perishing or fading. And yet Peter is saying that this hope that we possess
00:15:44
Speaker
in Christ is something that nobody can touch. Nothing can touch. I love that. It is kept for us. It's protected by our faith, protected by God for us, that we're going to enjoy this future forever with God and with one another who profess the name of Jesus. And nobody can take that away. I mean, that's the hope that we possess because of Jesus and what he's accomplished.
00:16:06
Speaker
I love that. I love that. Cause I keep thinking of the phrase or the sentence, you have a future. Like when we think about that, that's, that's so real. It's so true. God offers us this inheritance. That's so good. I think that's such an important thing to tell ourselves is that we have a future because I think that that's in particular suffering and trials and loss. Um, the, the myth that we believe in that is that we don't have a future that our future has been severed.
00:16:32
Speaker
And I think that the reality that we need to come back to is ultimate reality, which is God's reality. And that is that we have a future that our life doesn't end here on earth. It ends in heaven when God returns and he renews and restores the whole earth. I love the
00:16:48
Speaker
I don't know. I wish I could remember who said it. I'm terrible, but it's not. I can't remember who said it, but they used the analogy of hope. When they were talking about hope, they said hope is like fog or it's like lights in the fog. And I just love that. It's so simple, but I think everybody has driven in the fog and you turn your headlights on.
00:17:07
Speaker
And it's hard, you never turn the brights on, but you turn your lights on, so you can just see far enough. And you're straining to see. But you can just see enough to keep going. And I just love that illustration or analogy of what hope is, that it's like lights in the fog. And that's really what we're doing as we journey through life, as we keep our eyes on Jesus. It's much like that.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah and I think about as you're saying that I'm thinking about driving through the fog and how wow this is such a picture but like you can't look too far ahead or you can't see I mean you literally have to just look right in front of you and isn't that a picture of life and how God wants us to trust him in that and we can have hope by just looking at that and you know right in front of us he leads the way that's so good.
00:17:52
Speaker
I love that. A couple other things I think that are really important for us to remember is we're celebrating Easter, we're celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus, is that hope is trusting the promises of Jesus with little or no evidence.
Understanding Hope and its Challenges
00:18:04
Speaker
I mean, just think about those who've come before us. There's this reality that we have the communion of saints. There's those that have come before us who are now in the presence of God and we're connected in a very real way with other believers, not only within our local church, but around the world.
00:18:22
Speaker
And you think about the lives of different men and women who've lived before us and how their life looks so bleak and they didn't receive everything that they were looking for in this life. And I just love that idea that hope really is trusting the promises of Jesus with no or little evidence that there's times in our life where it just looks like
00:18:41
Speaker
God's not winning. It looks like that the promises of God are not true, and yet hope enables us to still believe that the promises are true, that God is going to come through on what He has said, whether I can see it right now, whether I even experience it in this life. Hope really looks to Jesus and trusts Him no matter what, and that's what the saints of old have done, and that's what God calls us to do in our time, in our generation.
00:19:05
Speaker
hope is believing in what we cannot see at times. And it's really trusting in what Jesus has accomplished for us. And so hope is really what we believe and not what we see or what we feel all the time.
00:19:21
Speaker
Well, and I think most of the time we're we're looking for that evidence that we can see. I mean, that's just the truth of how we as humans can operate. We want evidence. We want we want to see God come through when it seems like he's not there. We can lose hope so easily when we can't trace his hand in our life. And so this is you know, we we are called as Christ followers to hope in what we believe and not in what we see. And that that's real hope.
00:19:51
Speaker
I was just thinking about as you were saying that there's a great story and maybe some of our listeners that maybe come from a Catholic background will recognize Faustina. Saint Faustina lived in, I think she was born like in the early 1900s. She lived through World War I. She was a Polish nun and I just love the story that she told one time in one of her writings. She talked about, just real briefly, she talked about how she saw two roads and one road was this broad road
00:20:21
Speaker
And along that path, there were flowers and gardens and there were people who were laughing and there was music and every comfort and pleasure was sort of laid out on that road. And yet she says that the people that were walking along that road, they came to the end of the road without knowing it. And there was this great precipice, there was this great drop off and they walked off the edge of it to not be
00:20:42
Speaker
returned or recovered and then she says there was this other road and that road was much more narrow is very small and she says it was much more like a path and along that path there were thorns and rocks and people were
00:20:54
Speaker
were actually at times crying and there were tears in their eyes. And yet when they got to the end of that road, that they stumbled upon it, that they finally came to, there was this beautiful, magnificent garden. And then she ends that story by saying the moment that they entered that garden, they forgot all their suffering. They forgot all their sorrow. And of course, that's a great picture illustration of what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter eight, verse 18.
00:21:20
Speaker
that all of our suffering, all of our trials, the path that we walk in this life that can be full of difficult times will all be swallowed up. They won't even compare to the glory that will be revealed in us in Christ Jesus on that day. And so I just love that picture.
00:21:35
Speaker
that we do live with that challenge that as we walk along the road there are different difficult times and struggles and there's thorns and thistles and rocks and yet we have this promise that God himself is going to meet us and he will be waiting for us. He's going to wipe away every tear and when that day comes we're going to forget all of our sorrows in an instant and they won't compare
00:21:58
Speaker
As Paul says in Romans 8, they won't compare it all to the joy and the peace and the power and the majesty of being in God's presence. You shared that story. All I could think about is our tendency towards that path that looked so lovely, towards the path where everybody was laughing and
00:22:20
Speaker
I mean, that's the path we want, right? The reality of life is that a lot of times there are struggles and suffering, and then the garden, the perfection, the beauty, the relief, the hope is waiting for us at the end. And I think it really does challenge, it really does strike, and we're gonna close here in just a moment with Romans chapter eight.
00:22:44
Speaker
But I think it really does strike at what we believe the good life really is. And so I think this is a time of the year to go, what really is the good life? What is the abundant life? What is the flourishing life? And we live in a culture that in so many different ways is always selling us on what they think or what the culture thinks is the abundant life, the good life, whether it's on social media,
00:23:03
Speaker
or Hollywood or TV commercials, and yet Jesus offers this abundant life that He lays out for us in the Gospels and in the Scriptures as a whole. And so we have to, I think, this time of the year go, what do I really believe about the flourishing life, the abundant life? Do I really believe
00:23:21
Speaker
that it's found in following Jesus, even with all the thorns and thistles and trials. Right, we can have that hope now. We can have that hope now, and I think that heaven begins now for the believer in the choices we make, the ways that we say yes to Jesus and the life that he's trying to give us. Heaven begins now, and we have this hope that sustains us. It's an anchor in difficult and dark times.
00:23:41
Speaker
And even when we're walking through those dark, difficult times and seasons and circumstances, we are a hope-filled people because of what Jesus has accomplished for us. He's entered into the scariest place for us. He's entered into that place that we perceive to be a place of aloneness and separation, and He's conquered it.
00:23:58
Speaker
I want to close by just reading Romans chapter
Reassurance in God's Love
00:24:01
Speaker
8. This is one of my favorite passages of scripture, but Romans chapter 8, starting in verse 38 and then going through just, I guess, 39. He says, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither
00:24:15
Speaker
height or death, nor anything else, and all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. I mean, that is our hope. Amen. Amen. And this Sunday, we celebrate his resurrection. So, so good.
Closing and Engagement
00:24:31
Speaker
Well, friend, we are so grateful you have joined us. If you haven't had a chance to listen to the other episodes on Lent, be sure you listen back to those. We'll put all the links in the show notes at rootlegfaith.com.
00:24:46
Speaker
Also, if we haven't met, we want to get to know you. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Patrick W. Schwank and at Ruth Schwank or on Facebook. And would you do us a big favor and leave us a review or rating and share this podcast with your friends? Make sure that you tag us on social media as well. We're so, so grateful for your help in getting the word out.
00:25:10
Speaker
Well, I hope you have a great Easter, a great Resurrection Sunday, and a great week. We'll chat soon.