October 7, 2019
Download MP3 (right click to save)
The train left Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at 7:30 in the morning, headed for a popular resort area along the Indian Ocean. The train never made it. It was suddenly hit by this massive wall of water. It was a killer tsunami. It had devastated much of South Asia that day. The force of the waves actually tore the wheels off of some cars and leveled the train in this grove of palm trees. In one of those countless heart-wrenching scenes that come out of scenes like a tsunami, one young man at the train site wept in the arms of his friends as the body of his girlfriend was buried. He spoke out to his sweetheart who had died on that train: "We met in university. Is this the fate we hoped for?" Then, as he began to sob even more, he said, "My darling, you were the only hope for me." Tragic picture!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "One 'Unloseable' Hope."
It's hard to think of a more devastating feeling than losing what you had put all your hopes in. Maybe that's a feeling you know if you've lost your health, or maybe like me - the love of your life, your job, your retirement. Maybe you've lost an anchor person in your life, or the thing you've invested so much in, the thing - or the person - that's sort of been the glue holding your life together. You know, I have friends who have been told by their marriage partner of decades, "I don't love you anymore." When I asked one of those friends how he's doing, he just said, "I'm crushed."
So many of us either lost, or will lose, someone or something that we've put a lot of our hopes in. Hope is snatched away by death, or divorce, or desertion, disease, disaster. Suddenly, our life is thrown into confusion and anxiety, even despair. What we need is something to put our hope in that's going to be "unloseable" - something that can't be touched by death or disease, or can't be touched by divorce or disaster; something that will never desert us. Actually, someone who will never desert us. Surprisingly, many people have discovered that in losing their source of hope, they finally found the one hope they could never lose. It could happen to you.
That hope is spelled out beautifully in Psalm 62, beginning with verse 1, our word for today from the Word of God. "My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress; I will never be shaken...Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him."
The only life-anchor, the only life-hope you can never lose is a personal love relationship with God and God alone. Not a religion, but a relationship. It's possible to have a lot of religion and totally miss the relationship with God that you were made for. Any hope we get from anyone or anything on earth is just an unsatisfying substitute for belonging to God. When you belong to Him and you know you do, your soul can finally, as the psalmist said, "rest." But until you're belonging to God, your soul is rest-less.
That unloseable relationship with God comes one way and only one, because we're away from the God we need so much - away by our choice, certainly not His. We've repeatedly chosen our way instead of His way and that's built this wall between us and God. A wall that God Himself acted to tear down by sending His only Son, Jesus, to pay for all our sins when He died on the cross.
And then He rose from His grave, came back to life so He could come into your life today. He loves you enough to have died for you. That's how much He wants you. But you've got to want Him bad enough to say, "I'm sorry for my sin, God. I don't want it to be this way anymore. I'm putting all my hope and all my trust in Your Son who gave His life so I could belong to You."
You know, our website is set up for just a moment like this where you need this information to know how to totally belong to Him and know that you do. And I hope you'll go to ANewStory.com today.
That hope you've lost and the emptiness you feel could actually lead you today to the hope you'll never lose. Because hope has a name, and His name is Jesus.