Hopelessness is Destroying People

Priscilla Shirer discusses the danger of hopelessness. Listen in as Priscilla Shirer, Laurie Crouch, Victoria Osteen, Chrystal Evans Hurst and Elaine Fisher discuss how drastically hope can change your life.

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Hopefulness is so powerful to keep your chin up when it should be down to have um you anchored by a piece that as the scripture say passes, understanding like you nor anybody around, you can figure out why you’re still that peaceful given what they know about what’s going on in your circumstances.
And yet somehow they’re still able to have a sense of security and stability and sanity in the midst of circumstances that should be driving them and saying that’s proof of the hopefulness that comes to us when we believe it.
God is who he says He is.
Whenever I think of resurrection, I think back to the very first time, which now was nearly 20 years ago that I had the opportunity with my parents to go to Israel and gosh the impact of walking into the garden tomb area where it is believed that jesus’ body was laid and at the time they had something on the door there.
When you walk up to the garden tomb, there’s a little doorway that’s open.
So you can see inside of the tomb. There’s a sign on the door that says He is not here.
We could have had a whole holy ghost church moment right there because the fact that he is not there, I’ve never been so glad in all my life to not see nothing.
There was nothing to see. There’s not no um body laying there. There’s nothing mummified, there’s no museum.
It’s an empty tomb. And the resurrection is our receipt that he is who he said he is and that he has accomplished for us what he said that he has accomplished.
And so the scriptures say that it is through his death, that we’ve been justified and reconciled to God.
But even more by his life, we are saved.
We are graced, we are empowered to be able to walk in victory.
So I wanna talk about the hope of the resurrection because on this Good Friday, we can look forward to Sunday already in our hearts and experience.
The hope that comes from knowing that he got up out of the grave.
And the same power that conquered the grave is the exact same power, not, not like a lesser dumbed down version of that power, but the same power that was capable and able to get Jesus up out of that grave is the same power we’re supposed to be walking by the spirit that power every single day of our lives.
So when you look forward toward what Sunday means on an Easter weekend like this, what kind of hope that that does that give you to live through and press on in the trials of life and the details of what you have going on in your own experiences.
So, you know, I think about, um Friday and it’s horrible. Jesus, his disciples, they’re, they’re his friends.
His mother is watching him die and it’s horrible. Yeah, it’s horrible.
And how, uh, you know, on Resurrection Morning, um, the women were at the tomb.
Um, but not the disciples.
Like there’s shock, you know, when the women are telling them and Peter discovers and he’s running to tell everybody there’s this shock that he actually isn’t there.
And I often think what does it feel like to go from Friday to Sunday with expectation?
And what does it look like to go from Friday to Sunday in disappointment and despair?
And what I’m wanting to do in my life is live as if Sunday is coming because I get to choose how I go from Friday to Sunday.
Like, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t mean it’s not traumatic.
It doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking, oh, I wish this wouldn’t have happened this way, but it certainly changes my outlook and my excitement.
One of the worst things that can happen is that you lose hope.
I mean, it’s, it’s, life is hard enough but to hold on to hope that, that things can get better, that Sunday is coming.
That God does reign in victory.
That Jesus is coming back from the dead to, to be able to hold on to hope keeps you going when you live without hope.
That is just an awful feeling.
But I have to tell you that there are many times in my life where sinking into despair is my first reaction.
You know, and I’m not looking, you know, I’m not looking with an expected hope.
And so that’s as I think about that, I’m, I’m thinking about that reality in my life.
What does it look like for me when life is hard?
And I’m living through Friday to live with expectancy about Sunday.
Um because it changes how you talk, it changes whether or not you’re smiling or not, it changes how you engage with other people.
And honestly, it changes whether or not you actually live on Saturday.
Like if I don’t think Jesus is coming back then every Saturday of my life, I’m going to want to stay in the bed.
I don’t want to engage with anybody. I want to hide away.
If I believe that he’s coming back on Sunday, then I live on Saturday. It changes everything.
Do I believe that Jesus who got up from the dead?
That as I’m praying over this child or as I’m praying over this marriage or if I’m praying over my passions and not the personal pursuits of my life as I’m praying over my finances.
Do I believe that that same power can change the trajectory of my child can change.
The trajectory of my marriage can change the trajectory of what I even think I should do with my life can change.
Do I believe that that’s real?
Because if I do it changes how I operate it, it totally changes how I operate.
So it’s, I mean, being positive is great but being totally convinced of the power of God that results in resurrection is so much better.
Yeah, we’re gonna need that kind of hope through.
There have been so many layered difficulties that corporately all of us across the globe. It’s collective trauma.
I mean, and not just one pandemic, it’s been like layers of pandemic, whether it’s racial pandemic or political pandemic, medical pandemic.
I mean, it’s been, there have been so many things war, there have been so many things to disrupt our peace to, to really take us out of this sense of being able to face another day because on top of all of the global things that we have all faced, there have been so many personal griefs and losses and um life has been sort of up turned upside down and so many hard things.
I do not know how anybody could make it from day to day without anchoring ourselves in something else other than earth stuff because this stuff is so uncertain and disappointing lets you down.
Well, if we all think that we need to play God, if we’re godless, I mean, I can’t imagine what people, people without God are doing right now, with, without a source of a higher being that loves us, takes care of us and knows what we need.
You know, and thinking that we need to play God is just crazy.
But when you live in the power of the cross, I love talking about the power of the cross and what Jesus did for us.
First of all, it vindicated who he said he was and then he destroyed, he said, I’ve come to seeking to save the last I have just come to destroy the works of the devil.
And then he said, it is finished.
Now you go, you do what you’re called to do and I’m going with you.
So if we didn’t know that God was going with us to empower us in the Holy Spirit, but if we believed that truly, every person believed that we had the power of the Holy Spirit to go and do, that’s what Jesus has done for us.
He has given that to us. It’s a free gift and he has done it.
He, he, he has all power and he’s done.
If we all truly believe that, think of what would happen, right?
I love the fact that when I think about the cross and I think about what Jesus did is that he took two things that were separated and brought them together.
He gave us access to him. You know what we don’t need anyone to go in for us.
We have access to the Father through Jesus.
And I think that’s the most uh miracle of all miracles as we being human.
We literally can have access to God because of what he did on the cross.
And the same power, power that raised him has empowered us. So it’s not that we are weak here.
It’s not that we are defenseless, but we have the power of the Holy Spirit in us.
And so I think that’s what’s so embolden to say there is hope. I am.
I have hope because I have God in me, you know, and that’s what gives us the hope.
That’s what anchors us. Uh is the fact that yeah, when the whole world seems like it’s turned upside down, we know there’s still a God that’s empowered us to, to, to rise above it all, to live as a light in the world.
And so that’s, that’s the beautiful thing is that we’re not separated those, the division, the anger, the wrath, everything it’s been done away with.
We have peace with God. And that’s just a beautiful thing to think.
We can literally go to God, you know, face to face, we can come boldly.
What does the Bible say to the throne of grace, to obtain mercy and find help in our time of need?
And that’s what I think is so, so wonderful because there’s nothing like, you know, like they had to go to the priests.
You know, they had to wait for the priest to come out.
They had to wait for someone to prophesy over. They had to do so much stuff.
But we get access to God personally, which is, is pretty incredible.
Uh, yeah, because he didn’t have to do it.
He didn’t have to make a way for us to have a relationship with him and to have direct access.
So the fact that he just was merciful enough and gracious enough, just loved us enough with all of our faults and weaknesses and deficiencies to just make a way and that way was so costly for him.
His son. We said to my youngest son the other day, we were talking about just having a conversation about some things that we had read in the Bible.
And um as we were discussing the crucifixion and the resurrection, specifically, Jerry, my husband looked at Jude and said, you know, if I had to sacrifice you on behalf of anybody else in the world, those people would be in trouble.
There is no way in the world, I would sacrifice my son for that.
And so he said, as a father, you, you will never know the beauty of and the power of what God did until you have a son until you have a daughter.
And then you will look at that child and realize what the father must have gone through and how much.
He must have loved you if he was willing to give up his son for you.
Unbelievable love, especially sinners, especially for sinners, even good people.
We didn’t know we had no earthly is 65 says I allowed myself to be found by those who weren’t even seeking for me.
I allowed myself to be discovered by those who weren’t even looking for me.
They didn’t even care and still he made a way for us to have a relationship with him.
It, it’s breathtaking. Thank you Jesus.
Isn’t it cool too that we get to sit on the other side of the story like we’re not sitting on the Saturday going, I think he said he was going to rise from the dead like we’re standing and I’ve heard you share this in a message.
I read it in a commentary like we get to stand and fight from the victory like every day our Saturdays that come our Fridays of disappointment that come, we get to look back and go.
Wait. I already know the end of this story like the victory has already been won.
And so I don’t have to worry about my life.
I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to be.
If I put my faith in Jesus, if I put my trust in Jesus, then I know I’m secure in him and I don’t have to worry about that.
And I just, I think it’s very exciting to know the end of the story and not, you know, you don’t have to sit in the movie and go, I think the superhero is gonna save the day.
You know, he already saved the day, like the day has been saved.
And now you get to stand in that hope and being in the restoration of it and have the personal relationship.
It’s not this fake relationship. It’s a one on one conversation and a personal relationship with the Lord and he did that all for you, the great love of a father.
And it’s just incredible to me like man, that’s a really sweet father.
I love what you said about seeing the end of the story.
It made me think about, you know, anything about going to the movies.
You know, I never think if I go to a Marvel movie, you know, I got a house full of boys right now.
They dragged me to all these movies. I don’t want to see.
It’s like, can we do a comedic romance or something? You know, um biography something.
Um So I’m watching all these movies and, and no one ever goes in expecting anything other than the movie for the hero to come out on top.
So you go in with expectancy, you know, you enjoy your soda, your popcorn, you know, you get your snags you through all these other emotions and you’re there for the ride, you know, and um you know, as you’re talking about that.
I just think the expectancy factor, you know, what are we looking for God to do?
And if he would not spare his own son, you know, he’s a father that gives good gifts to his Children.
If he wouldn’t spare his own son, then not only can I expect the victory in my life, but I can expect the victory at no expense.
I mean, like that’s just like he’s gonna to ensure we can know that he can do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond anything that we can even ask or think so, normally, when we’re approaching our lives and we can’t figure out how God’s gonna show us the victory in a certain area.
It, the natural, my natural tendency is to have like trepidation of like, I, I hope this is going to turn out.
I don’t know how this is gonna, you know, I mean, that’s my first way to approach it.
But if I approached his exceedingly above and beyond his at no expense, victory, the same way I approached a good movie which is, let me see how he’s going to work this out.
I mean, not only does it change my approach and how I live, but it also, I think changes my witness.
What does it look like for people who believe on Jesus Christ, not only for their salvation, but believing that he’s going to come again.
How does that impact what we look like? You know, just the stuff with no fear, no fear. Exactly.
You know. You know, and even if we feel it because you, in the movie, you’re like, oh, this is, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re there with expectancy that you don’t operate based on the fear.
You know? And so I think you don’t walk out with that fear and you don’t walk out with that fear, didn’t care.
It was. And that’s, that’s what I want to see in my life.
I want to see that in my life more is just not the knowledge of victory, but the walk because of the expectancy of victory.
You know, because it does change how you move through your life. Hopefulness changes your life.
Hopelessness is what is destroying people. It’s destroying, I mean, literally to the point of suicidal.
Yeah, hopefulness can destroy someone’s entire existence in life.
And in the same way, hopefulness is so powerful to keep your chin up when it should be down to have um you anchored by a peace that as the scripture say passes, understanding like you nor anybody around, you can figure out why you’re still that peaceful given what they know about what’s going on in your circumstances.
And yet somehow they’re still able to have a sense of security and stability and sanity in the midst of circumstances that should be driving them and saying that’s proof of the hopefulness that comes to us when we believe that God is who he says he is and he’s going to accomplish the victory for us.
He already has and is gonna give us going to give us the experience of that in our existence no matter what happens.
Hope is the confident expected expectancy of what God is going to do.
So he’s going to do something good and sometimes we can’t figure it out.
I think sometimes we think, well, did I make the right decision? Did I make this thing go wrong?
Did I interfere? Am I making the right choices, you know, did this happen because I didn’t do this right?
You know, like I made the wrong choice here and I wish God would have helped me.
But you know, we have to understand that God’s all power powerful. He’s in control.
It doesn’t matter if we do make a bad choice.
He can turn those bad choices around all things work together, even the mistakes, even the mistakes, they work together for the good, good.
And so I think sometimes I know I have that, I’m like, well, am I doing the right?
Am I, am I, am I saying the right things? Am I doing the right things?
Am I gonna make this thing turn out right?
When it’s, you know, I can only do what I can do.
I can only seek God try to make the right choices, you know, and then believe that God can turn even my mistake into a masterpiece?
Somehow some way, you know. And so I know there’s people out there thinking well, you, but you don’t know what I’ve done.
You don’t know what happened to me.
You don’t know how with the childhood I had, you know, I could never get out of this.
I could never quit thinking like this. I could.
But God is a God miracles and he wants to transform our life and he wants to turn things around for us.
And that’s where the hope comes in.
If he can raise Jesus from the dead, like he said, he was, then he can resurrect your dreams.
He can resurrect those promises. He can resurrect your life. I love that. I love that.
You know, it’s, it’s this idea that I am not powerful enough to mess up whatever God has done.
But I have to tell you that, you know, there have been seasons in my life where I didn’t believe that Sunday was possible and I didn’t act like Sunday was possible because all I could see was what I could see.
And I really did need um other people to speak encouragement into my life.
I mean, that’s why um I’m glad we live in a day and an age where it’s not just television, it’s the internet, it’s your phone, it’s podcast.
You can be surrounded by God’s word everywhere. You turn books are everywhere.
Um But the encouragement that people need, you know, in order to, to believe what they cannot see.
Um, it’s like, you know, talking to a young mother and, you know, I mean, it just drives me crazy.
You know, you’d be in the store and some more mature woman would come by and she’d be smiling and then she’d lean over and say, enjoy these days.
They go so fast and you’re just like, uh um but her perspective, her perspective is different.
And so, um I, you know, the ebb and flow of many, many things just throughout my twenties and thirties.
I remember my mother would say, you know, with that nod of knowing, I know it’s hard but this too shall pass.
I don’t, I don’t want to hear that. You know what I mean? Like just fix it.
I want Jesus to fix it.
But what I can say is that those voices of encouragement, you know, when and, and that’s, you know, what we have to be intentional about doing.
I have to be intentional about doing is even as a believer is surrounding myself with voices of encouragement that remind me about Sunday.
You know, uh that I have to remind myself that’s why you have to stay in the word about Sunday that I need people who are stronger in the faith that are further along in the faith in me to, to say, I, I know it’s hard but, you know, it is no secret what God can do what he’s done for others he’ll do for you.
You know, I mean, these are the things that this is why community is so important that just like the disciples were huddled together in dismay and even waiting to see if God is going to come, they were together, you know.
And so I, I have to remind myself when I start feeling the pull of Saturday and I know that victory belongs to Jesus.
And I know that um he’s coming back one day, but we have to walk through life and we have to walk through the hardship.
And we have to, we find ourselves asking the questions.
It’s to avail myself of encouragement anywhere and everywhere I can.
Um And to allow other people who are more mature in the faith, to listen to them and put myself in the spaces where they are.
And then to believe that despite what I see, and despite what I feel that God is capable, um He’s not a man that he should lie, that he will finish what he started.
And I can believe that that’s how you build your faith. That’s how faith is built, right?
Because faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.
So we have to have people speak to us things that we can begin to see.
Because when you’re discouraged, you can’t believe that’s what, that’s what happened to the Israelites that when Moses was trying to say this is it I’m delivering you out of the hands of the, of the, of the Pharaoh.
The Bible says they were too discouraged to believe they had been under the weight of that oppression for so long.
They couldn’t even see how it could change.
And so that’s why we need people to speak faith into our life to tell us about the miracles that’s happened to them, to get the word.
Like you said, anything to get that faith built up and to meditate and dwell on those things to build that faith because it is hard when you’re discouraged.
You know, so I, I love the fact that that’s why we do need each other.
That’s why we do need to stay in the word.
I think too, this is the power of context like we’re in a generation right now that we have social media and we see everything in like 15 2nd blocks and we don’t have the power of the context of the whole story.
And if I get stuck in my Saturday, I don’t have the power of the context of the whole story.
And so I think some of it is just allowing yourself to be in the atmospheres that I go give me the context.
The older mother goes, I have context for where you’re going.
I have context for where you are and where you’re headed. And like the, the the Israelites, there’s context.
If they can understand, I’m only in the middle if I got up in the middle of a Marvel movie and I left and I didn’t see the end.
I lose my power of context.
And I’m in this moment now where I’m in hopelessness because I’ve lost the power of context.
And so I think in our generation right now, we have to go back and go. I need context.
I need community. I need the older to remind me, I need the younger to pour into.
I need this context so that I don’t get stuck in my Saturday because encourage them not to bow out to right.
And they’ll, they’ll have suicidal thoughts or they may try to give up early or they may go, well, you don’t know my situation.
It’s like, well, you don’t know my God, you’ve lost the power of context because all throughout the Bible, I’ve seen your story and I’ve seen a lost person find Jesus.
I’ve seen a blind receive their sight.
I’ve seen leprosy be healed off of a person’s body like, yes, I have the power of context.
And so I think that’s the other thing is we have to really, that’s why we can’t stop with Friday.
We can’t stop with Saturday. We have to go through and say the hope of Sunday is the power of the context of the whole story.
And that’s where we can receive a full heart of hope to go God.
You have more context than I do. So I’ll surround myself to know the power of it.
Well, the gospel of John chronicles this moment when a woman comes to the tomb and finds it empty and she is bawling tears as she kneels there in the garden realizing that her savior is not where she’s supposed to would be.
And she feels someone come up behind her and she supposes he is the gardener because who else would it be?
And through the blur of her tears, she has no way of being able to really clearly see that that guy standing behind her is not the gardener.
It’s the risen Lord. And it’s not until he says her name.
When he says her name, the way her name rolls off of, off of his lips.
There’s something about that, her name being spoken by this guy that lets her know this is the one who freed me who delivered me, who changed my life.
And so my prayer is that through the course of us just talking about hope and the resurrection and the empty tomb that the Holy Spirit has whispered somebody’s name and their tears, their despair, their disappointment that maybe has blurred them to Jesus and a relationship with him up until this point that today they’ll hear their name and they’ll be restored in their hope and that they’ll come into relationship with him.
So let’s pray about that, Lord. I thank you that you call our names. I thank you father.
That you know our stories. I thank you that you’ve given us opportunity to have a personal relationship with you.
I thank you for the hope that you have given us because of the resurrection. Father.
I thank you that your story uh did not stop with your son dying on Friday and continuing Lord to be buried and to remain um in death.
But father, he is resurrected to life and because he was so are we so I thank you Father for the hope that you have given to each and every one of us and to anyone who does not feel that sense of hope who is wallowing father because of their circumstances, in a sense of hopelessness and despair.
We pray right now in jesus’ name that you would by the power of your Holy Spirit, call their names so loudly and so clearly that they would have no choice but to run to you and that you would restore the hope of their salvation.
In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.