I Walk in Faith and Hope
Walking With God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Continuing series Walking with God...
Let’s begin by saying the The Pilgrim’s Credo together.
I am not in control.
I am not in a hurry.
I walk in faith and hope.
I greet everyone with peace.
I bring back only what God gives me.
I originally planned to call this message “Embrace Pain”. To walk is to embrace pain at times.
Tell about having Achilles tendonitis… This is the spiritual life at times, yet in the midst of pain we are called to walk with faith and hope. These words means something very different today than what they mean in the Bible.
Heb 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Faith in our culture often means a generic belief in the “universe”. That somehow, in some mysterious way, everything will work out. Faith in scripture is rooted, not in our circumstances, but in the object of our faith. Biblical faith is NOT everything will work out just like you want it, but rather in the One who loves us and holds all things for our good.
Hope in modern language is akin to “wishful thinking”. “I hope the Chiefs win the Superbowl.” In the Bible, hope is a assured conviction of an eventual outcome. Not only do we know WHO loves us, but we are confident that he will bring about all that he has promised - even if we don’t see it yet.
With this description in mind, I want us to work through a portion of Psalm 84. This is a pilgrimage psalm, likely written for and sung by pilgrims as they make their journey toward Jerusalem and the Temple, the place of God’s dwelling. It expresses the heartfelt desire to be in God’s presence again. It begins...
Psalm 84:5 “Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.”
This verse describes the heart attitude of the pilgrim. Their heart is a highway - a raised, prepared road - toward God’s house. Whether they are near or far from the destination, this remains their constant focus, and therefore their strength.
I wonder if we feel weak at times because our focus is wrong, because we’ve set our eyes on the wrong things. We have family issues, financial pressure, health concerns, and these things begin to take front and center. The highways of our heart lead to them rather than to God. Depending on the severity of our circumstances, it can be very difficult to do otherwise. At times our situation becomes all-consuming. Yet a promise remains, that to the extent we can set our highways - in faith and hope in God - we will experience his strength and grace.
For our heart to become a raised, prepared highway toward God is a practice. Roads don’t happen by accident. They take careful planning and consistent effort. Our heart has to be trained to turn toward God rather than our problems. One way to do this is by learning to pray God’s promises. Reminding your soul of who God is - his character - and what he promises to us, is a great way to train your heart toward the Lord. (Praying God’s Promises).
We might pause for just a moment and look within ourselves to see if there is any place our roads, the pathways of our heart, are moving in a direction away from God.
Psalm 84:6 “As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.”
This psalm recognizes that anyone who sets out to journey with God and toward God will walk through adversity. The valley of Baca isn’t necessarily a real place. Baca may refer to a kind of balsam tree that grows in arid places that “weep” sap. The word itself is very close to the word for “weep”. The point is that each us will walk through dry places and times of weeping.
All of us have probably experienced the disappointment of unanswered prayer, when God feels far away or uncaring about our circumstances. Scripture gives a lot of reasons why prayer may go unanswered:
God is not an algorithm where you can control the outcome based on your inputs. As he says in Isaiah, “As high as the heaven is above the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your through and my ways higher than your ways.”
There are other “wills” at work in the world besides God’s.
The answer can be delayed because of spiritual warfare.
The answer may be “no” or “not yet” because it might not be in your best interest.
It can be due to a lack of faith.
Sometimes, the reason is just “life” - the consequences of living in a fallen world.
In the end, our faith and hope are in the God who loves us, not in the answer to our prayer.
But even though the valley of weeping is sometimes a reality, notice what happens AS we travel through them. Because of the One who travels with us, we have the capacity to turn the dryness into a place of springs. As we walk in faith and hope - even in difficult situations - God’s power works through us to turn wastelands into wetlands.
What is your valley of weeping right now? Maybe you’re walking with someone else through their valley of Baca. How is the Spirit inviting you to turn it into a place of springs by walking in faith and hope?
Psalm 84:7 “They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.”
Faith and hope are muscles to be exercised. They may begin very weak. But by walking consistently in faith and hope we can see them strengthened.
I remember when I first started lifting weights in junior high. I literally could barely lift the bar on the bench press. It felt like such an accomplishment just to add 5 pounds to either side. Progress was slow, but I stuck with it. 5 pounds became 10, then 25, 35, 45. After years of training I could put well over 200 pounds on the bar and bench it several times - not great by today’s standards, but not bad where I came from.
This is how the walk of faith and hope goes. It requires pushing ourselves. It requires tenacity to keep going. But in time we see our confidence in God grow “from strength to strength”. And the reward is that we will see God.
Where is God calling you to step out in greater faith? Has he placed a ministry on your heart? Has he been prompting you to share your testimony with someone? Where is he challenging you to grow your faith and hope muscle?
Today God may be calling you to put your faith in him for the first time. You may feel like your own life is a dry wasteland, but the promise remains that he can turn your desert into an oasis. Next steps slide.
On June 23, 2018, twelve members of a junior soccer team in northern Thailand decided to explore a cave with their twenty-five-year-old coach. They were deep underground when a monsoon flooded the cave entrance. Terrified, they huddled in complete darkness almost three miles inside the cave, wondering whether they would ever feel sunlight on their skin again.
Their plight hit the news cycles around the world. More than nine hundred police officers, one hundred divers, and two thousand soldiers gathered with the world’s media at the mouth of the cave, but for nine days, no one could find the boys. The world watched on, fearing the worst but hoping for the best, as a billion gallons of water were pumped out of the cave.
On July 2, a diving team managed to get deep into the cave’s network of tunnels, crawling, climbing, and swimming against the current with zero visibility. After more than six hours, against diminishing odds, they discovered the boys alive, huddled together high on a shelf in a cavern called “the hidden city.” Cold, scared, and starving, they had no idea how long they’d been lost, nor how many people were looking and praying for them, but they were saved!
It would still take arduous work, and unfortunately even a fatality, before the boys could finally be pulled from the cave. Having been lost since June 23, and found since July 2, the last boys were only finally rescued on July 10, more than two weeks after entering the cave.
The Bible teaches, and our own experience testifies, that we live in the dark days of hope between July 2 and 10. In the already but not yet. We’ve been found, but not yet fully rescued. The renewal of all things has begun, yet it has not come to complete fulfillment.
And like the boys in that cave, we have no idea of the amount of prayers, the spiritual warfare, and the vast of array of God’s heavenly army that is even now at work on our behalf. God is not sitting still. In the meantime, in this “already but not yet” time, he simply calls us to walk with him and toward him in faith and hope.