What Are You Afraid To Hope For?
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Intro
Intro
If you have ever seen the movie “Hunger Games” you probably remember a scene where:
President Snow and Seneca Crane who was the head gamemaker for the 74th hunger games. They were talking about the Capitol’s strategy for the Hunger Games, which pits tributes against each other in a televised battle where there is only one victor.
Snow: “Seneca, why do you think we have a winner?,”
“Hope. Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous,” Snow declares. “Spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”
There is something very true about that. A little hope, keeps us from utter despair, but if there is too much hope....it changes how we live.
That’s what President Snow was afraid of…he was afraid that this hope would lead to a rebellion against the capitol, which it ultimately did.
So his solution was to contain hope.
I think there is a very real spiritual correlation in this movie scene and our spiritual lives.
The enemy, Satan, wants to contain your hope.
Because there is something powerful about hope.
There are many ways in which life experiences, or the lies of the enemy will try and drown out hope in our lives, but I want address something specific.
The Fear of Hope
What are you afraid to hope for?
Specifically in your Christian life?
Where has the enemy tried to contain your hope?
I’m believing God for a release of that today
We are going to be looking at the life of the Apostle Thomas. But before we go there, lets just talk about what hope is.
HOPE
HOPE
So what is hope? (Let students answer)
General definition: A desire for something good in the future and the motivation to persevere towards that good thing. It is accompanied by a reason for thinking our desire will be fulfilled.
John Piper points out that “Biblical hope is a confident expectation and desire for something good in the future.
What differentiates the two according to Piper is that usually when we use the word hope, we express uncertainty rather than certainty.
EG. Hope my team will win
Hope for the Christian has to do with certainty!
Hope is looking to the reality of the future, and is an integral part of faith!
Why would we be afraid to hope?
Let’s look at this story of Thomas
I believe his story gives us some answers, and can help us hope again.
Thomas
Thomas
Thomas is often known by the nickname “Doubting Thomas” and it comes from our text in John 20
John 20:19-29 (Student Read)
John 20:19–29 (ESV)
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Doubting Thomas: Let me tell you why, although doubt may have played a role, I believe that this story is not just about doubt.
I believe Thomas was afraid to hope
Thomas is only mentioned a little over a dozen times in Scripture, and there are only a handful of direct dialogue between Thomas and others
I think we can get a little bit of a picture about Thomas when we look at these other interactions.
Let’s look at the other two interactions Thomas had in Scripture
John 11:1-16 Summary
In this passage Jesus is with his disciples outside of Judea, when he receives this message from Mary and Martha that their brother Lazarus is sick, and they are calling to Jesus for help.
So Jesus tells his disciples in verse 7 “Lets go to Judea again.”
The disciples push back and say, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?”
But Jesus insists they are going to go to Judea
Then comes verse 16 where Thomas chimes in, and this is what he says:
“So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.””
Thomas was sure that they were going to die, yet he still went with Jesus
It’s a little ironic that later on when Jesus was arrested, all the disciples were scattered, including Thomas
But here he would rather die with Jesus, than be separated from Him
He didn’t want to be separated from Jesus
I think this becomes even more evident in the next passage.
John 14:1-4““(Jesus) Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
This is where Jesus gives one of the most profound sayings in the NT
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Heres what I get out of this interaction:
Thomas wasn’t satisfied with Jesus expression
This was about being with Jesus, and Thomas had to be sure he knew what He was talking about.
He didn’t want to leave any room for ambiguity
He had to know where Jesus was going, so that he could go there with Him.
You can see in Thomas a desire to be with Jesus
It’s almost like there is this sort of separation anxiety
In the Shoes of Thomas
In the Shoes of Thomas
Now, before we return to our original passage of Thomas refusing to believe that Jesus had resurrected…I want you to put yourself in the shoes of Thomas leading up to that point
Imagine your life before Jesus…its believed that Thomas may have been a fisherman before Jesus called him because he was with the disciples who returned to their former occupation in John 21.
Imagine your life as a fisherman
Then this man comes onto the scene and calls you to follow Him
Over the course of the next 3 years, you see:
People healed of all kinds of infirmities
People delivered from demonic possession
Bread and fish from heaven distributed to over 5000 people
The wind and the waves calmed by the word of this man
Jesus walked on water
You hear teaching that is unlike anything you have ever heard before
You’ve spent three years with a man that:
Loved so deeply he embraced a leper
Served so humbly he washed your feet
Spoke so powerfully, he raised the dead
A man so impactful, that nothing in your life will ever be the same again!
And you want to know where he is going so you can go with him
You are willing to die with him, than be separated from him
And then all of sudden, HE IS TAKEN FROM YOU
He is arrested before you very eyes
He falsley accused and slandered
He beaten to pulp and then hung on a cross where he dies and is then buried in a tomb
What is life after that?
How do you go back to the way things were?
How do you go forward? How do you hope again?
This is where Thomas is at…you have a man that is overcome with sorrow in a room where the rest of the disciples are claiming to have seen Jesus alive again.
Thomas wasn’t just filled with doubt, he was afraid to hope again
John MacArthur, “what set Thomas apart from the other ten was not that his doubt was greater, but that his sorrow was greater.”
He wouldn’t allow himself to hope, lest he be disappointed again. Lest he be plunged into an even greater sorrow.
Someone once said: The higher you go up the hill of hope, the farther you could fall
So in that room Thomas isn’t doubting as in “feeling uncertainty,”…no....unless he can touch the very wounds of Jesus, he is refusing to believe
Application
Application
Maybe you feel like Thomas in that moment
You’ve repeatedly experienced disappointment in your life which leaves you feeling helpless.
Failed relationships
Failed expectations
Shattered dreams
Hope to you isn’t a confident expectation but rather just another possibility for disappointment and loss.
You can’t risk hope and so you shut down, and live in a bunker of numbness.
Perhaps it manifests in things like:
Being afraid to fully surrender to God
What if His path doesn’t look the way I want?
What if his good is different than my good?
To fully believe that he loves you
You’ve been disappointed enough by love, and you can’t take another disappointment, so you want God, but you won’t let Him get too close.
You can’t accept His acceptance of you regardless of performance
Surely you have to do something to earn His forgiveness
Your story is not over, and neither is the possibility of hope.
Jesus came to Thomas…he held out his hands and said touch my nail scarred hand and feet, and the wound in my side, and don’t disbelieve, but believe.
Thomas responds: My Lord and God
He addresses Thomas and said, “Have you believed because you have seen me?”
But then Jesus addresses you next in verse John 20:29 - Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”
YOU CAN HOPE AGAIN!
Romans 5:5 “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Hope in Christ will not disappoint…it won’t prove us wrong in the end.
Hope in Christ is based in eternity, its based in heaven, where moth and rust don’t destroy, it’s based in a God who eternally loves us and who defeated sin and death!
What are you afraid to hope for?
That God can actually bring healing in your life?
That God can bring victory to your bondage?
That God can keep you and sustain you?
That your past is gone, and God has a purpose for you?
That God can free you from your depression, or give you the strength to walk through it?
Jesus isn’t holding out on you…don’t hold out on hope.
This is my prayer for us:
Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”
Prayer for Ezekiel cousin
Prayer for Ezekiel cousin
Getting diagnosis for tumor today
Sources
Sources
Source 1 - https://www.ellenhorn.com/blog/interview-with-drs-ross-ellenhorn-and-kent-harber-what-is-fear-of-hope/
When you hope for this something, you’re giving greater importance to it than you did before you began hoping. As a result, your potential disappointment over the loss of that thing becomes more intense the more you hope for it. The higher you go up the hill of hope, the farther you could fall because you’re making that goal more and more important as you pursue it.
Where does the fear of hope come from?
Ross: I think it comes from the experience of deep helplessness. Someone has identified something important they feel they need and lack, but then they don’t get that thing. As this happens repeatedly over time, they develop a deep sense of helplessness, an entrenched belief that they can’t get their needs met – not only in one or two specific cases, but in all. Naturally, they want to avoid this painful feeling. The best way to do that is to not hope, because hope takes them back to the possibility of losing something again. The experience is traumatic, in a sense.
People with fear of hope are kind of living in a bunker.
The metaphor is that a person fearing hope tends to play possum: They’re shutting down their existence. This is what the great psychiatrist, R.D. Laing, called “petrification.” It’s like they’re shutting down everything because they can’t take the risk of being a person in the world, since any kind of motivation leads to the possibility of something bad happening.
Source 2 - https://healthypsych.com/psychology-of-hope/
Instead, hope is a motivation to persevere toward a goal or end state, even if we’re skeptical that a positive outcome is likely.
hope is a mindset that helps us work towards our goals, even when we face significant adversity.
Source 3 - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/201112/the-will-and-ways-hope
Hope is not just a feel-good emotion, but a dynamic cognitive motivational system. Under this conceptualization of hope, emotions follow cognitions, not the other way round.
According to their theory, hope consists of agency and pathways. The person who has hope has the will and determination that goals will be achieved, and a set of different strategies at their disposal to reach their goals. Put simply: hope involves the will to get there, and different ways to get there.
Source 4 - https://www.gotquestions.org/difference-faith-hope.html
The relationship between faith and hope can be illustrated in the joy a child feels when his father tells him they are going to an amusement park tomorrow. The child believes that he will go to the amusement park, based on his father’s word—that is faith. At the same time, that belief within the child kindles an irrepressible joy—that is hope. The child’s natural trust in his father’s promise is the faith; the child’s squeals of delight and jumping in place are the expressions of the hope.
Faith is grounded in the reality of the past; hope is looking to the reality of the future. Without faith, there is no hope, and without hope there is no true faith.
Source 5 - https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/what-is-hope
So hope is used in three senses:
A desire for something good in the future,the thing in the future that we desire, andthe basis or reason for thinking that our desire may indeed be fulfilled.
All three of these uses are found in the Bible. But the most important feature of biblical hope is not present in any of these ordinary uses of the word hope. It is the opposite in this sense: ordinarily, when we use the word hope, we express uncertainty rather than certainty.
biblical hope is a confident expectation and desire for something good in the future.
Hope is that part of faith that focuses on the future. In biblical terms, when faith is directed to the future, you can call it hope. But faith can focus on the past and the present too, so faith is the larger term.