CRCF””2-20-11
Introduction
“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.”
Parade magazine told the amazing story of self-made millionaire Eugene Lang, who had been asked to speak to a class of 59 sixth-graders in East Harlem, New York. What could he say to inspire these students? Statistically, most of them would drop out of school to sell drugs or join gangs. In fact, he wondered how he could get these children to even look at him.
Tossing his notes aside, he decided to speak from his heart. “Stay in school,” he said, “and I”™ll pay the college tuition for every one of you!” At that instant, the lives of those kids changed. For the first time they had hope.
As one student said, “I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me. It was a golden feeling.” Nearly 90 percent of that class went on to graduate from high school and enter college, far above the normal rate for their peers.
“What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life”
Emil Brunner
Renee Schlaepfer
Every single person you see needs a dose of hope today.
Ronnie McBrayer
She said, “I don”™t want church. But I do want love, transformation, and community.” Love. Transformation. Community. Isn”™t this, at least in part, what the church should be about?
And don”™t these things give hope to our hearts?
Shouldn”™t church be “a safe place, a place where people are welcomed into a better way to live and made to feel at home”? (RM)
English Bible translator and martyr William Tyndale said it well, when, with his “plowboy” English, he said that Christians should have a “harborous disposition”.
[Color Slide of Harbor]
Harbors of Hope
Romans 15:1-13
As a group of Jesus-followers, we are to be a “harbor of hope” for all who seek
safety from life”™s storms.
Romans 15:1-13 (The Message)
1-2 Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”
1. Spiritual maturity is about depending more fully on Jesus.
NOT,
How many years we”™ve been in church
How long we”™ve “been saved”
How much we do at church
How much Bible knowledge we have
Etc”¦.
Maturity=Dependence on Jesus
Kenneth Sauer
Hospitality is a spiritual initiative, the practice of an active and genuine love, a graciousness that has nothing to do with self-interest, an opening of ourselves and our church to receive others. There has to be a place where people know they are welcome, loved, respected, wanted and needed”¦and that place is the Church!
As a group of Jesus-followers, we are to be a “harbor of hope” for all who seek
safety from life”™s storms.
3-6That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. “I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way Scripture puts it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we’ll be a choir””not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus!
7-13So reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory. Jesus did it; now you do it! Jesus, staying true to God’s purposes, reached out in a special way to the Jewish insiders so that the old ancestral promises would come true for them. As a result, the non-Jewish outsiders have been able to experience mercy and to show appreciation to God. Just think of all the Scriptures that will come true in what we do! For instance:
Then I’ll join outsiders in a hymn-sing;
I’ll sing to your name!
And this one:
Outsiders and insiders, rejoice together!
And again:
People of all nations, celebrate God!
All colors and races, give hearty praise!
And Isaiah’s word:
There’s the root of our ancestor Jesse,
breaking through the earth and growing tree tall,
Tall enough for everyone everywhere to see and take hope!
2. The more dependent on Jesus we are, the more hope-filled and free we are to welcome others into our harbor of hope.
We are to “reach out and welcome” (some translations say “accept”) each other and those in our community! We are to imitate Jesus and God the Father in warmly inviting all who will come into our harbor of hope.
John Piper
Christ-exalting hope is the great power to endure in self-denying, sacrificial love that pleases others for their good.
Do you see others as those for whom Christ died (2 Cor. 5), as those who desperately need the hope YOU have?
Ronnie McBrayer
We have spent too much collective time and energy focusing on the drivel, rather than on loving people. We fight and bleed over worship styles, which version of the Bible is the actually inspired one, and drawing up rules and restrictions for who can come to the Lord”™s Table and or who can or cannot speak in a pulpit.
We build all this structure and all these regulations on who is allowed in and who should be excluded, creating standards so impossibly high, Jesus Christ himself couldn”™t get in the door. We have endorsed and supported legalistic minutia while neglecting the weightier issues of love, mercy and justice. And meanwhile, people who are lonely, who are dying on the inside, who have had the absolute life beat out of them, who are racked by addiction and loss, who are burdened so low by the cares of this world they cannot lift their head, will not even look in the church”™s direction. They feel so badly already, and they cannot imagine that the church could somehow relieve or support them.
We must recognize these mercy-killing behaviors for what they are, name them, and by God”™s grace let Christ remove them. For when the church becomes a place of welcome ”“ a sanctuary ”“ it becomes safe space, and safe space is sacred space.
As a group of Jesus-followers, we are to be a “harbor of hope” for all who seek
safety from life”™s storms.
Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!
3. The Spirit of Jesus will give us the joy, peace, and energy we need to be a harbor of hope here together.
Said another way”¦
Where folks in our community can find a harbor of hope, it is there that the Holy Spirit is causing hope to overflow in the lives of Jesus-followers!
Kenneth Sauer
As we practice Radical Hospitality [in the power of the Holy Spirit] we adopt an invitational way of doing things that changes everything we do. We work together with an ever-present awareness of the person who is not present, our neighbors, our friends, and our co-workers who do not know Jesus as Savior and Lord!
As a group of Jesus-followers, we are to be a “harbor of hope” for all who seek
safety from life”™s storms.
Conclusion
Ronnie McBrayer
To create secure harbors, a place for others to come in from the storm to be warm, safe, and healthy is a high and worthy calling. Comfort, mercy, communion with God, entrance into the joyful reign of heaven, open arms and open hearts: These should be the natural overflow and outcome of life together with Jesus, as natural as flowers blooming in the spring when the rain falls and the sun shines.
As a group of Jesus-followers, we are to be a “harbor of hope” for all who seek
safety from life”™s storms.
THIS is our GOAL! THIS is what we shoot for””nothing more, nothing less!
Communion