Have a look at one of the scriptures
with me, please.
Psalm 71 and 5.
So I wanted to have Lionel over here,
sharing the fellowship.
Praise the Lord.
Amen.
Thank you, Jesus.
Psalm 71 and 5.
For thou art my hope, O Lord God.
Thou art my trust from my youth.
Psalm 39, verse 7.
Now, Lord, what wait I for?
My hope is in thee.
Psalm 119, verse 81.
My soul fainteth for thy salvation, but I
hope in thy word.
So you can guess which way I'm going.
There are dozens and I suppose hundreds, almost,
of scriptures which mention the theme of hope.
Oh, here's an interesting one.
Psalm 72.
No, hold on.
Psalm 42.
Verse 5.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
Why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God, for I shall yet
praise him for the health of his countenance.
And verse 11.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
And why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God, for I shall yet
praise him who is the health of my
countenance and my God.
And the next psalm, I'll read it right
through.
Judge me, O God, and plead my cause
against an ungodly nation.
Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust
man.
For thou art the God of my strength.
Why dost thou cast me off?
Why go I mourning because of the oppression
of the enemy?
Oh, send out thy light and thy truth.
Let them lead me.
Let them bring me unto thy holy hill
and to thy tabernacles.
Then will I go unto the altar of
my God, unto God my exceeding joy.
Yea, upon the heart will I praise thee.
O God, my God.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
Why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God, for I shall yet
praise him who is the health of my
countenance and my God.
And perhaps the most outstanding scripture of them
all, which is in Romans 15 and 13.
Now the God of hope fill you with
all joy and peace in believing that you
may abound in hope through the power of
the Holy Ghost.
I've been so used to playing hope down.
We don't like a hope-so religion, we
want a no-so religion.
But I find that in playing hope down,
we have lost, or for many of us,
we've lost one of the major truths of
scripture.
As you have already seen, the Bible has
a great deal to say about hope.
And we need to put it back into
its proper place.
Do you ever get discouraged?
Do you ever hear the motto, Blessed is
he that hopeth for nothing and he shall
not be disappointed?
It's the way that English people, I think,
in particular, think.
The idea is to safeguard yourself by not
expecting too much.
And the Bible says exactly the opposite.
Now isn't that odd?
My brother, I had an elder brother, he's
a good enough chap now, but when I
was a little kid, I was fairly hopeful.
And he was always downing me.
I'd have such bright expectations and he'd always
have something sour to say.
My sister called him Lemon Face.
The world treats us this way, it gets
us down, it discourages us.
For hope is born in the heart of
a child, Lester.
This is one of their wonderful qualities.
And they're full of expectation until this harsh
old world teaches them to drop it.
And then you start getting the negative things
and get tuned in on that.
And that's what they call wisdom.
And it's not wisdom, it is contrary to
the God of hope.
Who should fill you with all joy and
peace in believing that you should abound in
hope.
Through the power of the Holy Ghost, to
be quite ridiculous about it.
It is a bit ridiculous to abound in
hope, isn't it?
You know, and everybody else is always looking
for recessions and so on.
Everyone believes in arming themselves against disaster.
How ridiculous for the children of God to
abound in hope.
But if our Father is a God of
hope, then we are in line.
In developing hope to the degree that the
Bible indicates.
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul is describing the
things that pass away and the things that
remain.
He says there are lots of things that
we divide in which will pass away.
Prophecy shall cease, tongues shall cease, knowledge shall
vanish away.
But there are certain things that remain.
Nothing shall ever destroy them because they are
eternal.
And he names them as a group of
three.
He says these are they.
They're now abided, faith, hope, love.
The greatest of these is love.
But they are all three abiding qualities.
You don't drop them when you die.
You take love, or when the Lord comes,
or whichever way you make your transition out
of this world.
You take love over with you.
And you take faith over with you too.
Do you know where that text is found?
Faith shall be lost in sight.
Well it's not found in the Bible anyway.
It's found in somebody's head.
It's not in the Bible.
Because you'll continue believing God forever and ever.
With ever increasing faith.
The more you know Him, the more you
believe Him.
All the angels keep on believing on Him.
They never doubt Him in the slightest.
Wherever they're sent on long errands, they never
lose their confidence in their God.
And your faith and mine is being tested
in this small condition for eternal purposes.
It's important.
Your faith, you're not going to discard it.
It's growing up for it to be eternal.
Now abide it.
Faith and hope the same.
In eternity it's going to be so wonderful.
It's going to get better and better every
day and in every way.
Every year it will be better.
God will always be springing new surprises.
He is a forceless in His glory and
His grace.
And so one of the qualities in heaven
will be an unmanned hope that is always
moving into new fulfillments.
Praise the Lord.
All Jesus said about children who are so
full of hope, Of such is the kingdom
of heaven.
So you better develop it.
It's an eternal thing.
Your tongues may vanish away or cease.
And prophecy and knowledge and all that, all
your ministry gifts, they'll go.
But these three will remain.
So let hope have its perfect work.
On the other hand, despair belongs to hell.
Absolutely hellish.
Have you ever been hit by despair?
I have a couple of times.
And it's hell.
It's absolutely contrary to God and to life.
It belongs to the devil.
And there's a whole lot of it in
this world.
And what we often do with despair, when
we steel ourselves to it, we put the
lid on it and say, well, finish.
Let's go on from here and try again.
And that's not good enough, either.
Because God, who is a God of hope,
desires to heal every area of despair.
Praise the Lord.
And if we have carried over anything from
a past experience that we've put the lid
on and we've said, well, that's it, not
going to look back on that one anymore,
that will be a source of trouble and
destruction.
No matter how many of Wesley's hymns we
sing, it will still be there, a source
of corruption.
And if there's anyone here who has despair
in the past and you've just shut it
down, that's not good enough.
Our Father God is a pardoning God, a
God of restoration.
Hallelujah.
A God who not only forgives, but who
cleanses to the very depth.
And anything of this nature must come under
the healing flow that comes from the cross
until once again, with a childlike heart, you
hope in God, who is the health of
your countenance and your God.
No matter how often the world or your
own folly or something else has tried to
teach you the bitter lessons of despair, hope
thou in God, who is the health of
thy countenance and thy God.
I want to say that hope is the
fountain of health.
God is the health of thy countenance, at
the health of thy countenance and thy God.
Any doctor knows this.
That in the natural, if a patient has
undergone a major operation and is hovering between
life and death, that which will have the
most powerful influence on the patient's recovery is
hope, related to love.
And if these things can move in, there
is every chance that the much damaged body
will make a recovery.
But if there is despair and no love,
then the forces of death stand a good
chance of triumphing.
Doctors know this.
Do you remember Simon, Simon Peter, coming from
the synagogue in Capernaum?
He had just seen the first miracle that
Jesus had performed in Galilee.
He had done a lot down in Jerusalem,
but this time he had come north to
Galilee, called the disciples, and Peter saw the
first miracle in Galilee, a demon cast out
of a man in the synagogue.
I suppose the man had been quite a
regular synagogue attender, but when the presence of
Jesus was there, anointed with the Holy Ghost,
the evil spirit in him became manifest, he
cried out in the conflict, and he was
delivered.
And Simon went home hopeful, didn't he?
And he said, shall we tell him?
Shall we tell him?
We can do anything.
And Anon says, Mark, they tell him of
his mother-in-law.
It was hope, bringing them into an area
of faith and healing.
Of course it was.
Hope was the prelude to the miracle.
That's right.
And always, I'll tell you in a few
minutes, hope is the necessary build-up for
health.
Sister Annette asked me, she knew the Lord
long before she left the Catholic Church.
In her girlhood she read the Bible, and
she found the Lord, and she was filled
with the Holy Ghost, and she was a
Catholic nun.
Isn't that amazing?
And then when she realized what she'd got,
and now she's an enthusiastic minister, more Lutheran
than Luther.
She brought one of the girl students to
me, and she said Donna had been skiing.
We have a lovely ski slope not far
from us, a thousand feet direct from the
top to the bottom, and the way round,
of course, round the mountain is a building.
And Donna had been skiing, and she had
fallen and hurt her back.
She had been to a chiropractor, and he
had put her straight, and she was fairly
good.
Then she went skiing again and had a
second fall, and now she was in really
bad shape.
So I said to Donna, I think Donna,
with that pain in your back, you'll find
it very hard to believe, won't you?
So I said, well look, I gave her
these scriptures about hope, and I said, supposing
you just hope, don't worry about believing, because
here I'm going right across all the great
experts, you know, in this area.
I said, don't you worry about believing, you
just hope.
I gave her several of these scriptures which
I'd given to you, and she brightened up,
and she said, I didn't think hope was
important.
And I said, well you can see it
is now, can't you?
Will you hope, Donna?
Yes, she said, I can do that, because
hope is so much more easy than faith,
isn't it?
Especially if you've got a little bit of
a child left in you still, you lucky
people.
So she got the idea, and then when
I saw that she really had it, we
prayed.
And I said, Heavenly Father, we are hoping
that when we pray that Donna's back will
get straightened out, you'll do something about it.
In fact, we're hoping that her back will
really get right.
I said a few more words to this
effect until we were really all in tune,
and then I said, now, faith is the
substance of things hoped for.
So we're taking what we've hoped for.
I felt the bones go tick.
And so we thanked the Lord for it,
and when she got up, she didn't realise
what had happened, she put her feet to
the floor and stood up.
Oh, she said, it's gone!
The following day, Annette met her down in
the hall.
She said, how is your back, Donna?
Fine, she said, no trouble at all.
But, can I go skiing?
So Annette said, how is your hope?
Oh, she said, Donna.
Went away and thought about it, and then
went skiing.
Had the worst fall that she'd ever had.
Came through with a few bruises, but no
other trouble.
Hope thou in God, who is the health
of thy countenance, and thy God.
Oh, if only God's children would take this
childlike and yet eternal thing and put it
back into its proper place, how much more
miracle we would see.
I've had the privilege of being in a
couple of Kathryn Kuhlman's meetings.
I didn't intend to be there.
I went up to Peterborough to minister and
visit some friends, and lo and behold, Kathryn
Kuhlman was there for her first Canada meeting.
They took the great stadium, and long before
she was there, the whole place was jam
-packed with 10,000 people.
My friend and I, the vicar, got in
by joining the choir.
A couple of practices, and we played for
our seats.
And one of the things that strikes you
in those enormous meetings is the completely different
atmosphere.
For here are 10,000 ordinary folk, all
expecting God to do something.
And it's the most exciting atmosphere in the
world.
There are those folk in their wheelchairs, and
everybody's looking down to see what's going to
happen to them, and every new case that
comes in, instead of thinking, oh, there's another
one, I think I'm going to have a
bad thing, I wonder if that one's going
to be here, and so on.
The whole atmosphere is tingling with the excitement
of expectation.
And when Kathryn Kuhlman comes in, she's about
70.
She looks like 40, trying to be 25.
Silks that get blown around by the family.
Yet she brings the presence of the Lord
Jesus.
It's just Jesus.
I can't explain anything that happens here.
It's just God.
She says, I'll be preaching for a little
while, and when I feel that God is
moving, I'll pray for you.
And so she goes ahead, and she packs
everybody on the back, all her assistants, and
the choir leader, and the choir, and the
fellow who plays the piano, and the chap
on the organ, they all get their adulations,
until everybody's feeling happy.
And presently,
she'll say, I feel that, and he's moving
among you.
Let's just pray.
And then she'll start to pray.
And then she'll say, there's someone over there,
God's healing you.
Would you come forward?
Someone behind me, she says.
With a serious heart it is, and you're
being healed now.
Come and tell us about it.
And in a few moments, people are coming
from all parts.
Serious cripple cases, cancer cases, hopeless cases.
Moving in on the atmosphere of faith, and
hope, and love.
That's it.
Thousands of ordinary folk, hoping, and believing, and
loving.
And God has his kingdom there, because this
is the very nature of the kingdom of
God.
And so they move in and receive the
children's bread, which is healing.
It's just as simple as all that.
This whole cynical, doubting world is outside, and
Jesus has an open road through those blessed
three eternal things, faith, hope, and love.
A friend of mine, Ode Warnigo, the Norwegian
singer, a man who was converted a few
years back, told me that he went into
those meetings, and he said, I could scarcely
believe my eyes.
They nearly popped out of my head.
The miracles that were taking place.
But when he got home, he found that
he had been healed of three chronic diseases.
While he was sitting there, gazing with childlike
excitement at the blessings that others were receiving,
he was healed of chronic alcoholism, and a
kidney disease that would have killed him, and
a third disease which he didn't name.
Yeah.
He wasn't conscious of exercising faith.
He had just moved like a little child
into the kingdom, into the place of hope
and expectancy.
Oh, the joy of the Lord was there.
And in his body, those things were cleared
up.
Daughter of Fred Poole, Pastor Poole's daughter, was
in the choir with us at Peterborough, and
she had been a hole-in-the-heart
case from childhood.
And she was one whom Catherine Pullman called
forward, and she didn't think it could be
her.
She had to lie down about three times
every day and take all her housework in
little pieces.
She had been God in her heart, and
she didn't think it could be her.
And Catherine insisted, will that person in the
choir, who has been healed of a serious
heart condition, come forward?
And still she hesitated.
And Catherine dealt with other people, and then
she said for the third time, will that
person please, I know you're there, in the
choir, just behind me on this side, come
forward?
And then this good lady came forward.
She was gloriously tremendous.
All her life, a chronic invalid, just able
to carry on.
And from that time, doing all her housework,
running up and down stairs, not troubling a
thing.
Magnificent.
Hope thou in God, who is the health
of thy countenance and thy God.
And hope, as we begin to see this
now, is the groundwork for faith.
Faith being the substance of things hoped for.
We're always struggling to get faith.
We tie ourselves in figure of eight and
double bow lines to try and get faith.
We climb the walls to get faith.
We read books all about it, and get
all tangled up in this area.
But don't you see, that if you develop
your hope, which is so much easier, if
you're a child, a child of God, it's
so easy to hope thou in God, who
is the health of thy countenance and thy
God.
If you will develop your hope, then faith
will come very, very simply.
Like that woman who touched the hem of
his garment.
For she said, If I may touch but
his clothes, I shall be whole.
That's hope.
That's real strong hope.
It's not really in the area of faith.
It's just before faith.
It's in the if condition.
And so it was her strong hope in
Jesus.
I don't think she was conscious of trying
to screw herself up to that mysterious thing
called faith.
She just, in simplicity, hoped in Jesus.
She defied, whether she thought about it or
not, all the levitical rules about not touching
people and not letting them touch her.
She pushed her way through the crowd.
And she turned that miserable negative thought about
nobody touching her and her not touching anybody.
She turned it right round.
She turned that negative thing into a positive.
And she said, If I may touch but
his clothes, Mine is his hope at defying
the negative and insisting on the positive.
And then when it came to that contact,
daughter, thy faith.
You often talk with kiddies about David and
his sling.
You know, he got the stone, put it
in his sling, and then he slung it,
but the giant and the stone slung into
his forehead, sunk into his forehead, and he
fell to the ground, stunned, and David cut
off his head.
How do you teach the story?
How do you show the kids how he
used the sling?
These sort of go...
Just like that.
Is that how you teach it?
I don't think so.
You show old David doing this sort of
thing, don't you?
Getting up to speed.
Long before he lets his stone go.
Think of that stone as your heart's desire.
Oh, I met Dr. Kelly's lad.
Praise the Lord.
It was a bit wonderful how that heart's
desire went that day.
And that poor little crippling boy told God
that he wanted to go to school, get
a normal education.
And he's a colleague.
Doing fine.
Praise the Lord.
Now, when you've got your stone at heart's
desire, and you drop it in the sling,
just spin it round with a bit of
hope and get some speed up.
And then when you've really got the speed
going, then let it go in faith.
Or to use another figure, which I'm getting
more and more acquainted with in my travels,
that great big DC-10 that we came
over to Britain from Toronto in.
Enormous thing.
How many people cross it in one or
two?
Imagine ten people in armchairs and two aisles
with plenty of room.
That's the width of the thing.
How on earth it got off the ground.
You wouldn't think it would ever get there
at all.
Like sitting in a church.
It is really alright.
I don't know the capacity.
About 300 or more.
How does it do it?
It gets up speed on the runway.
Of course it does.
If you try to get in the air
all at once, if they did, they'd crash.
And then what a mess we'd all be
in.
But the pilot gets his speed up on
the ground.
And then when his indicators are right, then
he pulls his fancy lever.
I don't know if they still call it
a joystick or not, or whatever it is
called.
And away they go.
Now then, you develop your hope.
Get it on the ground, this ordinary sort
of thing.
And when it comes there, when you know
that your speed is right, then you can
take off in faith.
And see blessed and wonderful things.
The God of hope fill you with all
joy and peace in believing that you may
abound in hope through the power of the
Holy Ghost.
So when you start moving in this direction,
you may expect the blessed Holy Spirit to
enable you to hope until you're quite ridiculous.
Like Abraham, who against hope believed in hope,
that he might become the father of many
nations.
There it is, his faith.
And he is the classic example of faith.
His faith got off the ground by hope.
And against hope he believed in hope.
And that's how he became the father of
many nations.
He didn't mind the neighbors laughing at him
when his name was changed.
Those old sheiks who had their herds of
cattle on the hills around, they must have
had many a laugh at the campfire of
Abraham changing his name.
It had been a bit of a joke
when he had no child and his wife
was past childbearing and he was just called
Abraham, high father.
But when he had a little interview with
the Lord and he came back again and
he said, God
has taken over my name too.
He's now the God of Abraham.
So please call me now the father of
a multitude of nations.
Thank you.
He didn't mind them laughing.
He was quite ridiculous in his hope.
Praise God.
If only we know who our God is,
this God of hope, we will learn even
to be ridiculous in our hoping.
Hope thou in God, who is the help
of thy countenance and thy God.
Don't think it's wisdom not to hope too
much.
It's not.
That's a devil's lie.
Hope is a companion of love.
We saw that.
And look at this, Romans 5.
Very familiar scripture.
The early verses.
Therefore being justified by faith we have peace
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
By whom also we have access by faith
into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice
in hope of the glory of God.
And not only so but we glory in
troubles also knowing that trouble works patience and
patience experience and experience hope and hope makes
not ashamed.
That's the thing you're always afraid of if
you hope for too much.
But hope makes not ashamed because the love
of God is shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Ghost which is given to
us.
Now, Christian, you see why you can afford
to be ridiculous.
Because the love of God is shed abroad
in our heart by the Holy Ghost which
is given to us.
We are moving in God.
And so we can be extravagant in our
hoping.
Amen.
Hallelujah.
I like the way old Jonathan stripped off
his garments.
The garments and the uniform and the accoutrements
that showed that he was the heir to
the throne.
And gave them to David.
Why?
Because he thought his father would kill David?
No.
But because Jonathan's love was mixed with a
great big hope that his dear friend David
would take over the throne.
That's right.
And so hope and love are companions.
When Hannah brought her little boy back to
the tabernacle and put him in the care
of Eli, she didn't say goodbye to him
in despair.
She did it in hope that God was
going to do something greater than anything she
and her husband could ever do with a
little lad.
And that the contract she had made with
God would be more than fulfilled.
Thank God for the hope that was mixed
with her faith that enabled her to do
that wonderful thing when a little lad couldn't.
She surrendered him to the care of an
angel who was weak to say the least.
She did so in hope.
She hoped in God.
And her hope was fulfilled.
Rightly so.
Here's another area.
Hope.
How's this one?
Almost afraid to spring this one on you.
I'd better just give you the scripture.
Galatians 5 and 5.
For we through the Spirit wait for the
hope of righteousness by saying tell your wife
what does this mean?
It means that there are areas of righteousness
which are still future.
That's right.
Thank God for that blessed transformation we have
tasted and entered into.
But God has big plans for you.
Amen.
And one of the things that keeps us
from trying too hard like the Galatians were
doing with their rules and regulations to force
themselves into an artificial holiness which would never
last.
One of the things that was to keep
them from that kind of legal error was
that blessed waiting upon God who imparts his
holiness in days which lie ahead.
We through the Spirit wait for the hope
of righteousness by faith.
And then the next verse says for in
Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision
but faith which worketh by love.
Once again you have faith, hope, love uniting
together in the new creation.
Compare again verse 15 of chapter 6 for
in Christ Jesus a parallel verse neither circumcision
availeth nor uncircumcision but a new creation.
So part of your righteousness is not to
think that you can't be improved.
Hallelujah.
But to know that there's better on before.
Still there
is a hope in the New Testament which
is transcendent above all those other things that
I have been trying to share with you
so far and that is the hope associated
with the appearing of Jesus Christ.
And always Paul has this hope in view.
It enables him to make tremendous sacrifices.
It enables him to count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus my Lord.
It is a hope on which both Paul
and John concur and it is mentioned in
1 John 3 familiar scripture Behold what manner
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us
that we should be called the children of
God.
Therefore the world knoweth us not because it
knew him not.
Beloved now are we the sons of God
and it does not yet appear what we
shall be but we know that when he
shall appear we shall be like him for
we shall see him as he is.
And every man that hath this hope in
him purifieth himself even as he is pure.
That is the hope.
Not that when Jesus comes I'll be whisked
out of the tribulation but the hope that
when Jesus comes I shall be fully transformed
and conformed to his image.
That's it.
It's the hope of the consummation of new
creation in me and you.
That is the grand hope that keeps the
Christians steady in this world.
Look at it in Hebrews chapter 6 verse
17 Wherein God willing more abundantly to show
the ed and promise, the immutability of his
counsel confirmed it by an oath that by
two immutable things in which it was impossible
for God to lie we might have a
strong consolation who have fled for refuge to
lay hold upon the hope set before us
which hope we have as an anchor of
the soul both sure and steadfast and which
entereth into that within the veil whither the
forerunner is for us entered even Jesus made
an high priest forever after the order of
Melchizedek turning back to the previous chapter chapter
2 it became him for verse 10 of
whom are all things and by whom are
all things in bringing many sons unto glory
to make the captain the pioneer of their
salvation perfect through sufferings for both he that
sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all
of one for which cause he is not
ashamed to call them brethren saying I will
declare thy name unto my brethren in the
midst of the church where I sing praise
unto thee he is the pioneer the forerunner
of our salvation he went through death he
tasted death for every man and he went
on to the shores of eternity our forerunner
and our high priest and our guarantee that
God will bring not just one son to
glory but many sons to share that same
glory so in chapter chapter 6 the writer
uses a nautical illustration this man who wrote
the book of Hebrews must have been a
man who crossed the Mediterranean a few times
who had fled for refuge to lay hold
upon the hope set before us which hope
we have as an anchor of the soul
both sure and steadfast and which entereth into
that within the veil whether the forerunner is
for us entered even Jesus maiden high priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek turning back
to the previous chapter previous chapter chapter 2
it became him for verse 10 of whom
are all things and by whom are all
things in bringing many sons unto glory to
make the captain the pioneer of their salvation
perfect through sufferings for both he that sanctifies
and they who are sanctified are all of
one for which cause he is not ashamed
to call them brethren saying I will declare
thy name unto my brethren in the midst
of the church where I sing praise unto
thee he is the pioneer the forerunner of
our salvation he went through death he tasted
death for every man and he went on
to the shores of eternity our forerunner and
our high priest and our guarantee that God
will bring not just one son to glory
but many sons to share that same glory
so in chapter 6 the writer uses a
nautical illustration this man who wrote the book
of Hebrews must have been a man who
crossed the Mediterranean a few times as well
as being deeply acquainted with the Old Testament
and particularly the Levitical order he was at
home in these two things and so he
remembers the anchor it seems that the trading
ships in the eastern Mediterranean had at least
three different kinds of anchor they had some
kind of hook that they could use they
usually used a couple of big stones to
steady the ship in the harbour if they
couldn't tie up and they also had a
wooden anchor which was a great big beam
and this was for use in emergencies if
the ship was heavily driven by storm and
they were in the treacherous waters of the
Aegean where there are so many islands the
rowers would do their utmost to bring the
vessel under the shelter of an island under
the storm and when they had brought her
there they're struggling, struggling, struggling they need a
forerunner and then the volunteer who was a
strong swimmer with a light line tied round
his waist dives into the surf oh how
anxiously the crew watch him as he disappears
into the boiling water and then maybe they
catch a glimpse of head or shoulders and
they watch him as he dives into death
and makes his way through the cruel breakers
and up through the rocks and onto the
shore and then on the far shore he
signals back to them he is their forerunner
then they pay out the line with the
great wooden beam overboard it goes, there is
their hope and it goes overboard and he
pulls that one across through the surf that
he himself has passed through until it reaches
shore and then he fixes it in the
rocks on the shore, steadfast unmovable and now
they can ship their oars, hallelujah they enter
into rest because the forerunner has provided them
an anchor sure and steadfast which keeps their
ship true to the wind and sheltered from
the storm and that's what he's talking about
when he says which hope we have as
an anchor for the soul both sure and
steadfast and which enters into that within the
veil wither the forerunner is entered even Jesus
made an high priest forever after the order
of Melchizedek we used to sing a chorus
years and years ago which some of you
may remember I know Lionel would remember it
someday I shall be like him someday like
him changed to heavenly beauty when his face
I see, someday I shall be like him
someday like him, hallelujah this wonderful promise he
gives to me, let me get hold of
it and let me count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus my Lord and Paul says I
have a certain ambition I don't count myself
to have apprehended but in that great day
of resurrection he tells us and John tells
us we shall be changed in a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye but he
said I have an ambition I want to
come alongside that's what he means by attain
same word of a ship, coming alongside an
island, he says I want to come alongside
I'm not there yet he says but I
want to be so alongside that resurrection life
that I live it here on earth and
when that great day comes to change what
we know as the world that's what he's
after in Philippians chapter 3 getting alongside that
glorious hope praise God it's not just ambition
it's hope it's not just me trying to
apprehend something out of my own concept, it's
me laying hold of something for which the
Lord Jesus has laid hold of me for,
he's laid hold of you to be numbered
among the sons who are changed to his
likeness now you say that's it Lord that
hope is dominating me, I wait for the
hope of righteousness by faith and every day
I feel the tug of the line, every
day it's keeping me true, every day it's
keeping me in a place of rest and
yet a place of service right there on
that chart praise the Lord, God wants us
to abound in hope Satan likes to inject
a little bit of despair and you and
I can choose which we take and the
unhappy thing about despair is when you swallow
it, it's a job to cock it up
again, it needs some pretty big repenting and
heart searching and if there's any of us
having a battle in that area and God
Jesus is able to loose us completely from
the whole miserable business that satanic is devilish
it must go before the authority of his
name no matter how deeply its roots are
tangled around our circumstances it's got to go
it has no right in the life of
a redeemed child of God dwell now may
and may your heart respond to it may
the God of hope, it's his nature that
which he gave to little children he has
in his own heart, hallelujah he's so big,
he can be childlike he's the God of
hope, isn't he he's the most hopeful person
in the universe hallelujah just as he's the
most loving and the most believing he is
the fullness of all these things, wonderful God
the God of hope fill you with all
joy and peace and believing that you may
abound this is where you ought to jump
off the floor but I'm too sedated you
may abound through the power of the Holy
Ghost