Hope 3: His Name is Hope, episode 55

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal, and also help and hope for your own life journey. Today we are continuing a five-part series on hope. We all need hope, don't we? When you love a prodigal, you need hope, and we hold on to it, but it doesn't always happen the way we hope. And oh how we need to know the one whose name is hope.

0:40 Be listening for ways that you can hold on to your hope. Jot them down so you don't forget them. The numbers we're adding up for our prodigal son. The cars he had gone through, number 17. The traffic tickets for one year were about five. I don't even know how many gifts we had given him were gone, pond or stolen by one of his friends. Nor how many times he said, you're not my real mother, and the stories he expected me to believe seemed endless.

1:25 It goes on and on. The numbers of offenses that break your heart and give you great concern for your prodigal. As the numbers climbed, my hope dipped and sometimes disappeared, because when you love a prodigal, you often lose hope. In moments and days, seasons of despair, we look for hope. Everyone, whether you have a prodigal or not, at some time is looking for hope to grab on to. In an election season, people look for hope for a candidate who will turn things around or restore order or lead with integrity.

2:15 And many see no hope. In a financial crisis, how will we survive? Who will rescue us? Is there hope? When loss, loss of a loved one or our health or a job or a relationship devastates us, how will we go on? Can we keep hoping? Where do we look for hope? To family, to friends, a new job, a move, the government? But finding no hope, what is there but despair or resignation? Giving up, it seems hopeless.

2:56 And when you love a prodigal, you know these feelings. When he comes home drunk once again, when she gets pregnant, when he calls from the juvenile detention center, when you discover she is still cutting herself, when he says he wants nothing to do with you or your God, when she has run away, when the hospital calls to say he is overdosed, you feel helpless and hopeless. But hold on.

3:36 We do have hope. Our God has said his name is hope. Romans 15 tells us, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. I'm going to read it again. I read it last week. This verse is wonderfully encouraging and powerful. May the God of hope, that's his name, one of his many names, but he's the God of hope. May he fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

4:25 Is that how you've been overflowing with hope? Why is it such good news that one of our God's names is hope? Why should it fill us with hope? The apostle Paul tells Timothy, Even if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot deny himself. God cannot deny or disown himself. He must be who he is, and he is his names, whatever they are. They're the truth about him. And in this case, he is our source of hope.

5:08 There are a lot of other pictures that we get about God from other names like love, peace, Almighty, healer, provider, shepherd, fortress, defender, all those things we need at different times. And hope. He is the God of hope. The meaning of hope is the desire of some good with an expectation of obtaining it. That meaning itself is hopeful. There's a little acrostic using hope, H-O-P-E, and it's holding on with patient expectation.

5:57 Okay, that probably sounds impossible. But that's what we can do because we know the God whose name is hope. He says, hold on, because I'm holding you. He says, with patient, well, because we can trust him, expectation that God will take care of this, the result will be what God has in mind. When we hope, we acknowledge that we have not seen the answer we desire yet. We don't even know what that answer would be. But we know the why and where and who of hope, our faithful God.

6:40 And we could go to him with our tears and our fears, our anger, our despair. He says, I will give you hope. That's it, hope. No answers. We don't get what we are asking for. Our prodigals don't return or change or make better choices or follow Jesus. Paul reminds us, but hope that is seen, that turns out the way we want, is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have. But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

7:21 So we wait and hope with this assurance. This is the verse that took me through our 15 years with our prodigal. In Isaiah 60, I am the Lord, and it's time I will do this swiftly. Over and over, I was back at that same verse believing that he is God, and he's working even though I can't see it. And he lives in no time, and so it's swift, even though it seems like a long time to us sometimes.

8:01 We can wait with hope because God is working and his name is hope. Let me ask you a couple of questions. How could knowing that one of God's names is hope help to sustain you in your prayers for your loved one? Think about that. How have you found it possible to feel helpless but also hopeful, helpless in that you can't make it happen the way you want, but hopeful that the God whose name is hope, who is working, will make it happen in his perfect way and timing.

8:49 Next week, we are going to talk about 10 reasons to keep hoping. I think you should come back for that. 10 reasons to keep hoping. Don't forget, take a look at the show notes. There's lots of resources at JudyDouglass.com. And thank you for joining me today on the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. And you know, you can go and rate it and subscribe to it and maybe even give me a nice review. Your review really helps other people choose to come and listen.

9:32 Until next week, keep hoping in the God whose name is hope. God bless you.