Hope 5: A Door and An Anchor, episode 57

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 wrapping up a five-part series on hope. I hope it's been helpful and hopeful for you, because we certainly all need hope in our lives, but especially when you love a prodigal, we need hope. So as I'm talking about the door of hope and an anchor of hope, that you'll think, all right, what can I take from this that will help me today or tomorrow in my life with my loved one?

0:47 Write it down. You'll forget it otherwise. Okay, a door of hope. You may know the story of Hosea. God asked him to be a living symbol of his faithfulness to unfaithful Israel. So Hosea married a prostitute, loved her, gave her children, and pursued her when she returned to her former life. He's a picture of what God did for Israel. Hosea pursued her time and again when she turned from him as she chose a valley of trouble instead of the goodness of the one who loved her.

1:31 Through Hosea, God said to Israel, I will make the valley of trouble a door of hope. Doesn't that just speak exactly to us? He's saying that the valley of trouble where our loved ones are choosing to live, he's going to turn it into a door of hope. Our kids, our family, our friends, our loved ones have chosen a path that leads to the valley of trouble. They experience the consequences of their own choices and they enter into danger that they don't even comprehend.

2:14 We, therefore, live with fear of what might happen to them. As their choices lead them deeper and deeper into the valley of trouble, our fears lead us deeper and deeper into hopelessness. But God tells us, do not despair. I will make the valley of trouble a door of hope. God himself will meet them in that valley. He will open their eyes to see the depths of their pain and futility and danger, and he will open a door of hope to them and lead them back into the light.

2:57 Haven't you seen that happen? I know, I know of many when they're in the worst place they can be, God has met them and they've said, oh help, and God says, here I am. He gives hope. Of course, we don't know when he will open that door, but we know he is true to his names. And remember, one of his names is hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

3:38 May God fill you with hope even in the valley of trouble because it's in that valley that our loved ones often discover a door of hope. Hope is also an anchor. My son Josh and his wife Leslie loved to fish. Before they moved to their little farm, they owned a small boat and spent many hours in the ocean off Cocoa Beach and in the shipping channel running by a substantial rock jetty. The fish were usually biting by the jetty. So they would pick a spot near the jetty on the edge of the channel and drop anchor and fish for hours unless, of course, the anchor didn't hold, which happened occasionally.

4:29 Josh describes what they had to do when the anchor didn't hold. I had to drop my pole, hopefully in the boat, he said, run up to the front and start pulling in the anchor as fast as I can. Leslie would quickly start the engine and turn us away from the jetty or we could have a big hole in the hull. If his anchor didn't hold, it could have been disastrous. But we have an anchor that will hold. We read in Hebrews. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

5:09 It enters into the inner sanctuary behind the curtain as in the Jewish temple where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. Hope is an anchor for our souls, firm and secure. It's not going to give way when the wind comes and the waves come because an anchor that will hold must be able to hold in any kind of undersea terrain and strong currents and wind and waves. All of that can affect it. And God says, he's the anchor that will hold.

5:49 He's firm and secure. Jesus himself said, the Lord is my portion. Therefore, I will wait for him. Jesus is talking about God is the anchor. He is the anchor for our lives, for our hope, an anchor of hope. Hear God's word for you in Isaiah 49. Then you will know that I am the Lord. Those who hope in me will not be disappointed. Receive the prayer of Paul in Ephesians 1. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people and his incomparably great power for us to believe.

6:46 Know the hope to which he's called you. As we enter into the war room on behalf of our prodigals, as we accept God's invitation to come to his throne of grace, we can do so with confidence that our hope will hold. Jesus is the anchor who is solid and dependable. When we pray for our prodigals, we pour out our heart's desires. We cry out to God. We beseech him to woo and win, to rescue and restore. We ask him to lavish them with love, immerse them in his mercy, embrace them with his grace.

7:31 We know the God of hope is our anchor, and our anchor will hold. We join with Micah in proclaiming, but as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord. I wait for my God, my Savior. My God will hear me. As much as we pursue, pray, pray for, adore, give mercy, persevere, never give up, and so much more in pursuing redemption, restoration, reconciliation, and relationship with our love prodigals, so much infinitely more does God do all those for us and for our loved ones, so we can hope.

8:23 I have several questions for you. What does your prodigal's valley of trouble look like? Can you trust God to turn it into a door of hope? Why or why not? Look through this a little. There he is in the worst place. There she is making really bad choices. Valley of trouble, for sure. God says, that's where I'll meet him, and I'll open a door of hope. Can you imagine how that might be? What other anchors have you tried to rely on and see them fail?

9:07 I thought for sure that somebody that Josh was working with, who was a good person, strong believer, would be the place where he would find that door of hope or an anchor that held, or I thought hanging out with some other people or just anything where I could get him into a good place. But that wasn't where it happened. It happened when his valley was filled with trouble. And he despaired. And there was no hope for him or us. And God opened the door of hope and grabbed hold and held on firmly and securely.

9:48 When has hope in God been your anchor, the force that firmly secures you? I really encourage you to think about what it is that God is doing that can give you hope as we're wrapping up this time of looking at hope that he offers. Probably hope is the thing that I hear most from people who love a prodigal. I have no hope. I've lost all hope. It just seems hopeless. And yet we've talked five sessions here on the hope that God assures us that he himself is our hope.

10:33 And so I really pray that God would open your heart and your mind to see the hope that he has to give you. And you may see quickly new changes for your loved one, but it may take time. Know that God is working. Know that he won't leave you. Know that he will not abandon you or your loved ones. And he turns trouble into hope. I love that. Thanks for joining me again. Make sure you check the show notes for some resources.

11:13 And I wanted to tell you that next week, if you listen to my interview with Pam Lanhart, she told about losing her son Jake, who had been clean from a lung addiction for a year. And things were going great. And he made one mistake. And it was a poisoned drug. And he was gone. And she's very brokenhearted. But she's trusting God. And she's able to put into her ministry, which is called Thrive Family Recovery, all that she's been learning.

11:56 And so next week we'll be talking with her again. And she's going to share some of the resources, both specific places, but also scripture and resources of how to work with your prodigal. So you won't want to miss that. Until next week, God bless you with overflowing hope.