I'm No Quitter, But I Feel Like Giving Up (Part 2)
I’m no quitter, but I feel like giving up, and maybe that’s exactly what I need to do. Maybe I need to set aside my visions of greatness and put to death my disappointments. Maybe I need to embrace the crook as a means of shepherding, rather than a staff to propel me into professional recognition. Maybe I need to quit seeing others as competitors to measure up to. Maybe I need to give all these up and cling to the only hope I’ve ever had.
January
In January, 1990, I was 13 years old and standing on the highland peaks of Honiara, one of the main islands in the Solomon Islands. I was on a mission trip and my head was filled with grand visions of doing great things for God. I was going to leave a mark, achieve something, have books written about my exploits just like the books I was reading of faithful missionaries who’d gone before.
In January, 2000, I was 23 years old and looking over the waters of Suva Bay in Fiji. I was 6 months into marriage and on another mission trip, except this time I was the head leader. My heart was filled with ambitions of being someone great for God. I was gifted. I was admired (or so I thought), and I was confident that within a decade I was going to be a shooting star.
In January, 2010, I was 33 years old and living in Raymond Terrace. I was a father of four, and at least in my thinking, a complete failure. I was in the depth of depression and isolation that would have only led, unchecked, to a desperate and disastrous end. All my resolve had crumbled, all my ambition had been swept away, all my gifting seemed hollow and vain, all my efforts had produced thistles and thorns.
Now January, 2020, I’m 43 years old, and by the grace of God I’m here. My only resolve is to finish my race well and hear the gracious words of my Saviour, “Well done. Enter into your rest.” I have added my ‘Amen’ to the great Morovian Reformer, Zwingli, who stated that his life goal was to, “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.” After four decades of searching for hope and peace, I’ve discovered it in the grace of God through Christ, shown to a wretched sinner like me.
4 Ways You Can Try To Cling To Hope
Here are 4 ways you can try and find hope in the year ahead, but I’m going to lead with a spoiler-alert. 3 of the 4 are garbage and will not work, leading you into deeper despair and a greater sense of failure. Yet, knowing this, most of us will try them anyway.
Be A Better Christian — You’re going to be tempted to reflect on the year gone, or even the decade, and resolve to be a better Christian. Now, when most people say something like that, what they mean is, read the Bible more, pray more, be more patient, try and give up some bad habits, give more, go to church more, join a Community Group (or maybe attend the one you go to more then a few times in a Term). So you start a new Bible Reading Plan thinking this will be the year. Or you buy a prayer journal, one with a really nice cover and some colouring pencils to pretty it up with. Or you start jogging, or download a fitness app for your phone, and while you’re there you downloaded some accountability software for your computer to help you stop looking at porn.
Here’s the problem. You think if you can do these things you’ll find hope and peace, but you’re wrong. And you’re wrong on two counts. First, you won’t be able to do those things, you’ll fail, just like you did last year. Second, even if you could follow through on your resolve, hope doesn’t live at the end of that rainbow, pride does.
Do Amazing Things For God — This is the year you’re going to ‘step out for God’, or, ‘catch on fire for God’, or maybe even, ‘create a legacy for God’. This is the year you’re going to break through, leave behind the past, make a name for yourself (oops, I mean God). You’re going to be tempted to think that if you could be more like those heroes of the faith, men and women of renown (both past and present), if you could launch a great ministry, or write a book, or lead in a way that transforms countless lives, you will finally find the hope and peace you've been searching for.
But you won’t. I mean, you might do some of those things, you may achieve some of those dreams, but you won’t find peace, nor hope.
Turn Inward And Discover Authenticity — Maybe you’re a little worn and jaded. Maybe you’ve been there and tried that before. You’re going to be tempted to try and find hope and peace by turning your focus inward, withdrawing from life around you, saying ‘yes’ to yourself more, and practicing more self-care. Yet isn’t it interesting that in a world that is far more aware of looking after yourself, that champions self-care more than ever, and puts authenticity on a revered pedestal — anxiety, depression, relational breakdown, and social disconnect are rampantly out of control. As good as authenticity and self-care are, maybe they aren’t the answer.
Now before we hit on number 4, let me make a quick concession. Do I think that reading your Bible more this year is a good idea? Yes! Do I think praying more, attending a community group, coming to church, serving in a ministry, stepping out in faith, are good things? Yes. Absolutely. All of those things are healthy and beneficial and worthy goals, but while ever your pursuit of hope and peace is focused on your ability to achieve more, do better, and succeed where you’ve failed, you are destined for disappointment and heartache. Because hope and peace were never designed to be found in you. They were only ever, and are only ever, available in Christ.
The question remains, how do we gain hope? As we cross into the threshold of a new decade, how do we lean toward hope in the year ahead?
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. - Romans 15:13
We have a God of Hope
I’m not sure what your default way to relate to God is, but we all have one. A way we perceive God to be, a certain characteristic that seems dominant in your thinking. The Scripture reveals God to be bigger and grander than we can perceive, but here, Paul wants to highlight that God is actually a God of hope. The grace of God in Christ is a story of hope. It’s good news for sinners and screwups like me. It’s hope that should make us want to celebrate the year ahead, not just take a deep breath and ‘hope for the best’, but one that is a living, breathing, dynamic hope, because it flows out of the God of hope.
Did you notice that? Look where joy and peace come from. Joy and peace flow from the eternal spring of the God of hope—he fills us up.
You don’t Gain hope, you’re Given it
I don’t want you to give up on your aspirations, or even your resolutions, but I do want you to give up on striving for them. I want you to abound in hope for 2020 and beyond. I want you to have visions and dreams for what God may do in you, in your family, in your church, in your town. I want you to be so filled with the joy and peace that flows from the God of hope, that rivers of life flow from you. But if you think you can somehow earn this, muster up enough spiritual zeal to make it happen, polish up your marketing, or discover it in trendier styles or services — you will be so disappointed. Because you don’t gain hope, you’re given it. You can’t just ‘be more hopeful’, but you can just lean a little heavier on the Spirit of God. You can’t just have a more positive outlook for the year ahead, but you can fix your affections more profoundly on Christ. When the power of God is at work, hope flows in abundance.
The Gospel is the Key
I want you to notice a little phrase right in the middle of this verse.
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.
Everything else in this verse is about what God will do. But right here, sandwiched between everything that he will accomplish, is something we’re asked to believe. But believe what?
Believe the gospel.
The entirety of this book (Romans) is a living structure to this truth. Paul unpacks here one of the most comprehensive visions of the good news, that a righteous and holy God has reached out in grace toward sinners and rebels to create a way whereby we can know peace with God through absolutely no merit of our own, but entirely of grace through faith. Rooted in this glorious truth, we reach the pinnacle of this hope as he declares in chapter 8 that, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus”, we have peace with God. Then as the chapters lead us toward the close of the book, the gospel begins to work itself out into the daily rhythms of our lives. So Paul would say in chapter 12, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
Even here in chapter 15, this one verse sits within a larger section where Paul is pointing us to the glorious reality of the gospel. Here he asks us to lift our vision to the ‘root of Jesse’, the promised offspring who would come as a greater David, a greater King, and redeem God’s people.
And again Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope." - Romans 15:12
So lean into the gospel this year. Explore the wonders of the good news. Mine the depths of God’s grace toward you in Christ. Centre your affections in the realities that are wrapped up in the sacrificial death of Jesus, and the victorious defeat of the grave that gave us life.
Centre your life around the gospel. Believe it. Not just as a list of truths to be recited, but as a reality that transforms all of life. Believe this gospel and ‘the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.’
