Radiant Hope | Michael W. Thompson

Just before we jump into the word, Pastor mentioned a renewal movement that happened

in our community in our county in nineteen ninety five. God moved across our

county and just extraordinary ways happened to be in our house because we had the

biggest church as far as building, but it was a community wide of God.

We met six nights a week for nine months, and then another year

and a half we met every weekend Baptist, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalian Vineyard

movement, I mean across the board and we saw something happen there that could

only be blamed on God. And Pastor just wrecked me for normal, just

wrecked for normal. And I thank God for his faithfulness when we meet time

and time again and he shows up. But I'm just so anxious to see

God dumbfound us, leave us godsmacked. I'm just so anxious. We learned

a few things to pray in those days. They were simple because we didn't

have a clue what God was doing. Some of us pastors even got t

shirts that just said I don't know, because people would come up and ask

us questions about what was happening with I don't know, but we prayed some

simple prayers. Come Holy Spirit. We didn't know what to pray. We

didn't know what to do, so we just came and said, come,

let me tell you something. When you do that, he will respond and

he will mess you up so bad. But we prayed more Lord. I

must have prayed it a million times over people because I didn't know what else

to pray what God was doing. We prayed deeper, Lord, deeper as

we watch God move into the depths of people's hearts with healing and correction.

And then one of my favorites was increase my capacity to receive. There's nothing

that we have that we don't receive in the Kingdom of God. It all

comes by reception. I remember praying for people maybe striving, and and I'd

say, stop, your only job is to receive. When I come into

a house like this, Diana and I pray this all the time. Now

we're all over the place, preaching in different places. I never want to

come to a house and do my thing, whatever that is. I want

to come and just simply be a conduit for those prayers. Come, Holy

Spirit, Come, Holy Spirit, More Lord, Increase deeper. If somehow

we can posture our hearts to mean those prayers. There's literally nothing God won't

do because all He's are looking for people who surrender to Him and say,

Lord, we can't do anything without you. So come hold spirit Lord.

I need to be stretched and filled. I want more of you. I

want you to go deeper in me. I want you to increase in me.

It's the cry of revival. What was it we heard a minute ago?

Revival? Here? Revival? Now? I say amen, Amen.

Diane and I have been privileged to be married almost forty five years. Diane'll

tell you there was twenty of the most wonderful years of her life. The

other ones are sketchy, but you know we were in ministry, full time,

ministry for time. We got out of college at pastor my first church

when I was nineteen, as if I knew something. We moved to Minnesota

when we were I was twenty one, founded a church there, and God

poured his spirit out on us. We wandered through a couple of other things

and wound up in Melbourne, Florida, and we're privileged to serve with a

real general of the charismatic renewal and then succeed him as pastor, and we

we welcomed and embrace this move of God that happened in our region. And

then I flew our lives into a cliff and we had to come back and

find out what we really believed. I remember dying talking to our children saying,

do we really believe what we've said all these years that we believe God

began a work of restoration and healing, and it just filtered through our marriage

and then into our children and our oldest son. Part of the reason may

have so much of aise. Our old son took him twenty three years to

come back to a place of surrender and ob and wonder before the Lord.

Few couple of months ago, we did a family and marriage restoration conference at

a church in our town, Abou. One hundred and fifty people there,

and our two sons did it with us. The four of us sat and

told of the goodness of God. People will talk to us sometimes in this

work that we do and they'll say, you guys carry something. We keep

looking at each other and go, what is it. It's like having a

germ. We go sneeze on congregations and hope they get it. Whatever it

is. I've begun to believe that what we carry is radiant hope, because

we've been over the edge, we've been beyond hope, and now we live

beyond hope. And if there's anything we could impart, anything we could deposit

for you today, it's that radiant hope. It comes from a prayer that

I've prayed over our children, our grandchildren, our friends in ministry. We

prayed over you, guys. It's a prayer that means as much to me

as any of the prayers of the Bible. It's an Apostolic prayer. So

there is great authority in the words that we're going to look at this morning,

because it was Paul praying this for the people to whom he was an

apostle. This happens to be to the Romans. But Paul was our apostle

too. He was an apostle of the Church. And so when we read

these words, I want you to hear the great Apostle praying them over you,

over your children, your grandchildren, horizon, over this region. These

are the words of the apostles, but he cries out to the heart of

the Father, this is what I want you to do for these people.

God. I've been praying this over this house for the last few weeks.

Romans fifteen thirteen. May the God of Hope fill you with all joy and

peace as you trust him, so that you will overflow with hope by the

power of the Holy Spirit. Now I want you to put your hands out

in a receiving position, if you would, And I want to pray these,

but I don't want you to hear my words. I want you to

hear the Apostle as he praised these, because he wasn't just praying for Romans,

he was praying for Pyphons two thousand years later. May the God of

Hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust him, so you

can overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let me read

it over you as JB. Phillips translates it. May the God of Hope

fill you with joy and peace in your faith, that, by the power

of the Holy Spirit, your whole life and outlook may be radiant with hope.

Holy Spirit. Come, I don't have words that can do this.

We can't sing enough songs to accomplish this. But would you come and fill

us in this house this morning, Oh Great God, Hope, fill us

in this house this morning with all joy and peace, as we trust you

so that we can radiate hope by the power of the Holy Spirit, in

the name of Jesus who bought it. Amen. Diana and I for thirty

six years have lived in the space coast of Florida, so seeing rockets go

up is a common occurrence. We watched all the shuttles go up. Now

that Elon's in charge. We got a rocket about every two days now shooting

up in our backyard. And there we love all things space in our region.

And there's this great story of a lady. Your name is Nagie Cows.

She was the project director of three of the four Mars rovers that we

put on Mars, and they wrote around, took pictures and all that.

She had this idea when she started the project. She wanted her team,

her people, she said, to be Martians. So she said, we're

going to work on Mars time, even if we live on Earth time.

So in Mars a day is forty minutes longer than it is here. So

she made them come to work forty minutes later every day. This went on

for months. Well you can imagine after a few weeks the middle of the

day on Mars is the middle of the night on Earth, and so she's

to keep her team synchronized. She actually had watches made for them. She

called them Mars watches. The weights of the watches were adjusted, they were

changed so that they worked on as Saul, which is a Martian day,

So they worked on Mars time. So OLIVERR. Teen had two watches on.

They had her earthwatch and they had her Mars watch on. They worked

by Mars time even though they lived by Earth time. And here's what it

did. It made the place they were seeking real to the place they were

living. So they became people of another place in this place. Does that

sound familiar? We pray it all the time. Kingdom of God Come,

Will of God be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. We we

live by another kingdom even though we live in this one. And I want

to suggest something to you. Jesus has provided you a heaven watch so that

you can live by this easons of eternity, even though you're bound to the

moments of time. His desire is that we live on Heaven time even though

we're in the Earth. Hope is your heaven watch. If we had Mars

watch for heaven, it would be hope, because hope is the belief that

something God is going to do will dramatically affect where we live and bring the

Kingdom of God to be at hand. So it's this belief, it's this

hope, it's this expectation of a preferred future. Hope, I believe is

the greatest tool God has for the on earth, as it is in heaven

experience to actually become part of the raw, a real place that we live.

And I believe it's especially important in this season because we seem to be

in a culture that lives under the spirit of despair, and we carry the

spirit of hope. See, the spirit of despair believes that the future is

full of pain and problems. The spirit of hope believes a future is full

of possibilities. And so we say to a culture that's so in despair it

spends all of its time trying to escape the moment. We are constantly telling

them, but the Kingdom of God is at hand, it's close enough to

touch, it's ear. Now He has come and He has not left.

Hope is the mindset of heaven without the influence of earth. Despair is the

mindset of earth without the influence of heaven. We carry the influence of heaven.

Despair says, this is all there is, and it's not good,

and it's gonna get worse. Hope says, this is not all it is.

It is gonna get better, and one day it's gonna be as it

should be, as he made it to be. Hope SE's promise. Hope

sees possibility. Hope sees the ability to change. Hope allows us to remain

tethered to Heaven while we live on earth. It's our Mars watch. It's

such a powerful thing that it's part of the triumvirate of values that Paul said

will last forever. Now, all bide to three things, faith, hope,

and love. So three things are going to last into eternity. He

says, These are the values of the kingdom. These are foundation stones.

These are the crown jewels of the king's crown. And one of those is

hope. And it's so powerful that in our prayer here he actually calls God

by that name. You are the God of hope. In other words,

you are a god who operates all the time in the atmosphere of hope.

You are never bound to how it is because it will always be how it's

going to be in your heart. So God is a god who operates in

the atmosphere of hope. He is the God of hope, which means the

reservoir of hope that I draw from is inexhaustible. It's as big as God.

So if God is the God of hope, every time I get a

little hopeless, I have the ability to go deeper in Him and I can

find hope for the moment I'm in. It's like a cave diver who gets

to the edge of a cliff and he thinks he's gone down as far as

he can go, and he can hear the Master saying, steelunk into the

caverns of my heart. You'll find it's deeper and deeper and deeper. You'll

never run out of hope. If God is your source, he's the God

of hope. I love that, eh. You See, the world operates

under this spirit of lack. We call it the spirit of poverty. It's

not just in the money area, it's in everything. It's like there's not

enough for all of us. So I'm gonna get what I can. Can

what I get, sit on the lid and poison all the rest. I'm

gonna get what I can because there's only so much. But that's not how

the Kingdom mess God. Paul actually prays at one point for us, I

want you to know the breadth and linth and depth and height of God's love,

which is beyond knowing. See, God is so big that even in

eternity we will constantly be exploring more of Him. So it's not like I'm

gonna get to heaven and I know everything about God. I get to heaven

and I have the capacity to know everything about God. And then he says,

now you've got forever to go and discover me. And if that is

true of God, and God is the God of hope, there is no

limit to how much hope we can't have. You cannot out hope the goodness

to God. Have a friend that says God is good. He's better than

you think, and you cannot imagine him better than he is. You can't

out hope the goodness of God. So he says, God is our sirse

of hope, and the God of limitless hope wants us to become into the

prayer overflowers with that same kind of hope. So God who overflows with hope,

wants us to become people who overflow with hope, have so much hope

in us that when we get squeezed, what comes out is hope. When

we get pressed, what comes out as hope. When we get crushed,

what comes out as hope. He said, I want the God who is

hope to make you people who are hope. What do you have to offer

the city of Fife, What do you have to offer the region? Hope?

Hope? In a system of despair, I was thinking about pastors called

to us to pray together for the government, for the election to have integrity,

and I thought about all my friends that have said system sucks, it's

broke their work, it's only gonna get worse, only have scilly people running.

And then a pastor sends up and says, wait, wait, wait,

wait wait. Hope says God can fix it. Hope says divine surprises.

Hope says upsets in victory that nobody expected them to win, but guess

what they did. It's that kind of thing. It's a hope that says

if we call on God, he can turn any nation around. That's hope.

It's the ridiculous belief that God is in charge and there's nothing you can

do about it. See, hope is like a lens for us as believers.

When I take these off, you guys are just a big blurry mess.

And I put them back on, You're still a mess, but you're

not blurry anymore. You get it. What happens. These provide clarity so

that I'm seeing things for real, not out of skew and distorted because of

my eyes. Does it makes sense? That's what hope does. Hope is

Heaven's lens through which we view all of reality. When we put hope on,

it brings clarity, It brings focus, so that we see things like

God does, the God of hope, instead of like the world around us

does. How can you have hope in this mess that we're living in?

How can you not? If you're connected to God. My friend Bill Johnson

says, you have permission to be hopeless about whatever God is hopeless about.

Sounds like a good deal to me. So whenever you find something God doesn't

have any hope about, then you can be hopeless. We are connected to

the God of hope. We wear hope as a lens, and therefore we

see for real, even in a world that seems foggy and out of focus.

Anytime the church takes off hope, we have as distorted a view of

reality as the world does, even though we do it in God's name,

and God doesn't like Jesus never liked it when the religious people of his day

took off their God lenses. That's why he kicked over tables and did all

that kind of stuff, because they were giving a distorted view you of his

Father. He said, no, no, no, if you have seen

me, you have seen the Father. Let me focus it in on me.

Hope is our focus. It's how we see things for real. So

when I thought about this and I pray, you know, I I prayed

this prayer for years. I've never preached it on it ever, and part

of the reason was I would pray it believing. But then I'd scratch my

head trying to figure out what Paul was actually praying, because if I wrote

the prayer, it would be like this, May the God of Hope fill

you with so much hope that you overflow with hope by the power of the

Holy Spirit. But that's not what he prays. May the God of Hope

fill you with all joy and peace as you trust him so that you overflow

with hope. So it appears in Paul's mind that joy and peace discovered and

expressed in the moments that you have to trust him. That's what creates hope

that you overflow with. So I said, well, what does that mean?

What does he mean? Joy? Its interesting. Joy seems to be

in the Bible, how Heaven seize your struggle. We get joy when we

agree with the perspective of Heaven on the difficulties that we're in. The joy

of the Lord is your strength. One meaning of that is the joy of

the Lord is what makes you strong. The other is what makes God happy

is when you're strong. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Whatever

it means, the joy of the Lord is an actual entity that we can

receive. In fact, Peter calls it joy unspeakable and full of glory,

and we used to sing it when I was a kid. I won't do

that because Dimald will come running off the stage if I sing it. But

joy that you can't express because it's so full of God. This is where

people start thinking that we're irrelevant because we talk about joy in the midst of

what we see all around us. But you know it's joy because it agrees

with God's perspective, not our perception. And here's the problem. The reason

we don't have joy is that we look at things from this plane rather than

the one Pastor read to us about where we are seated with Christ in the

heavenly realms, so that we're looking at the world at this plane rather than

from up we've been put up here with Christ in heavenly places. When you

see it that way, everything looks different. So when I see the struggle

I'm in, the pain that I'm having, the waiting that I'm doing,

when I see that from his perspective, what comes to me is joy.

You know, back in the mid nineties, in this renewal movement that happened,

one of the manifestations of God at that time was laughter. Took a

horrible beating for it because people would just start laughing right in the middle of

your sermon. And I don't mean like I mean to be falling out of

their seat, laying in the floor, laughing like they were drunk. And

people would criticize that, But what if that person was going through some of

the darkest season of their life and all of the sudden, they saw it

from God's perspective, and they laughed. God sits on his throne. What's

he do? He laughs? Why because he looks down at all the mighty

men of earth who are out there flexing for everybody, showing him how they're

going to control the world. And he laughs because he sees it from up.

Joy comes to us when God allows us, even for a brief moment,

to see our struggle from his perspective. I thought of it specifically in

the area of mourning loss. We're told by Paul that we are to mourn,

but not as those who have no hope. Okay, so we're supposed

to mourn, but not as those who have no hope. What's the difference.

Mourning when you have no hope means this is the end. Mourning as

you have hope says this is the beginning. He says, mourn, But

how does those who have no hope? How does that happen? Jesus said,

blessed her you when you mourn, for you'll find the comforter. So

he says, if you can sit with God in your grief and loss,

you will find the presence of the companor and is the comforter, and Isaiah

had prophesied that he will bring you the oil of joy for mourning. And

if you sit there long enough with a spirit applying the oil of joy over

your mourning, ultimately he will turn your mourning into dancing. That's joy.

It's joy when you can dance with tears. He said, I want God,

the God of hope, to fill you with all joy because you see

as Heaven sees. But then he says, end peace, the shalom of

God. Peace comes when you recognize how Heaven is shaping your story. I'm

not out here on my own, I'm not building my own life. But

God is writing the story. The narrative is from Heaven. So important that

we remember that He is the author and finisher of your faith. If he's

the author, he controls the storyline. If he's the finisher, he controls

the ending. I remember time in my life that I thought I could write

a better story than God. And I reached up and snatched the quill out

of his hand. And when I did, I dumped the ink well over

and black ink splattered all over my life. And everyone around me believed God

was going to write the end. But God took the quill of his love,

passed it through the mess that I'd made, turned the page and started

writing a new chapter, and whispered in my ear, You're never going to

believe the ending. Peace isn't just tranquility. It's not just the absence of

conflict. It is the presence of the Prince of peace. Peace is a

person. We have him. Peter describes it as Paul describes it as peace

that passes understanding. In other words, nothing has to change to explain why

I have peace. It passes understanding. And you say, well, what

does that look like? It looks like Jesus sleeping in a boat when the

storm was about to sink the ship. Disciples were scared to death. These

guys were experienced fishermen. They knew they were going under. They come down

and say to him, don't you care that we're gonna drown. Jesus gets

up and says, be still, calms the storm. But I'm convinced Jesus'

first choice would have been to weather the storm with his disciples sleeping beside him,

because you have power over any storm you sleep in. He's asleep in

the storm. They're panicking. They're doing everything they can to right the ship.

And I really think Jesus really wanted to say to them, boys,

come on down and take a nap, because before we left, I said

we're going over, and there's no way we're going under. When I said

we're going over, peace that's unexplainable, peace that is unextinguishable. It's interesting.

Jesus gathered his decidiples at the end of his life, just moments before

he goes to the cross, and he says, I want to read to

you my last Will and Testament. And here's what he gives them. My

peace I give you not as the world gives give I into you. My

joy is going to be in you, so your joy will be full.

Interesting Jesus leaves his disciples this legacy joy and peace. Paul says, God,

you're the God of hope. Would you fulfill the legacy of Jesus.

Leave these people full of joy and peace. But here's the part that I

think everything hinges on as you trust him. You see, I believe Paul

is saying there are going to be moments when the joy and the peace he

has left you are challenged by the situation and circumstance that you are in and

in those moments, what you are left to do is trust him. If

you trust him, he will fill you with joy and peace, and those

things together will cause you to overflow with hope. See. Trust is about

confidence in God's character. Faith is about a word from God. Remember,

faith comes by hearing. Hearing by the word of God. So you get

a word from God, you hang your faith on it, even if you

can't see anything. But your faith is attached to something. It's attached to

a word from God. But trust is clinging to God's character even when you

don't have his word, when you don't have any promise that you can hang

your faith on, when you don't have anything you can hang your heart on

except the goodness of God. Trust. I think that's why over fifty times

in the Old Testament you get this line, God is good. His mercy

endures forever. Fifty times in the Old Testament. Why because we need to

be reminded God is good, because there were moments that's what you hang your

heart on. God is good. Yeah, his mercy anders, he says

God, I'm praying that when your people are in the position and they simply

trust you because they believe you are good in that space, in that moment,

in that struggle. Fill them to overflowing with joy and peace. Cram

it into them till it runs out as hope. People that are full of

joy and peace overflow as hope. My favorite movie of old time is a

movie. It's an Italian movie. It's called Life is Beautiful. Interested in

it? One year I was watching the Oscars and they won, first time

a foreign film had ever won Best Picture. And they announced it and this

goofy looking guy had little's hair as I did, but it was sticking out

everywhere. Jumps up, starts climbing on the backs of seats, kissing people,

kissing baldman's head, just going absolutely crazy. And I said, I

don't know what the film is about her, who that is, but I

have to see that film. And I went to see it, and it's

a story of an Italian Jew. He's crazy a little while lilick centric falls

in love with a woman she's not Jewish. They wind up getting married,

they wind up having a son, and then the Nazis move into Italy.

He and his son are taken captive and sent to a concentration camp. Beautiful

scene where his wife not Jewish comes to the train and says, what are

you going to do with my husband and my son. We're taking him to

a camp. She said, take me too, I'm going too, which

you're not Jewish. I don't care. I'm going where they go. So

this wildly eccentric father realizes if I don't help my child, what is around

him will devour him. So he comes up with a plan. He gets

his little boy and he says, this is a game. It's a game.

See his boy loved above everything else in the whole world. Tanks,

toy tanks. That was his greatest toy. He says, listen, if

we win this game, you will get a real tank. So they go

through all the things you can imagine in a concentration camp. But he's all

the time telling the boy, listen to me, watch my face, look

in my eyes. It's a game. One point that German comes in and

he's yelling in German and nobody can understand him, and he says, can

anybody interpret this? And he raises his hand. He goes up and stands

next to him. Can't speak a word German, but he interprets the whole

message for his son that this is a game, and these guys around you,

they're trying to steal your points. You gotta stay faithful, you got

to keep positive, you're gonna get your points. Goes on and on through

all these scenes, and at one point he comes in. He finds his

boy hiding and crying and he said, I overheard some of the old guys

talking and they said they're gonna kill us, and they're gonna make guitar strings

out of our skin. And he goes, oh, they're just they're just

trying to steal your points. We're so close. Allied invasion comes and you

can hear them approaching the camp. So the Germans decide to burn everything and

kill everybody that's left. He hides this little boy. He says, you

can't come out until you hear quiet, till everything's quiet, and he said

if you come, if you stay in there long enough, when you come

out, you will win. His father was one of the people that was

killed in those final moments in the camp before the Allied troops moved in.

Finally it got really quiet, little boy figured it was time to come out.

He comes out of his hiding hole, walks out and stands in the

middle of the street, just as a US tank turns the corner and starts

straight, coming straight for him, stops right in front of him, and

he looks up and he smiles real big, and he goes, we ran.

He got his tank. That story, to me, is the heart

of our faith. We have a God who's constantly saying, listen to my

voice. I'm telling you the truth. Don't listen to what you see,

don't listen to what you hear. Listen to me. Look in my face,

watch my eye. And if you do that long enough, one of

these days, time is going to close Eternity's going to open, and you'll

be able to shout we win. That is hope. Concentrate on his voice.

How does he see what you're going through? How does he see what

you're going through? Pray with me? Father, So much easier to talk

about this than it is to practice it. And yet, Papa, you

are the God of hope, and you want us to overflow with hope.

So I pray in this house this morning for those that are standing at a

point in their life where they just have to trust you. They trust you

with that prodigal child that hasn't come home, They trust you with that job

that's hanging in the balance. They trust you with that diagnosis from the doctor.

They trust you with the shakiness of their marriage. They trust you when

there's not quite enough money to make it. They trust is standing there hanging

their heart on your character. I ask you this morning fill them with all

joy and peace as they trust you, so they can overflow with hope by

the power of the spirit. I want to do one thing with you before

we get out of here. If you're in that position you feel like you're

trusting with all that you are, but it's a hard season. You got

lots of questions. Things aren't where you want to be, and they don't

necessarily look like they're going to work out. Well. If that's you,

But you say I want to be a person of hope, I want you

to stand. I want to pray over you that God in the moments now

that you stand trusting Him in spite of what you see around you, what

you're going through. As you trust him this morning, he can fill you

full to overflowing with joy and peace as you trust him, so that you

walk out here with radiant hope, radiant hope that people around you actually see

and feel you're that full of hope. Father, in Jesus' name, I

pray for my friends that have stood. You know where they're at, You

know what you're they're going through. And Lord, I'm praying that they would

become people crammed full of the joy of the Lord and the peace that passes

understanding. I pray Lord that you would fill them now, even in this

room, Fill them with all joy and peace as they trust you, so

that they can superabound with hope. With it, Lord, every squeezing time

and season of life squeezes hope out of them. Every time they're pressed with

questions, hope comes out of them. Lord, I pray for this house

to be a radiant hope in this community. Let them radiate hope in a

community that so many are experiencing despair. Now, Lord, we trust you,

We trust you. Fill your people now, and may they leak on

the way out, leaking hope everywhere they go, abounding in hope. By

the power of the Holy Spirit Jesus' name,