Ancient Prayer, Present Power | Paul's Prayer for Overflowing Hope (Derik Fuller)

I could have just kept on singing this morning.

That's all right. I don't even need to come up

here. Turn in your Bibles to Romans

Romans 15:13

chapter 15, verse 13. That's page one O 1008.

If you're using one of the Bibles that are found underneath

some of the chairs in the auditorium here.

I want to start by telling you this morning so that you can

begin to stock up on some of these things, some things that I

have heard are going to be in short supply in 2026.

So you can be in a position to not run out of these things.

OK. So first of all is protein, in

particular beef. So if you think beef is

expensive now, it's going to get more expensive.

So if you, you, you can talk where's if Eric Silvera's here

you go. Talk to Eric about getting

yourself a side of beef. He'll get you hooked up.

Right, Eric, he's got his thumbs up.

If you thought, well, don't worry, I'm a vegetarian, I'm

going to let you know that beans, beans are on the list.

Apparently the growing conditions have not been great

in some of the places that are the biggest suppliers in the

world of beans. So we may have a great bean

shortage in 2026. You think?

No problem, I'll just eat. I'm a rice person.

I didn't get my carbs from rice problem rice growing places have

not had great growing conditions for rice either.

For those of you who work in the party store area, you'll know

that helium has been in short supply for quite a while.

Helium's used in all sorts of industrial uses, not just party

balloons. But helium is in short supply.

And for those of you who are are like, I don't care about any of

that other stuff, the nutritional stuff you started

with, because I, I get most of my liquids from an aluminum can,

you're in trouble too. Aluminum cans, because of all of

the disruption due to tariffs and stuff and how integrated our

supplies are, we're probably going to be short on aluminum

cans. But we live in a world in which

shortages happen, right? Some of those shortages are

expected, like Maple Leafs Stanley Cup victories and some

of those are unexpected, like say spring 2020 and toilet

paper. I mean, you just can't prepare

for certain things. One of the things that I have

noticed is in short supply in Canada in 2025 is this hope,

hope. And, and that's just not my

observation. Here's the percentage of people

who over the past eight years have expressed that they often

or always have a sense of hope. In 2016, that number sat at 75%

of people who would say, yeah, yeah, I, I, I usually feel

hopeful. When we got to 2021-2022, that

number dropped to 64%. And some of you say, well, of

course, think about what's going on in the world at that point.

It was, it was difficult. It was difficult.

Well, I'm telling you, it hasn't got less difficult because in

2024, the end of 2024, when they asked the same question again,

that number had now dropped below 60%.

That means in the course of eight years, there's another 15%

of people who have lost hope. We're now at a point in Canada,

and Pastor Keith was telling me this this morning.

One out of 20 deaths that happened in Canada happened due

to medical assistance in death, one out of 20.

And it's a problem when hope runs low.

It's a bigger problem than beef or beans or aluminum cans, even

Stanley Cup victories. It's a big problem because hope

isn't a luxury item, it's a necessity.

We need hope. Psychologists will tell us that

as they've done studies, what they find is if you're going to

be a resilient person, if you're going to be able to get through

the things that inevitably hit us and try and take us out of

the knees in this world, you need hope.

If you're going to be a person who has the ability to fight off

despair in this world, to have a bit of a buffer between you and

the creep of depression, you need hope.

Hope is linked to stronger immune systems.

Hope is linked to a faster recovery from surgery.

In fact, hope is directly linked to longer life spans.

And it's not just on an individual level, because hope

brings people together. In societies where people lose

hope, sociologists will tell you there is an inevitable loss of

social cohesion. There is an increasing sense of

apathy that takes over and cynicism that wells up in people

so that the entire fabric of society begins to fray when hope

is in short supply. Here's a quote from a guy who

was aware of what was lived like to live in a society where hope

was in short supply. Fidor Dostoyevsky, he said this.

To live without hope. It's to cease to live this

morning. I just want to tell you, if you

walked in here today and you're short on hope, God's got you in

the right spot. God has you here for a reason,

Because the prayer that we're going to look at today, this

ancient prayer that comes out of the mouth of the Apostle Paul,

it's a prayer of hope. And it shows us there's no

reason that in our lives hope needs to be in short supply.

There may be all sorts of reasons why we run into

shortages for all sorts of things, but I want to let you

know today, hope does not have to be one of those things that

we're running short on. And if you're here today and

you're in a spot where you're like, well, I'm here.

I already have all the hope I need.

You know what? You're surrounded by people who

need a little bit of that hope. And this prayer is going to tell

us how we can be the type of people who overflow with hope to

a world around us that needs us. So let's let's read this

together. It's one verse, verse 13, Romans

Romans 15 · chapter mention

chapter 15. Now may the God of hope fill you

with all joy and peace as you believe, so that you may

overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit Churches.

This is my prayer, the prayer that Paul prayed for the church

in Rome. This is my prayer for us, that

we would be a people, a community, that you would be a

person who is filled with hope by the God of hope so that you

overflow and you're filled to the brim with joy and peace by

the power of the Holy Spirit. I just want to unpack these five

things that Paul prayed for that I think are in this verse that I

am praying for you and that I want us to be able to pray for

one another because this is a a prayer over Paul's praying over

other people, right? This is a prayer I'm going to

ask you as we take time to pray in this, to pray for the people

around you, not just you, the collectively that we would be a

people of hope. And the first is this that you

would know the God who is the source of hope.

Look how Paul starts this. Paul starts by praying to the

God of hope that hope flows from God.

He recognizes hope has a source. One of the ways that you run

into supply issues as you have sourcing issues, right?

Anybody know who grows the most bananas in the entire world?

Theirs does not grow any bananas.

Larry, again, I will point you towards Eric who can also tell

you where your meat comes from. OK, Actually India produces the

most. Where, where, Where are my

Indian peeps here? You should know India produces

the most bananas in the whole world.

But we don't get any bananas from India.

We get our bananas the the 50% of the bananas we get come from

Guatemala. And Ecuador is actually the

biggest single exporter of bananas in the world.

If Central America had a disease that ran through and and killed

off a banana crop, we have a problem in Canada.

We got a sourcing issue, right. We can't get what we I don't

care how many greenhouses we have.

We don't have enough greenhouse space to grow enough bananas to

feed the banana appetites the Canadians have.

We, we just can't, we can't meet that demand.

I would suggest to you that one of the reasons that we have a

hope deficit and a hope shortage is because we have a sourcing

issue. We're looking to get hope from

things that cannot provide it. It can't make enough hope for

us. We need hope.

So we go looking for hope because it's a necessary

component of what we need. We're starving for it, and we

try and find it in places that cannot give us all the hope that

we need. So we place our hope in other

people. We place our hope in a in a

spouse or a partner or a child or a parent or a friend.

And when they inevitably fail to meet the expectations that we

place on them, we lose our hope because we had it sourced in the

wrong spot. We go to our jobs, we look at

the achievements and guess what? One day, every single one of us

in this room, no matter how much you love your job and you're

good at your job, your job will cease.

You won't work it anymore. If that's where your hope is,

you're going to run out. You look for recognition or, or

even worse, we look for a politician, a political party

that's somehow going to fix things and restore things and

make Canada great again. You're not going to find it in a

political party or a politician. You're not going to find it in

any institution or any human being or any leisure activity

you invest yourself in 'cause you get excited about because

there's only one source that can supply all the hope that we

need. The God of hope, Paul starts his

prayer by pointing out, hey, this is the source.

May the God of hope be the one that you find your hope in.

He's the origin of hope. That is, he gives hope, he

bestows it, but he's also the object of hope.

He's the reason we have hope. Psalm 62, verses 5 and 6, the

Psalms 62:5

psalmist writes Rest in God alone.

My soul for my hope, it comes from Him.

He's my rock, He's my salvation. He's my stronghold.

And when my hope is found there, I will not be shaken.

So the good news is this. If you're low on hope, there's a

source that is more than able to supply all of the hope that you

need. You just got to stop sourcing it

from the wrong spots. If you're feeling short on hope.

If something has robbed you of your hope, it might be a sign

that you were getting it from the wrong place.

Because God doesn't run out of hope.

He's the God of hope. My deepest prayer is that

everyone who is here, everyone who would ever hear this

message, would know that God is a God of hope.

He's the one who always keeps his promises.

He is the one who never, ever, ever deserts us, betrays us, or

leaves us alone. He's the one who can sustain us

in the present and has made certain and sure a future for

His people. There is always hope when God is

your hope. So let's take a moment to pray.

And would you maybe just pray this?

Would you pray for the God of hope to reveal Himself to you

today if you're low on hope? And would you pray for the

others around you, not just for you, but for the people sitting

behind you, in front of you, in the balcony, on the main floor,

Even those who are teaching today in kids or the kids who

are worshipping today with us? And pray that the God of hope,

who would give hope to those who are struggling to find it today?

Let's pray, God of hope, show us, remind us

that this is who you are. Don't just just give us hope,

anchor our hope in you. You, You alone of all things are

a certain thing, are a sure thing.

We don't know what the next moment holds, but we know who

holds those moments. Your Word alone is what is true,

always and forever. Anchor our hearts to your

promises. Anchor our hearts to your

beauty, into your glory that we've sung of this morning, to

your greatness. In our struggles, in our

uncertainties, in our waiting, in our wanting, be our hope.

We pray, Lord. Amen.

So as Paul prayed for the Romans, I pray that we would

know God as our source of hope. But I also pray that you would

be filled with joy and peace because you know him as the God

of hope. See, when you're filled with

hope, there's some markers that show up because hope's hard to

kind of identify in and of itself.

So you need some things that show that there's hope there.

And the two markers that Paul gives us in this are joy and

peace. The Bible talks about hope.

It's it's not talking about wishful thinking.

There's a reason I give Leafs fans such a hard time and it's

because I'm a Cowboys fan and the Cowboys are the Leafs of the

NFL. So I deeply understand your

delusion. It is delusion season for me

right now as a Cowboys fan because it's pre season and in

pre season anything is possible and in January reality comes

right. I know how this goes.

That's not the type of hope we're taught.

It's not wishful thinking hope. No, this is certain hope.

Biblical hope is is certain because it is based on what God

has done. It's rooted in reality.

It's attached to the promises of the one who is always faithful.

It's our true and certain hope is the gospel, right?

What is the gospel? That while we were sinners,

Christ died for us. These are all this.

Paul just said that in Romans 5/8.

This has been part of the same letter.

He, these people, they're reading this letter, they know

this hope. While we were still sinners,

Christ died for us. Romans 10-9 If you confess with

your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that

God raised him from the dead, this is a certain hope you will

be saved. Romans 623 The wagers of sin is

death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus

Christ our Lord. That's the hope of the Gospel,

Romans 81. There is now no condemnation,

there's no judgment, there's no punishment for those who are in

Christ Jesus because Jesus paid it all on the cross.

What type of joy, what type of peace, what type of hope should

be ours if those are true things, Not just things we know

in here, but things that we believe in here, What could be

better than that? If this is our true and certain

hope? If you have trusted in Jesus,

you're forgiven completely, totally, utterly, washed clean.

You are loved, accepted, redeemed, restored, made a child

of the King. So this present difficult moment

may be a difficult moment, but it's a moment.

It's not your story. 2nd Corinthians 417 to 18.

The same Paul that prayed this prayer.

The reason he can pray this because he knows it, he lives

it. Love these verses he says, for

our momentary light affliction is producing for us an

absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.

So, so we don't focus on what is seen.

We don't get drawn down and stuck in what what's in front of

our eyes in this moment that's distracting us from our hope.

No, what is unseen is what we focus on because what is seen,

it's temporary. But what's unseen, that eternal

weight of glory that's going to be yours forever if you're in

Christ Jesus and you say, well, it's easy for Paul to say light

and momentary affliction. Paul doesn't know what I'm going

through. No, but I know what Paul went

through. And you can find out what Paul

went through because in that same letter in Second

Corinthians, he tells us, he says five times I received 40

lashes -1 from the Jews, his own people.

Three times I was beaten with rods.

Once I received a stoning. For those of you like under the

age of 40, different type of stoning. 3 times I was

shipwrecked. I've spent a night and a day in

the open sea. On frequent journeys I face

dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers.

That's good alliteration right there.

Dangers from my own people, dangers from the gentiles,

Dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, Dangers that see

lots of dangers. Dangers from false brothers,

toil and hardship. Many sleepless nights, Hunger

and thirst, often without food, cold and without clothing.

And that's his momentary light affliction.

But he has joy. He has hope.

Does he get into points where it's dark?

Yeah. He has some moments in jail

where he feels alone, he feels defeated.

He needs people around him. But he never, ever, ever fully

loses his hope. He has peace because he knows

that that momentary light affliction is producing for him

an absolutely incomparable weight of glory.

He knows if he has Jesus, he has everything.

If he has Jesus, he has nothing to fear because everyone who has

Jesus, everyone who is in Jesus, they are secure.

Their future is secure. Why is Christian hope certain?

Because our future hope isn't tied to what we do or don't do.

It's tied to what Jesus did for us.

And what is done cannot be undone.

A lack of joy, a lack of peace is is.

Again, it's a warning sign. It's, it's a little light

flashing on the dash that maybe we're placing our hope in the

wrong spots and the wrong things that we've lost or are losing

sight of the true and certain hope that comes from knowing

Christ who is our hope. So let's pray this, pray and

just bow your heads, close your eyes for a minute.

Pray that God would pour out joy and peace on those around you

right now as they find it in Christ.

Pray that He would remind them of the truth of the gospel, the

certain hope, so they'd be filled up with joy and hope.

Today. Godfather, get our eyes fixed on

you so that we would be people who find peace and joy in the

midst of these momentary and what seems very much not like a

light affliction. Just help us to remember the

incomparable weight of glory that Christ has provided for us.

Your love and goodness towards us I pray, Amen.

Third thing I pray is I pray that you would believe.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you

believe. Hope, joy, peace.

They come through belief in Jesus.

I'm just going to say this straight out.

If you don't believe in Jesus and you're here today, you

should not have hope, shouldn't have peace because it's

delusional there. There is no hope apart from

Jesus Christ. And I don't want you to live in

a delusion. I don't want you to jump off the

building thinking you could fly and not realize till you hit the

bottom that you couldn't fly. But I also want you to know with

Jesus, no one is without hope, that there's no limit on who

Jesus made hope available for. That the hope that Jesus

provides is available to anyone and everyone who recognizes and

confesses him as Jesus and Lord. And when we do that, when we

believe in Jesus, then hope is ours.

It's a gift that's given to us, the joy and peace we receive

that I also want to say to some of you who are here who believe

that that's more than an intellectual ascent.

It's more than just a nodding of my head about a statement.

See, as you believe probably would be better translated as

you trust here, but you would have be filled up with joy and

peace as you trust, as you choose to walk in faith in what

Jesus has said, what Jesus has done, what God has promised,

even when your heart is struggling to feel it.

Belief shown through action that that's, that's where belief is

proven. That's where where faith's

proving ground is. Trust is not a passive thing.

It's not. It's not merely intellectually

believing an idea about something.

Jesus tells us that the demons believe and shudder because they

don't really believe. They know, but that's not where

their heart is. Choosing to act in congruence

with what we claim to know is what we need to do in order to

live out our faith. So, for example, here I believe

I'm fully forgiven and accepted not because of what I've done,

because of what Jesus did on the cross to wash my sins away.

My hope lies in the God who forgives my past because of what

Christ did for me. That should then mean this.

I'm not going to live in shame. I'm not going to hide my sin

away. I'm not going to hide my past

away. I'm going to live honestly, even

if it's costly to get honest about things.

And when I live like that, when I actually put what I believe

into practice, that's when joy and peace begin to fill up in

me. To just sit there and know

something is not enough. You have to trust.

You have to put it into action. And it's uncomfortable.

But Christianity is uncomfortable.

And in the uncomfortableness and the difficulty of it, that's

when the joy and peace comes. A lot of us, we want the joy and

peace without the trust. We want the feelings without the

faith. But Paul says all joy and peace

as you believe. So let me just ask us to pray

for this this morning again, Just bow your heads for a

moment. Just take distractions away.

Did you ask the Holy Spirit? Because He's the one who

convicts and convinces and shows us where we have things in our

life that we don't know ourselves.

Would you ask Him to reveal to you an area where you need to

live what you believe you're just not living in congruence

with what you claim to believe. It's an area of sin.

There's an area where you're failing to say yes to God in

something. Maybe you don't even know it, so

just ask Him to reveal it. And then would you pray this,

pray that God would grant anyone who is here who does not yet

believe that Jesus died for them, that they can be forgiven

and made clean. That God would do a work in them

to open their eyes to faith. And today, even today, would be

the day where they would place their trust in Jesus Christ as

Lord and Savior. God of hope, fill us up with joy

and peace that comes from believing that the gospel is

true, believing in such a way that we live as if it's true.

I pray for those who do not yet believe that you would open

their eyes to your great, great, great love for them and their

great, great, great need for you.

I pray for those who do believe that we would be people who more

and more would live the gospel that we have trusted in, that it

would shape and form us, and we would be shaped more into the

image and likeness of the Savior who saved us.

Amen. Now may the God of hope fill you

with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow

with hope. Fourth thing I pray for us is I

pray that we would be so filled with hope that it would

overflow. You know, people are looking for

hope. People are desperate.

We've we've already talked about that church.

We are in a time where there's a hope deficit.

You know what we have hope. How many of you have people

coming up to you on the regular saying, hey, just wondering why

you got so much joy and peace, why you're so hopeful?

I got to ask myself that question, how, how often am I

getting asked about the hope I have?

Because if I'm not getting asked, that's a problem.

First, Peter 315 Peter says, in your hearts regard Christ the

Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who

asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

There is an assumption that Christians will live in such a

way they're overflowing with hope.

Somebody's going to come up and ask what if?

Evangelism was a lot less of figuring out how to answer all

the questions that you're scared to answer, and more about

figuring out how to answer a question when someone says why

do you have hope? What?

Why do you have peace? I know what's going on in your

life. How can you have peace in the

midst of that? Why can you still have joy?

Let me let me suggest some of the questions that I think the

people of God should expect to receive and some answers that

you would hopefully be ready to give.

What if we got asked this question?

What if we live so differently in this age of anger and

frustration and irritation and outrage that people came to us

and they said, hey, notice you aren't angry and irritated and

frustrated all the time? Man, it would sure be nice if

most of the people I know who were not angry were were not

Christians. But I seem to find so many

Christians who are angry and irritated and outraged more than

anybody else. But what if we lived in such a

way that it showed up and you could say, because I know the

God who created this world, I know the Jesus who stepped into

this world and I know he's going to sort it out and I trust in

him. So I'm not anxious and fearful

and, and anger is usually just anxiety and fear showing up in a

different way. What what if, what if This was

the question. You got that person, man.

They're such a jerk to you. How can you still treat them

with grace and compassion and empathy the way they treat you?

Because I can tell you exactly what you can say.

Because I know a God who was gracious and kind to me when I

was a jerk when I haven't deserved it.

He has been so forgiving and compassionate to me.

What if the question you're receiving is, I know how

difficult everything that you are going through has been.

It looks awful, and yet somehow you've got peace and joy in the

middle of that. I would love to know how that's

possible. And you could look at that

person, you can say, because my peace is not rooted in my

circumstances, it's rooted in Jesus.

That's so listen, the answers you give to those questions are

going to be so more powerful in most people's lives than an

esoteric answer about how a good God can allow bad things to

happen. Those are important.

You should learn those. You should get to know those.

But the answer that every Christian should have is, why

does the gospel matter in your life?

How come you're changed? Our world needs people who know

the God of hope, who are filled with joy and peace through

believing and have that overflow into the world around us.

So let's pray this, and let's pray that it would start with

us, and then pray for everyone around us that God would make us

a church, a community of people who are overflowing with gospel

hope, peace and joy so that people couldn't help but ask

what's going on. God, work on us.

God, we don't want to just talk about this hope, peace, joy

stuff. We want to be so filled up it

flows out to a starving world around us and people are lining

up to ask what's going on. God help us to be able to point

to you in those moments in ways that are true and authentic and

resonate in ways that help people see how beautiful and

glorious you are in Jesus name, Amen.

And I want to end this with this.

I think this is really important.

We can't do any of this on our own, He says we do this by the

power of the Holy Spirit. So my prayer is that the Holy

Spirit would empower us to all of this.

You cannot work this up in you. This is not about white

knuckling up more hope. We need the Holy Spirit to show

up and get in US and give us this hope and work it up in US.

How does he do that? Well, he's the Spirit of all

truth, who guides us into all truth.

One of the things the Holy Spirit does, he takes those

promises, those certain truths, he brings them to mind inside of

us to give us hope. In those moments where this

where Satan is feeding us with lies and the world is on us with

stuff that just wants to pull us down in despair, we got the Holy

Spirit to remind us of the truth that we have hope and by

empowering us to do weird, uncomfortable things.

I know Baptists don't like this. The Holy Spirit is weird.

Christian Christianity is weird. And it's OK to embrace the

weirdness. It's OK to embrace the

uncomfortableness. We we need to be waking up in

the morning and praying. Holy Spirit guide and direct me

today and if you prompt me to go have a conversation with

somebody and say some words to them on behalf of you because

you want to speak in their life. I'm an open vessel, even though

that seems really weird and I'm really uncomfortable with it.

We we got to pray that if God isn't in this, it's not going to

happen. That that, that you would pray

that the Holy Spirit would allow you to be a conduit to point

people towards Jesus each day that they would see him at work

in you and you would be able to say, yeah, that's the Holy

Spirit that I got through Jesus. He's making me this way.

And to go out into the world and live in such a way that people

are like, oh, there could be a better, different way of living.

I'd like to learn more about that.

So let me just pray this and you can pray along with me.

Holy Spirit, we struggle to maintain hope.

We get our eyes so easily off God.

We forget the promises so quickly.

The words of this world sink in so quick and and rob us from the

truth of your word. And we need you to refocus us

and to remind us of what's true. We need you to empower us to

live lives of hope, even when it's a weird and uncomfortable

that we would live lives that would be a constant sign that

there is a God that is out there who moves in power and works.

And he didn't just do it back then, He's doing it now.

That you are the center and the source of all hope.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you

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

Holy Spirit. Hey church, today there's hope.

It's a hope that can fill you with joy and peace in any

circumstance, whatever you're going through.

Today there's hope because that hope is built on the certain

truth that Jesus died to save us and he's going to rescue us and

redeem us. And what he promises always

comes true. If you've got Jesus, you have

nothing to fear and everything to hope for.

So Live Today as people who believe that.

Live Today as people of hope, and pray that the Holy Spirit

would empower you into that hope in greater and more measure.

In all the days that lie ahead, let's sing together.