Millions of sermons each year focus on faith and love.  We are taught that without faith it is impossible to please G-d.  We are encouraged to show compassion on our fellow man, but the Church has failed because there is little or no focus on one of the most critical components in our lives, hope.

A man who has just lost his job needs hope.  People who have lost their homes need hope.  The person who has lost his or her spouse needs hope.  The child who has lost a parent needs hope.  The parent of a terminally ill child needs hope.   Even the average person struggling to maintain in today's faltering economy needs hope.  Christians believe that if a person has enough faith, he or she will have hope, but sometimes our faith falters and we need a jump start.  We need to see a light at the end of a dark, desolate tunnel. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, not the other way around.

The church focuses on faith and love and peace and longsuffering, traits that we, as Christians, should obviously cultivate and possess, but that is not enough.  We cannot impart faith.  We cannot give a person the ability to love.  We cannot hand a person peace or longsuffering, but we can give a person hope.   If you are wondering how you can possibly give another person hope, you have just proved my point.  In fact, like everyone else, you probably avoid people who feel hopeless because you subconsciously believe that hopelessness is a contagious disease.

It takes more than preaching and teaching and a moving worship service to edify the body. We must also encourage others around us.   We must bear one another's burdens.  We must lend a hand and an ear and bring hope to the desolate by holding them and showing them the very real possibilities of today and tomorrow and then we must walk with them.  Hope is one of the few things that we can give to others but very few people know how because they are taught that Christians automatically have hope by default.  If a person is a Christian, how can he or she feel hopeless?  If a person feels hopeless, let's remind them of faith and love and longsuffering and peace... FAIL!

Think about it for a minute.  Faith gives life to something you hope to see or hope will happen.  Faith is the substance of things hoped for, not the other way around.    Faith is the evidence not seen, not the evidence of things of things that don't exist.  A prayer of faith may be the beginning to something that currently does not exist, but first there must be a seed of hope to form that prayer.

Hopelessness walks the razor sharp edge of depression and people are indoctrinated to believe that it is not possible for a Christian to be depressed, yet depression is rampant in the church.  People are silently suffering in the pews and no matter how long or loud they repeat some mantra, hope will not magically appear in their hearts.

It has been a rough couple of years for us.  My wife has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, our rising medical bills are insurmountable, my father passed away and I recently lost my job.  We won't even talk about what the doctors say about my heart.  There is no money for continued medical care, heat for the house, food, transportation, and every other thing that most people take for granted.  Talk about feeling hopeless!

During our literal struggle to survive, my wife and I have received few encouraging words from others.  In fact, our lives have spiraled into the abyss of deafening silence because Christians simply don't know how to respond to someone in a hopeless situation.

If believers cannot give hope to their own, how can they be expected to bring hope to a dying world?

When it comes to hope, the Church is a colossal failure.

What are you going to do about it?

Can someone tell me why I have included the following non-Christian video in this post?

Yeha Noha

• Topic: Devotionals

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