Sister Teri Sunday School 11/10/13

Sister Teri Sunday School 11/10/13

This study is on the thought of true hope and having our hope based on truth.

Hopelessness, the world is full of people that are feeling this hopelessness.  They will look for things that will get them out of this hopelessness.  If people get to despair then they may commit suicide. 

People are full of hopelessness and are not looking to the true hope for whatever reason.  We can show them this hope and they must grasp it by faith.  There is no help elsewhere.

I felt that a situation that I was praying for was hopeless.  It was attacking my faith.  Twelve spies went out to spy out the situation in Canaan.  Two returned and said, “our God is well able.”  The enemy is out to attack our faith.

If the enemy can rob us of our faith then he can rob us of our hope.

Hopelessness, I want you to get a sense of it:  having no expectation of good or success, despairing. 

1. Giving no ground of hope or expectation of good; promising nothing desirable; desperate; as a hopeless condition.

A state of being desperate, or affording no hope.

A synonym for hopelessness is unredeemable. Another is despair.  Despair means to lose all hope.

2Co 4:8  We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;

2Co 4:9  Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;

Perplexed is feeling there is no way out.  We are not in despair or utterly without a loss or resource.  We don’t have to renounce our hope because our hope is in God. 

Charles Swendol - “Anything in God’s control is never out of control.”

If we place our hope and confidence in God then we don’t have to feel in the depths of despair.

The challenge is getting our eye off of the situation.  When we look just on it then it looks hopeless.  When we get our eye of that and look at God then we see things as they are.  We must take our eyes off of our own reasoning, our own thoughts and our sense that we have to do something about it.

Job went through this battle.

Job 17:1  My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me.

Job 17:7  Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.

The fountain within me is weak and nearly dried up.  My distress and grief has overtaken me and my mind is clouded and dull.  All my members are as a shadow.

Job 17:11  My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart.

My life is over, my reason for living is past, all my plans have been torn from me, even the things that most occupied my heart and my affection.

Job lost everything except his wife who was no encouragement to him.  Satan may have left his wife to discourage him.  She was a part of the battle. 

His friends tried to question his experience.  People have a prosperity doctrine.  They think that God will make them prosper and then when things go wrong they question.  Our confidence needs to be in God instead of the blessings.

Accusations worked on Job from without and probably from within.  When things change suddenly and there is grief, there is a battle in that, a regrouping and trying to find, “What is my life about now?”

Job 17:12  They change the night into day: the light is short because of darkness.

Those purposes and things were what lightened my days and made my life worth living.  Without them there is only darkness and brief glimpses of light.

Job 17:13  If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.

I am as bedridden in darkness.

Job 17:14  I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister.

My spirit feels more closely aligned with the grave then with life and help.

Job 17:15  And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it?

Where is my lifeline, my expectancy, and what I longed for and lived for. 

He couldn’t think that he would live to see any more joy.  There was nothing remaining but to await death.

Job 17:16  They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust.

He believed it was useless to pick up new hopes.  They would only die with him.

Job 23:1  Then Job answered and said,

Job 23:2  Even to day is my complaint bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning.

Job 23:3  Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!

Job 23:4  I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.

Job 23:5  I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would say unto me.

Job 23:6  Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me.

He was so desiring to get before God and ask Him face to face, “What is going on here?”  Would God accuse him as his friends did?  No the spirit of God says, “This is the way, walk in it.”  He doesn’t want to see us hopeless but with strength and going through to victory.

Job 23:7  There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge.

Job 23:8  Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him:

Job 23:9  On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him:

Job 23:10  But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

Job finally got a hold of that hope.  Even thought he couldn’t perceive God around him he got a hold of that lifeline.  “I know that I have pleased God.  I know that I have lived righteous before Him.”

He couldn’t ask God face to face, God had stepped back; that was a part of the trial. 

Job 23:11  My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.

He knew himself and that he had not strayed from the path that God had set for him.  We need to know where we stand and that we have not gone back from what He has showed us.

Job 23:12  Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.

Do we know that we love God more than anything else?  If we do then we can stand when the enemy brings an accusation against us.

Job 23:13  But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth.

Job knew that if God had purpose in it then it would work to his good and no struggling would deliver him from the trial. He needed to stay there until God had accomplished his purpose.

Streams In the Desert 2:

Through the wearisome hours of a sorrowful night. 
I had prayed for a morning to break… 
‘Til he prayed through the morn through the sorrowful night. 
He knoweth his own and I go not alone. 
So as I journey through darkness and light…
He knoweth the way, the way if his own
And I take it with him not alone, not alone

Job 23:14  For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him.

As we go through the trial we may pendulum from encouragement to discouragement, but if we lift our eyes to God then we can make it through.

Job 42:10  And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.

Job 42:11  Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.

Job 42:12  So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.

Job 42:13  He had also seven sons and three daughters.

Job 42:14  And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch.

Job 42:15  And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren.

Job 42:16  After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations.

Job 42:17  So Job died, being old and full of days.

Many times when we are in a midst of a hopeless grievous situation, it looks like there is no future and nothing good would ever be on our path again.  It is probably not true.  God will turn things around.  We saw someone in New Jersey who had a terrible loss beyond what he thought.  He could see no hope.   Today, eight years later, he is extremely happy.  God can turn things about.  Some is just a natural thing in life.

Our hope is in God.

Charles Spurgeon - We have faith hope and charity.  Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened.

D O Teasley – Tie the cable to hope and then when storms rise your anchor is sure.

When Job was in this horrible situation, when people are thinking of suicide, they are in a circle that they go through again and again.  If they can get their eyes off of that then they can break the circle.  Job was told to pray for his friends.  This got his eyes off of his situation.  He began praising God and that broke it.

Tie the cable to hope and then when storms rise your anchor is sure.

Song: Have we any hope within us of a life beyond a grave in that fair and vernal land…  We have a hope within our soul, brighter than a perfect day.  God has given us His Spirit and we want the world to hear it, all our doubts have passed away.