The Need to Share Our Blessed Hope in Christ

One of the few things that I enjoy during a 12 hour flight from LA to here is that I can FINALLY catch up on some of the movies that I don’t have time to watch while I’m in the States. And flying an airline that provides you with your own movie screen is great because you can pick and choose those movies.

During this last flight, I watched an independent film entitled “HENRY POOLE is HERE.” According to the movie’s synopsis, this is a comedic drama about a disillusioned man who goes hiding in placid suburbia only to discover he cannot escape the forces of hope. Returning to the middle class neighborhood where he grew up, Henry chooses to live in indulgent isolation. Real life, however, refuses to cooperate with his plans. Nosy neighbors interrupt him with curious visits and prying questions. Then the situation escalates as a stain on Henry's stucco wall is seen to have miraculous powers. His last-ditch hideout becomes a shrine; his backyard turns into an arena for passionate debate about faith and destiny. Seeking anonymous oblivion, cynical Henry Poole instead finds himself right at the center of the human comedy. This modern-day fable investigates the unexpected wonders of the everyday. A faithless man finds hope. A hopeless man finds love. Whether backyard miracles are real or triggered by hope and belief, their personal effects are permanent.

“Henry Poole is Here” was a sharp reminder to me that people around us are always looking for something to believe in. That’s the underlying premise and overarching emotion in the movie. You see that in the next door neighbor’s daughter who hadn’t spoken in over a year, but, after touching what looks like the face of Jesus on the stucco wall, her speech returns. Then there’s the grocery store clerk whose eyesight is restored after she also touches the wall.

The focus of the movie was all about hope but it made me sad to realize how desperately people want to BELIEVE in miracles that they will worship a stain on a stucco wall. Or they will travel to the town of Lourdes in southern France between March to October because they believe the

spring water from the grotto possesses healing properties. I have friends in CA who would travel regularly to Međugorje, a town located in western Herzegovina in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This town is best known due to reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary which appeared to six Herzegovinian Croats since 24 June 1981, and is now visited by pilgrims from around the entire world as a shrine. Being a predominantly Catholic country, the Philippines has more than its share of places where people will travel to be healed or to experience a miracle, like the shrine of Our Lady of Manaoag in Pangasinan.

And yet, here we are, believers in the Lord Jesus. We actually have the true message of hope and yet, are we doing our part to share this message to those around us who are looking for hope in all the wrong places, like in that stain on someone stucco wall that looks like the face of Christ or in Lourdes or in numerous shrines around the Philippines?

But, I also realize that before we can share this glorious message with anyone, we need to live lives that exemplify our hope. That's really our first obligation, to LIVE in hope.

“Hope” is found 131 times in the Bible in 121 verses. At its most basic definition, hope is the Christian's attitude toward the future. Hope is believing God for the future. Hope believes in what God has promised to do. In the Isidro Annotated New Testament, my Dad calls this “an upward and forward hope.” That’s a great way of looking at hope – upward and forward! My dad goes on to say, “As believers in Jesus Christ, we now have a new, positive and glorious future. This is towards the appearance in glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.” This hope that should characterize our lives is a living hope. My dad’s annotation of I Peter 1:3-12 goes on to say, “It is a hope that is certain to be fulfilled. And that hope is our ultimate glorification forever.”

But, why should we live in hope? The short answer is “Because it glorifies God.” Here’s how John MacArthur described it: when we truly trust God for the future, we are affirming by that trust that God is trustworthy and, as a result, God is glorified when we trust Him. As a believer who has received God's grace and who has seen that God was faithful in the past and is faithful in the present, we should live in the hope that God will be faithful in the future. By having this mindset, we give Him glory.

When we live lives that show to the world our hope in a God who keeps His promises to us, a covenant keeping God, this hope glorifies God and the result is that others around us who don’t know the Lord will want to know how they, too, can have this same hope.

So, here we are in a new year that God has graciously given to us – a new year that always starts out with great promise and bright hopes for a good future. Counting today, we have 336 more days to share our faith with people who are looking for meaning in their lives; people who need the Lord; people who need HOPE.

This is the awesome message of HOPE that we must share: that everyone can have “a new, positive and glorious future” by putting their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the best and the most loving thing that we can do for others – to share with them this blessed hope of Christ’s love and His promise that if they will put their trust and faith in Him, they, too, will be with Him forever in glory!

So, this is my challenge to myself and to all of us in 2009: may we all have the courage to share our “upward and forward hope” in Christ to everyone whom God brings into our lives. God bless you today and always!