"Wild Hope"
Hope is not wishful thinking. It's much more than that. Hope is the confidence that if you do God's will, God will keep his promises to you.
God makes many promises. First of all, God promises to be there for you in times of trouble. You can count on God being there to strengthen you and carry you through difficult times. God doesn't promise to deliver you from difficult times, but gives you the strength to endure, to triumph, to be more than a conqueror over those things which would otherwise defeat you.
I don't know how many times I've talked to people who are going through horrible pain and agony in their lives-times of loss, times of suffering-and they've said to me, "If it wasn't for God's presence, if it wasn't for the strength that God gives me, I don't think I could make it." One woman said to me, "I never realized that Jesus is all there is until Jesus was all I had." Christ will help you in difficult times. That's a promise. Remember that.
The second thing that God promises to do is that God promises to make things good out of the difficult times. I mean in the midst of all the troubles, you can be sure that God's at work and God's going to be with you, and out of the difficulty something good will come. We live in that hope and that expectation that no matter how dark it may seem, there's light at the end of the tunnel, that God will bring something wonderful to pass.
I was speaking at a university in the state of Arkansas and I gave an invitation for people to accept Christ. This young woman came forward and accepted the Lord as her savior and became a transformed person because of her experience with Christ. A few years later I was back at that same school to speak again and as I spoke there was a couple and they wanted to talk to me after the service was over. They told me that their daughter had been an absolute mess. Counter-cultural to the hilt. I mean tattooed, messed up and into drugs and sexual stuff. Her life was a disaster and she broke her parents heart. She had accepted Christ when I was there that earlier time as a speaker, but then she went back to the dormitory after the service was over, wrote a letter to her mother, wrote a letter to her father asking for forgiveness, asking that they could be reconciled. She promised to come home that next weekend to go through this process of reconciliation. She wanted her parents to know that she had been changed by the power of God. She mailed the letter.
The next day, crossing the highway on her way to class she was hit by a truck and killed. They buried her, they put her in the grave, certain that their daughter was beyond hope, beyond any good thing. Three days after the burial the letter that their daughter had written came through the mail. The parents read the letter and out of their despair, out of their pain of the loss of the daughter, came this good glimmer of hope. A hope that one day they would see their daughter again because she had changed, she had given her life over to Christ. Out of the darkness, out of the dismay of the hour, God was at work and something good did come. It didn't minimize the tragedy; it did say that out of tragedy something good can happen. So remember, it's not over until it's over. That's an important thing to recognize.
The third thing that God promises, in addition to being there in times of trouble, in addition to bringing good out of the dark times, God promises this: he promises that he will never stop loving you. No matter what you've done, no matter what mess you've gotten into, God will not stop loving you.
I have a friend who's a pastor of a church in Brooklyn, a run down, beat up area of the city. He got a telephone call one day from the local funeral director who said that he had a funeral that nobody wanted to take. None of the ministers in the area wanted anything to do with this funeral. The man had died of AIDS. My friend, Jim, took the funeral.
I said, "What was it like?"
He said, "When I got there, there were about 30 homosexual men. They never looked up at me. Their heads were down and they stared at the floor the whole time I spoke. After the funeral service was over we got into the waiting automobiles and went out to the cemetery. I stood on one side of the grave with the undertaker and the homosexual men stood on the other side. They were frozen in place like statues. They seemed to be motionless. Not a nerve or sinew moved as I read Scripture and prayed. We lowered the body into the grave and I pronounced the benediction. I turned to leave and then I realized that none of them were moving. I turned back and I asked, 'Is there anything more I can do?'"
One of the men said, "Yes. They always read the 23rd Psalm at these things and you didn't do that. Would you read the 23rd Psalm?"
Jim said, "Certainly." And he did.
Another man spoke up and he said, "There is a passage in the 3rd chapter of John which says that the spirit of God goeth where it leadeth and you cannot tell on whom the spirit of God falls. Could you read that passage?" And he did.
And then one of the men said, "Would you read to me and to all of us that passage that talks about the love of God, that nothing can separate us from the love of God?"
And Jim said, "I turned to these homosexual men and I said quite simply this, 'Neither height nor depth nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come, neither life nor death, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'"
Jim said nothing was more thrilling than to say to these men, who had been so ostracized and hurt by the church, that God still loved them and that nothing could separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So there you have it. A God that keeps his promises. A God that says in difficult times, "In difficult days I will be with you. You can count on this. I will be your refuge and your strength. I will be there in times of trouble. You'll have troubles, but I will be there with you and I'll carry you through."
Secondly, we've got a God who promises that in the midst of all the terrible things that go on in our lives, all the heartbreak, all the suffering, God is with us and he will bring something good out of the tragedies of our existence, out of the pain, out of the sufferings of our everyday lives. He promises that.
And the third thing is this: he promises that he will never, never stop loving you. So hang in there, folks. Hang in there. Remember God will never give up on you. God will always be there for you. Live in the confidence that no matter what happens, God is your help and strength.
At the end of World War II, Winston Churchill was at a dinner and a man stood up and said, "At the Battle of the Bulge we had evidence that the British soldiers were braver than the Nazi soldiers. The Battle of the Bulge proved that." When Churchill got up to speak, he said, "That's not true. The Nazi soldiers were just as brave as the British soldiers. But the British soldiers were brave for five minutes longer."
That's what I'm telling you. When it all looks bleak and dark, hang in there. Hang in there! Don't give up. Never, never give up hope! Live in the confidence that the God who gave his Son Jesus on the cross will not turn his back on you. He'll be there. He'll be there to carry you through the difficult times and give you the strength to endure. He will be there to bring good out of the negative. He will be there. Do you hear me? He will be there loving you through all that goes on.
Nothing can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. No matter what you've done, no matter what has gone on in your life, you've got a God who can't help himself. Loving you is his nature and he will love you until the very end. Be of good cheer. Even in death he will be there and he promises eternal life to those who trust in him and walk according to his purposes.
Conversation with Tony Campolo
Daniel Pawlus: Tony, it is so good to see you. Thank you for joining us again this year with your busy schedule.
Tony Campolo: I love being here.
Pawlus: Well, we love having you. Don't we?
Lydia Talbot: Indeed.
Campolo: Good to be with you.
Pawlus: I wanted to say, I followed your travels this year and you've been everywhere: on the Stephen Colbert show, you've been working with Jim Wallis. What are you speaking about? Where is hope coming in these talks that you're giving around the country?
Campolo: You know, we live in a day and an age where politicians get elected by playing on our fears. In both parties, they're playing on our fears. They've got us so afraid and they say, "Trust me, vote for me and I will protect you." We need a new breed of leadership in America and I'm out there trying to challenge young people to be that new kind of leader, a leader that does not get a following by frightening people but by giving them hope for the future. The Bible says when the young no longer have dreams and the old no longer have visions, the people perish. I'm looking for a group of young people to come along, who believe that they can make the world a better place rather than just being afraid that they're going to be destroyed by the enemy. I'm trying to breed hope and that's what I do. I go around preaching hope to a bunch of kids who need to be hopeful and be visionaries.
Talbot: I'm so glad you discerned the difference between hope and wishful thinking. It's not optimism. But say more about that, Tony. What are the greatest sins against hope?
Campolo: Well, I think the greatest sin against hope is fear. Sometimes we get so fearful that we are consumed by our fear. But perfect love for Christ casts out fear. The more you love God, the more you trust in God, the less fearful you will be. There's a great line that is used often: We don't know what the future holds but we know who holds the future. That delivers us from fear. The Apostle Paul says you don't even have to be afraid of death. "O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?" We don't have to be afraid. We've got a God who gives us hope.
Talbot: So hope is the thing that is always there, even when your worst fears are realized?
Campolo: Well, my worst fears are never realized. That's the good news of the Gospel. The greatest fear I have is despair, that there will be a time of hopelessness. That's my greatest fear. My greatest fear is that fear will conquer me and drive me to despair. The good news of the Gospel is that God won't let that happen if you trust in him.
Talbot: Despair, but also presumption. Isn't that also a negative aspect or reaction to it?
Campolo: Of course. And people have this idea that if they are godly and they pray that nothing bad will happen to them.
Talbot: An immature presumption, a self-willed presumption.
Campolo: I'm a Christian and so God is going to keep me from having troubles. God's going to keep me from sorrow. God's going to keep me from difficulty. Oh no! The rains fall on the just and the unjust. But here's the old hymn: if you build your house upon the rock, when the storms come you have this hope. You will endure. You will survive. You will be more than a conqueror.
Pawlus: I want to ask you, Tony, about your book, "Speaking My Mind." And I've heard you talk about calling yourself a "red-letter" Christian these days. Why don't you explain a little bit what you mean by that.
Campolo: Well, there's a group of us who are very concerned because in America today Christianity has become politicized. If you say to somebody, "I'm an evangelical Christian," there's an immediate presumption that you're part of the religious right. Now the answer to the religious right is not to create a religious left. We need a Jesus that transcends partisan politics. When anybody asks me if I'm a Democrat or a Republican, I always have to ask a question in return: "Please cite the issue." On some issues I'm a Democrat, on some issues I'm a Republican.
To make Jesus a partisan, to make him the God of one political party is what is happening in today's world. So when somebody says I'm religious, I'm evangelical, I'm Christian, people get nervous and say, "Oh. You're one of those right wing people " Jesus isn't right. Jesus isn't left. Jesus is just and worked for justice for the poor and the oppressed. And what it means to be a "red-letter" Christian is to go to those verses of Scripture that are in red letters, the teachings of Jesus. And you'll find that Jesus is radical but Jesus is not a radical Republican or Democrat. Radical in the sense of a life of love lived out with commitment to the poor and the needy of the world.
Talbot: And how does that speak to religious diversity, Tony?
Campolo: Well, I think this. That whether you're on the political right or on the political left, whether you're a Catholic or a Protestant, or for that matter a Muslim or a Jew, you can say this. You can say that what ever God is about, you will find that God is about helping the poor and the needy of the world. You know, that's what I love about addressing the needs of the poor and the oppressed, that every religion of the world calls us to do that. I don't have to compromise being a Christian to work with a Muslim or a Jew when addressing the needs of the poor. I don't have to become less than an evangelical Christian, or a red-letter Christian as I'm now calling myself, just because I'm opposed to war, just because I'm opposed to capital punishment, because I can contend that if you go to the heart of the great religions you will find mercy and love and generosity and compassion at the heart of all of them. In fact, I say to my Muslim brothers and sisters, you don't have to become what I am in order to be committed to these good things that I'm talking about.
Talbot: And there is a piece of God on everybody.
Campolo: Let's hope so. We are all in the image of God.
Talbot: Hope. I love that notion of boundless, abounding in hope in St. Paul's letter to the Romans. Maya Angelou says to survive is important but to thrive is elegant. Tell me more about hope in your personal life. Have you ever been on that chasm? Has it ever been hard to hold on to for you?
Campolo: There have been times.
Talbot: What times?
Campolo: When there is sickness in my family, when my mother was ill. I mean, there are times when you say, "Why doesn't God act? Why doesn't God intercede? Why doesn't God deliver us from this mess?" I want to say this: to be Christian, to be a person of hope is to be more defined by the future than the past. More defined in terms of what you expect will happen in tomorrow and that day after that. So many people are prisoners to their past. I contend, stop looking at the past. The Apostle Paul says this: "Forget those things which are behind and press on to the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." God has something wonderful in store for you. If you believe that there's something wonderful up ahead of you, you are a person of hope.
Talbot: And so if faith puts us on the road, it's hope that keeps us there.
Campolo: Amen.
_____________________________________________________________________
Please right-click the link to display your browser's "save as" options.
We encourage you to purchase