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
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
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
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.