Resolution 3 - Hope

Transcribed from our YouTube video:
10 Resolutions for the MediaWise.church - Resolution 3 - Hope

The telltale sign of misplaced hope is anger. We don’t notice it at first. But it quickly rises to the surface and erupts into its recognizable forms: 

the increased heart rate, the heightened blood pressure, maybe even an angry Facebook post or a triggered response to a friend.

Counterfeit hopes collapse with little or no agitation at all. 

A quick survey of the wreckage should find us aban-don-ing it altogether, but instead we argue with one another, but mostly ourselves, until we are satisfied that the flimsy structure of false hope has been sufficiently mended. It’s a marvel of emotional architecture.

In Romans 15:13, Paul reminds us that true hope results in joy AND peace and that you can actually abound in hope through faith. A sweet combination of “believing and the power of the Holy Spirit”. 

Abounding in hope is unlimited hope, never running out, never exceeding its supply of comfort, joy, or peace.

Financial crises, health emergencies, pandemics, elections… 

these are the litmus tests for our hope. These are the times when the PH of our hearts is raised to dangerously acidic levels, and the false hopes of this life prove ineffective in neutralizing the toxicity.

Hope in wealth or financial systems, hope in technology, hope in politicians or political ideologies.

Hope is not a word we should use to describe these untested, unproven, uncertain, unlikely solutions to problems that are fundamentally matters of the heart. 

This includes technical solutions, such as the speculative benefits of cryptocurrency for example. 

Presented as a fix to the worlds corrupt and broken financial markets, but entirely impotent to matters of the heart. And if the heart remains unchanged, there is no hope, and these new systems will continue to be harnessed, as they always have been, for oppression, for corruption, and for inequality.

Hope is not found in our expectations of an elected official, or a political party, as it relates to how we want our government involved, or uninvolved, in our pursuit of comfort, peace or joy… or life, liberty and happiness. 

We certainly can not storm the government, when our hopes are crumbling. If our hopes are crumbling, then they were simply false hopes.

Isaiah 28:15 condemns this entirely, as nothing more than “making lies our refuge”, and “taking shelter in falsehood.”

No, we do not set anchor in these tumultuous, deceitful waters. This is not hope. The anchor will not hold.

Take for example the tech industry. They are really struggling to deal with the sinful reality of this fallen world. A reality where freedom of speech is highly esteemed, but in that freedom, it is the lies and the evils of this world that spread faster and further across all major platforms. They are overrun with disinformation, and the problem has no trivial solutions.

Parler, for example, demonstrated itself to be a cesspool of anarchy, with plots to overthrow the government, playing a role in what happened in the American Capitol on January 6th. And yes, in the short term, Parler needed to be taken down. The coordinated efforts for additional attacks continued to simmer and boil on that platform, and minimizing the reach of those messages is instrumental in preventing even greater violence and saving lives.

All that to say, it’s a real conundrum that - in the long term, is not solved by banning services, or by giving these services the ability to self govern. Our hope is not in technology.

It is indeed hopeless. Some blockchain social platform will emerge. It will champion free speech, as some sort of resistance to censorship, all the while enabling all the evils the human heart can muster, dwarfing even what we’re seeing today on Twitter, Facebook or Parler.

So, today there is a mass effort to purge disinformation and lies from social media, we must also expect that one day this same tech will facilitate and expedite the persecution of truth. 

But our hope is not in technology, and we can not be found spinning our wheels fighting on this battle front either. Our hope is not to bubble wrap our lives to escape persecution or hardships.

No. Our hope is in Christ.

Revelation 12 verse 11 speaks directly to the hope of the believer.

“And they have conquered [the accuser] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

Our hope is in the blood of the Lamb, not technology, not the PR campaigns of social media and viral messaging. Our hope is not in petitions or protests, the mobs or the riots. Our hope is not in governments or political leaders. Not even church leaders.

And did you catch that, conquering is on the basis of our “testimony”. Words about what God has done in our hearts and lives. Our feeble attempts to describe the “peace that surpasses all understanding”.

The church conquers with the testimony of our hope in Christ, and Christ alone. Our only testimony. That is our victory. This is the anthem of the MediaWise.church project.

And lastly this is a victory championed by those who do not love their lives. 

To love our lives would be to seek comfort and divert our resources resisting “oppression”, fighting for our “rights”, doing everything we can to escape the hardships that Jesus himself promised. 

If our hope is in politicians, know this, they will fail. If our hope is in governments, they will fail. If our hope is in technologies, they will fail.

The resolve of the MediaWise.church must be to, as Peter says it so eloquently, “set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Horatio Spafford captured the solemnity of this moment, the trumpet blast that ushers in the return of Christ, when he wrote the lyrics, 

“The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend. Even so it is well with my soul”.

Even so. Those two words lodge a sizable lump in my throat.

Even so. In spite of the fact that Jesus is returning to make right all the crimes of this world, of which I am a guilty accomplice.

In spite of all the judgment I deserve, in spite of my countless actions that deny any love for the Lord. Our hope is not in our actions. They simply betray any inkling of hope. No, our hope is in the actions that made forgiveness for our sins possible, and those actions were entirely His. 

Even so, our hope is in His grace. It is well with my soul.