Hope for Your Heart: Finding Strength in Life's Storms (11 page)

Few places on earth depict the story of early Christians and the struggles they faced more than the dusty catacombs beneath modern-day Rome. Take a journey back in time and picture yourself there in those beginning days of persecution and hardship. You leave the bright light of day to enter a maze of dark tunnels and cramped chambers carved into soft bedrock.

You’ve come here with other believers, outlaws under the watchful eye of Roman authorities, to say good-bye to one of your beloved—and brutally martyred—friends. The stale air is heavy with the odors of death and dank earth.

Your fear grows more intense with each step. Keenly aware that without warning soldiers could suddenly appear from out of the shadows and arrest you, you wonder whether you might be the next one carried sorrowfully into these tombs. What horrors might you suffer before you die? Are you strong enough to endure them?

Just when you fear that terror and despair may overwhelm you, your roving eyes spot a few symbols carved into the stone walls around you. The image of a fish reminds you that Jesus Himself was persecuted and killed by His enemies; a dove brings to mind the Holy Spirit’s constant, comforting presence in your life.

Then suddenly you see another symbol etched deep into the archway just above your head. This one impacts you the most. This one takes you out of the present stench of suffering and death and transports you into the future glory awaiting you in heaven. This symbol reminds you not only that Jesus suffered and died, but also how He was able to endure it.

The words burn into your mind: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Heb. 12:2–3).

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus . . . who for the joy set before him endured the cross.” Again and again the words echo in your mind. Jesus wasn’t focused on His circumstances but on His hope . . . on the guaranteed joy of being in heaven with the Father.

What did you see on that archway? What was able to so amply strengthen your resolve? You saw the image of an
anchor
. Someone walked this way before and left a message to encourage you: “There is hope. . . . Your story will not end here in these dark catacombs. . . . This will not be the final chapter. . . . God will hold you steady in the storm and see you all the way through it to heaven.Have courage!Have hope! Your anchor holds!”

When persecuted Christians took time to carve images of anchors into the stone of the catacombs, it was not just a way of affirming their belief that despite appearances they were not adrift.
They were trying to
encourage those who would follow in their footsteps.

Yes, a sustained, terrifying “storm” raged all around them, but they had a powerful anchor that enabled them to focus not on their physical plight but on their spiritual supply . . . not on their temporal situation but on their eternal destiny . . . not on themselves but on their witness to a dying world.

Wind and waves howled, but God’s people were steadied by something indestructible. And that something was hope, from which sprang forth courage.

Today those same symbols—the fish, the dove, and the anchor—are still around . . . on key chains, car bumpers, Bible covers, coffee mugs. Yet we barely notice them, much less find in them an inspiring source of hope. What has changed?

Do we trust God less? Do we need Him less? Are faith-testing times a thing of the past?

Certainly not, but you might not know it by looking at the relative comfort in which we live. The danger in great abundance is thinking,
This is how life should be
. Unlike our ancestors who patiently waited for lulls between storms, we all too often expect the sea to be storm-free.

An attitude of
entitlement
misleads many into thinking that hope in God always results in
relief
from trials when it more often gives us
cour
age
to endure our trials. As much as we resist the idea, it’s not always in our best interest to anesthetize our pain or avoid trials.

A woman named Linda called me on
Hope In The Night
because she had begun to lose hope in the face of intense suffering and injustice. Here are her comments and my response:

One thing I’ve noticed all my life is that mean-spirited people seem on top of the world. . . . Everything seems to go their way. Then you see God-fearing, good-hearted people who would give the shirt off their back have one misfortune after another.

It seems it doesn’t matter whether you’re a good person or not. I counsel, and I’m confronted with suffering all the time. I have felt hopelessness. I have cynicism. What can I impart to others? How can I encourage them? How can I help myself and help bring others out of hopelessness?

First of all I would deal with the issue of God’s perspective and God’s involvement in the lives of those yielded to Him. Our God is a God of hope. If I use “hope” in our common vernacular it means an optimistic desire that something will be fulfilled, but it’s subject to change.

The biblical meaning of hope is very different . . . an optimistic desire with an assurance of fulfillment. It’s absolutely
assured
. If God tells us there is hope in a particular area of our lives, we can go to the bank with it! The word
hopelessness
is absolute despair of having any expectation of good or of success.

Right.

But when you yield your will to the Lord, Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” Biblical hope is not just a distant desire, hope is not a feeling, but rather it’s a gift from God. Hope is His anchor for our souls that He has already thrown out upon the sea of life, to stabilize our hearts and lives.

If in the ring you knock a boxer down enough times, he just can’t get back up.
What can you do to keep people from getting to that brink?

We have Jesus as the Anchor for our souls and an example for our lives. He was hit with everything His enemies could throw at Him. He was berated, betrayed, and brutalized, but He was never without hope. If we are to be Christlike, we, too, are going to be persecuted. What we
can
do in the midst of that persecution is: Make a difference in our own personal world . . . be instruments of His love and His grace . . . and thereby change hearts and lives.

Here’s the bottom line: Before we can let hope fill our hearts with courage, it’s necessary to remember why we need hope in the first place. So let’s talk about storms.

When average Americans reach age sixty-five, they will have seen two million commercials on television.
¹
Two
million!
The predominant message in those advertisements is, “All you need is the right
stuff
to make your troubles disappear (car, clothes, house, hot tub, retirement account). Life is meant to be one long vacation. You deserve nothing less.”

And we want this stuff
now
. . . not
after
we’ve worked hard and sacrificed. The collective credit card debt in the United States alone is testimony to that.

Ask young people about their generation’s top life goals and the answer is clear and resounding: They want to be rich and famous. . . . 81% of 18–25 year-olds surveyed in a Pew Research Center poll said getting rich is their generation’s most important or second-most-important life goal; 51% said the same about being famous.
²

Clearly, our secular society has driven home the message that fame and wealth are not only desirable above all else, but they’re God-given rights. Television advertisements present life as one smooth sail . . .
until reality hits
. Troublesome times and turbulent storms quickly drown out such superficial media portrayals.

What TV commercials don’t show is that there is far more “want” in the world than “plenty,” and storms of all kinds have devastated millions of lives.

When it comes to life pursuits, Jesus paints an entirely different picture. What is the greatest commandment? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37–39 esv). Concerning the most important pursuits in life, Jesus tells us to love God and to love our neighbor. The world tells us to love money and to love fame.

The irony is, young people today are even less likely than their parents to attain the wealth and fame they seek.

Monetary realities are far bleaker for this generation than what their parents experienced. . . . These young people may well be dreaming when they envision futures filled with money and fame.
³

In fact, all of us are “dreaming” when we put our hope in a life without trouble, tribulation, or sacrifice. We want to be rich and famous in order to finance or finagle our way out of storms. Christians often think that way too. We hope that becoming a believer will give us a “get out of trouble free” card. Who needs courage when we can simply escape into comfort and ease?

In Psalm 23 we eagerly read, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” (v. 6 esv) without considering the courage it takes to “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (v. 4 esv), trusting in God’s purposes, relying on His strength, learning huge life lessons through hardship.

Although the world turns a blind eye, consider the following two aspects about life’s storms.

The truth is, life is
not
easy. At the same time, some lessons in life can only be learned the hard way, for it’s through the fire that true character is forged. Even Jesus, the perfect Son of God, suffered for the purposes of maturing and proving. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8).

And because Jesus suffered, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15), but rather we have a High Priest who not only prays for us but who anchors us when storms come.

When we spend our time believing that we should have nothing but blue skies, we are dangerously unprepared when storm clouds gather. We try to deny or outrun bad weather, but when it is unavoidable, we should face the storm, drop anchor, and courageously hang on to hope.

And we must never forget we are not alone or ill-equipped to face the storm. “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Pet. 1:3).

All the virtues—what Paul called the fruit of the Spirit (“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” Gal. 5:22-23)—are only lofty concepts until they’ve been tested under fire.

How can we build up courage without being afraid? How can we develop perseverance without being weary? How can we become merciful without being wronged? And how can we come to trust everything to God’s steadfast love unless it seems our very lives depend on it?

At the intersection between hardship and hope stands a present-day hero. Sam Johnson grew up in Dallas, Texas, and began a twenty-nine-year career in the U.S. Air Force at age twenty.
⁴
He eventually served as Director of the Air Force Fighter Weapons School (“Top Gun”). During the Korean War, Sam flew sixty-two combat missions and named his F-86
Shirley’s Texas Tornado
after his wife Shirley.

Returning to the United States, Sam flew with the world-renowned Air Force Thunderbirds precision flying team. But as the Vietnam War intensified, Sam was called back into active duty.

On April 16, 1966, during his second tour of duty, Sam was flying his twenty-fifth combat mission in his F-4 Phantom when a barrage of enemy fire sent his plane spiraling downward over North Vietnam. He survived the impact but suffered a broken arm, dislocated left shoulder, and broken back—injuries his captors exploited in their constant efforts to gain information from him.