The Hope Choice
by Beverly Marshall-Goodell
Isaiah 61:1-3
July 19, 2015
It doesn’t rain much in Southern California, and it rarely rains enough to cause any flooding.
However, several years ago is rained so hard that a portion of Lake Forest actually flooded.
A story is told that the Orange County Register sent out a reporter in a boat
to check on flood victims.
When he found a woman sitting on her roof, he climbed up to interview her.
They watched a Weber barbeque float by, followed by a golden retriever on his dog house.
Next they saw an SUV drift past the house.
A few minutes later they saw a hat float by, but when it got about twenty feet past the house,
it began to float back upstream until it had gone twenty feet past the house the other way.
Then it started floating downstream again.
The reporter watched the hat moving back and forth seven or eight times
before he asked the woman if she knew how the hat kept going downstream and then up.
“Oh, that’s my crazy husband.
He said he was going to mow the lawn, come hell or high water.”
The problem with many of us is that we are still focusing on the lawn
when our home is floating away.
Today we will consider two of God’s blessings in disguise: grief and pain,
and how they can help us tap into God’s power.
Please follow along on the screen as we hear from Isaiah 61:1-3
Scripture-Isaiah 61:1-3
The spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to
preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim
freedom for the captives, and to release from darkness for the prisoners; to proclaim the year of
the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, and provide
for those who mourn in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of
gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be
called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord, for the display his splendor.
Prayer
Ever present God, help us recognize the pain of our grief as a sign that we need your help.
We need your power to let go of the hurts from our past.
We need your power to be free from our hang-ups about not being good enough.
We need your power to break the bad habits that haunt us.
Help us find love and genuine intimacy with you so that we can love others
and receive love from them. Amen.
Message
We all have broken areas in our lives, things that bring us grief and pain.
When we carry a hurt for a long time,
we can come to find our identity in our hurt and become a victim.
Some people try to escape their pain by using drugs or alcohol.
Others may try to control those around them with anger.
As we work through the eight healthy choices identified in the beatitudes
from Jesus’ sermon on the mount this summer,
we will each come face-to-face with truths about ourselves we have tried to hide.
Then we will experience the hurt and sense of loss that accompanies our mourning.
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The Hope Choice
by Beverly Marshall-Goodell
Isaiah 61:1-3
July 19, 2015
When we mourn over our past mistakes or our loss of control, God leads us into His comfort.
As the beatitude for this choice says, “Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Everyone has regrets from their past.
We wish we hadn’t made those dumb decisions,
wish we hadn’t spoken in haste and anger,
wish we had another chance to make things right.
We have all hurt people, and have been hurt by others.
And, even though we were never really in control, we thought we were.
Facing up to that fact brings a sense of real loss.
Mourning is what happens when we finally face the truth of Choice 1:
we truly are powerless to control our tendency to do wrong and our lives are unmanageable.
The good news for us today is that mourning can serve as a pathway to comfort,
and to the help and hope God has ready for us.
God’s promise to us is clear in our reading from the prophet Isaiah this morning.
That promise includes, “a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”
The pain of our grief over our hurts, hang-ups and habits is God’s antidote for our denial.
C.S. Lewis once said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience,
but shouts in our pain.”
Just because God allows pain to enter our lives does not mean God causes our pain.
Sometimes our pain is the consequence of our poor choices or the poor choices of others.
God loves us, and wants to lead us out of pain into his healing.
Yet far too often, we deny our pain and refuse to accept God’s help in healing
our hurts, hang-ups and habits.
Instead of denying our pain, we could all benefit from claiming God’s denial busters,
and accepting God’s power to help us recover from the pain of our sin.
People rarely change when life is easy and comfortable.
Instead, we change when God gets our attention through three denial busters:
crisis, confrontation and catastrophe.
Remember Joe from last week’s message?
His drug and alcohol use had been a problem for years, but he was not motivated to change
until a cancer diagnosis brought him to a moment of crisis.
For some people in Joe’s situation, God uses others in their lives
who care enough to confront them with the truth and recommend an intervention.
For others, those who do not experience a crisis or a confrontation,
sometimes the only thing that brings about change is a catastrophe;
when the bottom completely falls out physically, emotionally,
spiritually, financially or relationally.
Choice 1 from last week says, “I admit it. I’m helpless. I’m powerless.”
Choice 2 for today says, “There is a power greater than me, and there is hope.”
Choice 2 goes along with Step 2 of the 12 Steps of AA and other recovery programs:
“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
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The Hope Choice
by Beverly Marshall-Goodell
Isaiah 61:1-3
July 19, 2015
Choice 2, the Hope Choice, is about understanding three magnificent truths about God:
1) God exists, 2) we matter to God, and 3) God has the power to help us.
Let’s see how these three truths made a difference for a woman named Mary.
Mary was born three months premature with a deformed left hip, shoulder, and jaw.
She always felt like a burden to her family, and knew that she did not measure up to
her father’s standards for beauty.
How could she matter to God when she did not matter to her own father?
By age five Mary was already obsessed with dieting to stay thin, just like her mother.
After Mary’s parents divorced and they each remarried,
she lived first with one couple and then the other, and was abused in both households.
She married a man who was always critical of her, just like her parents.
She managed to stay thin until she got pregnant.
Using the pregnancy as an excuse to eat, Mary grew fat,
and did not lose the weight after the baby was born.
Eating dulled her emotional pain, but her husband had an affair and then abandoned her.
This was Mary’s rock bottom, and she decided to take her husband’s life.
When she knew he was sound asleep, she took the biggest kitchen knife she could find,
and held it above his neck.
At the last instant, she thought, “Maybe God doesn’t want him dead.”
Until that moment, she was not even sure she believed in God.
Suddenly, Mary found herself on her knees,
praying that God would give her the power to put the knife down.
She felt as if someone were hugging her, and she wept with relief and hope.
The next Sunday Mary went to worship at Saddleback Church,
where Pastor Rick Warren’s message was on building a better marriage.
She did her best to reconcile with her husband, but he chose his girlfriend over his wife.
Mary continued going to church, asked to be baptized, and began the long road to recovery.
She struggled to overcome the years of feeling unlovable,
but as she began to study her Bible and trust God more and more,
she came to admit her part in the break-up of her marriage.
Eventually, Mary met a man at church who loved her for who she is, and they were married.
Mary is very clear that without God’s help she would not have been able to receive
healing for her broken self-image.
She admits that she still struggles to eat a healthy diet and maintain a positive self-image,
but she knows she has God to help her.
Maybe you don’t struggle in the same way Mary does,
but none of us are perfect, and all of us need God to help become our best selves.
When we understand that God exists, that we matter to God, and God has the power to help us,
we can all have hope that our future will be better than our past.
Prayer
God of love and hope, we pray this day we can all come to believe
that you exist, that we matter to you, and that you have the power to heal our brokenness.
We know we need your help to heal us from the hurts of our past,
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The Hope Choice
by Beverly Marshall-Goodell
Isaiah 61:1-3
July 19, 2015
our hang-ups about not being good enough, and bad habits that lead us into sin.
Fill us with the power of your Holy Spirit, that we might receive new life
and follow your will and your way. Amen.
Benediction
There is a power greater than ourselves, the God who created all things,
and who deepest desire is to heal our broken, sinful nature.
May we go forth this day choosing hope and seeking the help of God in Christ. Amen.
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