I want to read a really quick proverb. Proverbs 13, 12 says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. But a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. We always call ourselves a tree of life church. If you're new to his hand, you're like, what's with all the paintings of the trees? What's with the tree on the logo? It's the tree of life. And that's kind of an image of the kind of church we want to be. It's about the love of God, a relationship with God. It's not rules, it's not religion, it's a relationship. That scripture, that's a powerful scripture. It was written about 3,000 years ago, but real truth is timeless. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. But a dream fulfilled is like a tree of life. It's like something being birthed. When you have a dream fulfilled, when you get to do something that you've always wanted to do, it's crazy. I don't know if you guys have ever had one of those like pinch me moments. I have two that come to my mind. Number one is when I married my wife. I am obligated to use this one as an example, but I'm not doing it for that reason, okay? I promise you. But like when I married, when I married Megan, I saw her on the back of a bus when I was 16 years old. I was a sophomore in high school, she was a freshman, I thought she was insanely beautiful. I flirted with her and she shut me down. Like it was, it wasn't even like it wasn't even one of those situations like, I wonder if that girl's kind of like, no, there is no no interest whatsoever. Um and so we became friends and started dating, and years later, like when I stood on that that altar at that church and I looked her in the eyes, and and I got to say, I do, and she said, I do. That was like, that was a dream fulfilled. That was one of the greatest moments of my life. One of the other greatest moments of my life is when I got to be in the locker room of the Duke Men's basketball program when they won a championship and hang out with Mike Sheshewsky. So my two greatest moments are a beautiful woman and um Mike Shoshevsky, if you know what he looks like, not as attractive as Megan, not close. Um, but I'm a I'm a huge basketball fan, huge Duke basketball fan. I used to do sports journalism, and one time I got to like cover that team and be in their locker room. And so those are the two greatest moments of my life. And my kids being born. Um, you know, dreams fulfilled. But you know what it's like when you have a dream fulfilled? Like when you literally have one of those pinch me moments, you're like, is this real? Is this really happening? Those are the best. But on the flip side, the first half of that verse, hope deferred. When things don't go the way that you hoped, when you had dreams and you've watched those dreams maybe, maybe crumble, it makes the heart sick. We have a hard time as people dealing with disappointment. It's hard for us to handle life when things don't go the way that we hoped. And I'll give you a great point and case of how this is like hardwired into us. Raise your hand, those of you online, if if you would respond as well, let us know. How many of you have ever raised a two-year-old? A two-year-old child has been part of your life. Okay. This is this is another dream-fulfilled moment for me. On March 29th, my youngest turns three, and I will be forever, I hope, done with two-year-olds. Um, we have had a two-year-old in our home for three of the last five years. And so, you know that whole terrible twos thing? It's real. That's a real thing. That is not just clever marketing, that is a real thing. And we've been in that world for a long time. Two-year-olds have a very difficult time dealing with disappointment when their hopes are deferred, when they don't get what they want. It doesn't go well. In fact, there's kind of this running internet joke. Parents will post pictures of their kids in like the throes of a fit, and it's called Reasons My Kid Is Crying, and it's almost always two-year-olds. And those of you who had two-year-olds, you'll know, you'll be like, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. But if you haven't, you're like, Really? Yeah, yeah, this is this is what it's like. So I'm gonna show you a few of these real quick. So, like, just go ahead and put the first one up, guys. Um, I wouldn't let her eat Lysol wipes for dinner. Like, that's or that's not a made-up thing. Like, that's that's not a made-up thing. Um, I I fully relate. She wanted ravioli for dinner. I made ravioli for dinner, she didn't want ravioli for dinner. Like, it my my youngest, he has this weird thing with milk. Like, he'll he'll ask for a milk and I'll start to pour him milk and he'll scream and I'll say, No, I want mommy to make it, and so I'll hand her the milk and she'll hand it to him and he'll scream and she'll like, no, I want daddy to do it. And we just sit there, and it's like negotiating with a terrorist. It's awful. All right, I have but another one. Um, I won't let him eat the cat's food. Right? That's just what happens. Social media is great that we have this. This is my this is my youngest Eli. I want to explain this one. This is Eli. He's awesome. Turns three in March. Um this was just a few weeks ago. Megan sent this to me while I was at work, and unfortunately, she didn't get the picture while he was in the throes of the fit. This is about five minutes after he was just like losing his mind. And the reason is because she made him a waffle, but it didn't have eyes, like it does on the picture. And he spent like 15 minutes screaming at the top of his lungs, it doesn't have eyes. And like, what do you like what do you do? You know, when when when kids are that young, they get so upset so easily and they just they can't handle it whenever whenever they don't get what they want. When their hope is deferred, when things don't go the way that they hope, they just they melt down. Now, show of hands, those of you online participate. Let's be real for a second. How many of you, at least internally, have had some type of meltdown moment in the last five years because things did not go the way that you hoped they would go? All right. People who didn't raise your hands, you are now our small group leaders, and you will sign up uh on your way out today because we're all coming to your house to learn how to do life, okay? Um, like it's it's funny, I I'm a lot older than two, but I have had internal meltdown moments when my hopes have been deferred more than I would care to admit. Because it's hard when things don't go the way that you hope. But it's common. In fact, it's actually constant. I would imagine that all of us right now, all of us, are dealing with some level of disappointment this morning. Maybe that disappointment is major. Maybe it's major. Something earth-shattering has happened in your life and it's been tragic and there's loss, and it's one of those sort of, I don't even know what to do in this moment kind of disappointments. For many of us, most of us, it's probably a multitude of very small disappointments. But those add up. And in my experience, when you have a lot of disappointments, even really small disappointments, but in the same area of life, whether it's your career, your marriage, your relationship with God, you name it, if you have a lot of small disappointments, those can those can have this cumulative effect. And over years and years and years of that, you just have this weight. And it and it's a burden that's almost impossible to bear when you deal with constant disappointment in any area of life. What do we do with those disappointments? How do we deal with our disappointments? Because trust me, if we don't deal with disappointment, disappointment will deal with us. And at the end of the day, what that looks like is this thing called hopelessness. Hopelessness is when you get to a state where you cannot even envision a way forward. When you think about any area of your life and you're like, I can't even see how this is going to work. There's nothing I can think of that will make it work. And what I want us to know is whether you're there or not, if you're a Jesus follower, if you've given your life to Jesus, I know not everybody here has, not everybody watching has, but if you're a Jesus follower, hopelessness is meant to be foreign to you. You are meant to live with an enduring hope, no matter what happens. But that doesn't come naturally. Two-year-olds, right? So this morning we're gonna actually look at a scripture that gives us sort of a roadmap for hope. For how to really deal with disappointment, not stuff it down, not ignore it, not avoid it, but to truly deal with disappointment. So I want to look at Romans chapter five, verses one through five. We've been going through this scripture for uh for the last several weeks, and today we're gonna focus on the latter part of it. It says, Therefore, since we've been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Our series right now is called All Because of Jesus. We're just focusing on all the amazing things that we get to experience because of Him. Not because of us, but just because of Him. And we get peace with God. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory. We can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials. For we know that they help us develop endurance, and endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. So, like I said, this gives us a roadmap for hope. And it starts, ironically, with disappointment. It said, you should rejoice. Get excited when disappointments come your way, when there's trials and troubles. That's not our normal response when things don't go our way. You never see someone go, yes! What happened? I lost a bunch of money. This is great. You know? That'd be odd. But it says, rejoice when when trials, tribulations, when trouble comes your way, when when disappointment is at your door, rejoice. Why? Because if you if you lean into God and if your eyes are on him, that disappointment is something that he's going to use to make you the person that you're meant to be. And it begins with this word, endurance. Let's talk about that for a second. Endurance. Some translations will say fortitude, and in some ways that might be a better word because this is not talking about just the ability to like kind of keep going. Sometimes we can keep going in a really negative state. This is talking about having a strength of character, we're gonna talk about that in a second, but having like a spirit that can't be broken. Having an enduring spirit. It says that when we encounter trials, when we have difficulties, when we're dealing with disappointment, it develops endurance. We have the ability to keep going. At the end of the day, when we when we deal with disappointment in life, whether big or small, we always have a pretty simple choice. Simple is not the same thing as easy, so I'm not saying it's easy, but it is simple. Am I gonna keep going or am I gonna quit? Am I going to keep going or am I going to quit? It feels more complicated than that, because oftentimes there's a lot of stuff that's that's pulling at us, there's a lot of emotions, a lot of thoughts, but the choice is actually very simple. Do I want to keep going? Keep trying to do whatever I can do to make this work, or am I just going to throw in the towel to say I'm I'm done? And sometimes going forward is really hard because we might know what going forward looks like. Sometimes it's really tempting to quit. I know for me personally, I feel most tempted to quit when I know I'm the problem. Like if I know other people are the problem, I'm less tempted to quit because I'm like, ah, I can find a way to avoid those people or find some new people to be around, whatever. But but when I know that I'm the problem, when I know deep down inside that the issue is me, that's when I feel the most like quitting. It's hard for me to deal with the disappointment of my own shortcomings. We actually see examples of this in scripture. For example, John chapter 21 is a really interesting chapter. Uh, it takes place after Jesus has died and risen from the dead, and he has an encounter with the really good friend of his named named Peter, Simon Peter. Verse 3 of John 21 says this Simon Peter said, I'm going fishing, will come to, they all said. These are other disciples. So they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night. Now, this does not seem like a very meaningful verse. This just seems like a plot device that gets us from one point to the next. But if you know the story of Simon Peter, this is meant to hearken back to the beginning, really, of his story with Jesus. He was a fisherman. And from what we can gather in Scripture, not a good one, actually. Like he never catches any fish unless Jesus does a miracle. There's only three times that I can think of off the top of my head that Peter catches a fish, and all three require Jesus doing something miraculous. So he's just, he's terrible at his job. So good news. If you're terrible at your job, you might be qualified to be Jesus' top-ranked disciple right now, because that's who Peter really was. You know? So he's a fisherman. And his story with Jesus begins that he's fishing all night long and catches nothing. And then Jesus comes up to him and he says, Hey, why don't you throw your nets over there? And he kind of does the eye roll, like, okay, but I mean, I fished all night, I caught nothing, and he throws his nets in the water, and there's more fish than he can even deal with, and he's like, You must be God, because I'm so bad of a fisherman that that's the only explanation for how in the world I could catch this, right? That's the moment. And in that moment, Jesus looks at Simon Peter and he says, Hey, you know what? I'm gonna change your entire destiny. You are no longer going to be a fisherman. Instead of fishing for fish, you're gonna be someone who reaches people. You're gonna capture the hearts of people and help them experience what Jesus called the kingdom of God, living life in the kingdom means living life connected to God with God leading you. And so Peter becomes a disciple of Jesus and quickly shows his worth, and Jesus says some really cool things to Peter, and he kind of elevates Peter, and Peter's one of his inner circle, and Peter's kind of a big deal. But then Peter messes up, he trips up and he denies Jesus in a really pivotal moment. Jesus has been arrested, and Peter's afraid of what's going to happen to him, and so he ends up denying that he even knows Jesus multiple times. And he realizes his failure and it breaks him. And then Jesus raises from the dead, and you would think that Peter would be like, yes, that's amazing, that's awesome. Now I can I can sleep at night, now I can go back to what I'm I'm meant to do, but he just can't do it. He's not there yet. He's still dealing with the failure and that feeling. And so he quits being a fisher of men, like Jesus said he would be, and he starts being a fisherman again. He says, Hey, I'm going back to fishing. And some other disciples follow him and they fish all night long. This is not leisurely fishing. This is not a few hours to have some rest. This is work. In his mind, he's he's missed it, he's quit. And Jesus shows up in John chapter 21 and he says to Peter, basically, My calling for your life is still on. Like Peter, don't give up. You may have slipped up, but you don't have to give up because you slip up. And some of us here this morning, we need to understand that just because we're we're not hitting the target in some area of life does not mean that we need to quit. You can endure. Just because you've made mistakes does not mean that you've you've missed it. You don't have to give up because God never gives up and he definitely doesn't give up on you. Jesus never gave up on Peter. Yeah, you can clap for that because God loves you. Jesus, he just doesn't give up on people. And I give up on people all the time. I give up on myself. Like, what do you do when you're dealing with that inner disappointment that you know you're not enough? Because I'll be honest, I know that I know that I'm not enough as a father. I have moments every week. It's actually this really interesting phase for me. Those of you who uh who are older than me, you've been here. Those of you who are younger, you'll you'll be here one day. Uh my 10-year-old, I know that he doesn't respect me as much as he used to. Like I know it. I see it, I feel it. And I know I've had moments where I've done things, and he's looked at me and kind of been like, you know. And I used to be his hero. He used to think I was awesome, that I knew everything, that I was invincible, and now he looks at me sideways half the time. And he's embarrassed by me, and I've earned it. And sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it is not. Because I know I don't have it as a father all the time. I don't have it as a husband, I don't have it as a pastor. I mess up, I slip up, and and when you slip up, there's this temptation to start asking these questions, like, man, should I am I even should I just quit? Don't quit. You don't have to give up because you slip up. God never gives up on you. You can endure. In fact, endurance is actually the defining characteristic of mature faith. It's not excitement, by the way. Sometimes we think that the defining characteristic of mature faith is someone who's just like excited. We have kind of Christianese words that we use or phrases like that person's on fire for God. And that's awesome. When people are excited about God, I hope you're excited. God's amazing and excitement's great, but it's interesting. Jesus tells a parable about these four different types of soil. Each soil represents the status of a person's heart when they receive the message of Jesus. And the second soil is defined by excitement. It springs up, it's full of life, it's exciting, but it doesn't have deep roots, and so it does not endure when it deals with disappointment. The defining characteristic of mature faith is endurance. The only thing the disciples of Jesus got right is they just didn't quit. If you read the stories, I heard a pastor say one time, the only good thing the disciples ever did was they just stayed in the boat. You read those stories of Jesus and his disciples, and it doesn't seem like he picked the right people. They don't seem to get it, they don't seem really good at what Jesus is asking them to do. They forget the things that Jesus teaches all the time, but at the end of the day, they stuck with Jesus. They just endured. And if you'll endure, you will see. You will see God complete what he starts. God finishes what he starts. Jesus, scripture says, is the author, he's the initiator of our faith, but he's also the one who completes it. So endure. That's how you begin to deal with disappointment. You just say in your heart, I am going to endure. Number two, it says that when we endure, we develop a character. We develop a character. There's a Greek word, dokume, and it means a metal that has been refined by fire. If you're wearing jewelry this morning, if you're wearing some gold, some silver, if you look at it, it's probably shiny, it's probably, it's probably pretty, and it did not come out of the earth looking like that. When it came out of the earth, it was it was rough, and it had to be refined. And that's a pretty intense process. There's fire, and everything that's impure in that metal rises to the top, and they get that out of the way, and and the most pure metals, they've done that over and over and over again. And that's what it took to get it into the state that it's in now. It's interesting because that that same word dokume, which means a metal that's been refined by fire, it is the same word Paul, the author of Romans, uses here for character. That we're meant to go through things, to struggle, because it's going to create in us a more refined character. We just sang the song New Wine earlier, and it says that in the pressing and in the crushing, you're making new wine. God will use our disappointments if we give them to him. He will use our disappointments, he will use our struggles, he will use our frustrations to shape us and make us into the person he wants us to be. And that's not always an exciting thing. There's a type of character that can only be developed through failure, through disappointment. It cannot be developed through success. If someone is unbelievably successful all the time, that's amazing, they're blessed, they're probably really talented. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that they have a strong character because you don't really know what your character is until it's tested. In fact, I have a really good friend who's very successful in the business world, and we were having lunch, and he was uh he was telling me about a uh a guy he knows that invests in other people's companies. And this guy, I guess, is a pretty, pretty big investor. And he said that this guy has a rule. He will not invest in someone's company if they've never had a company fail. He won't do it. And that seems odd at first, right? Like I would rather invest in people's companies who are like successful. Like that seems like the best investment. He's like, no, I will not invest in someone if they have never had a company fail. He says, because that means that somewhere inside they believe that they can't fail. They believe that they're invincible, that they're like a wonder kund, and all of their ideas are good ideas, and that's not the way things work. He says, I want to work with people who have who have messed up, who have seen it all kind of collapse, but then have had the strength to get back up and build it back. That's someone I want to invest in. See, there's a strength of character that success does not create, but failure does if you endure. If you keep your eyes on Jesus. If you endure, it will develop this resolve. It's a mature faith. It's not a faith or a hope that's ignorant.

You know what?

When we're young, when we're children, children, by the way, are awesome and they're so optimistic and so incredible, and there's so many things we can learn from children. In fact, Jesus said we gotta be a lot like children if we wanna be part of his kingdom. But at the same time, Scripture tells us not to act like. Children. We want to have childlike faith, but we don't want to behave like children. And children are interesting because one of the things children have is like ignorant hope. You know, they they all dream for big things. Like if you ask like a child, what do you want to be when you grow up? They will tell you something awesome. You know, like it's not, or they'll they'll tell you something weird, but they think it's awesome in their mind. They're like, this would be the greatest job in the world. Um like you'll talk to a kid and and like, what do you want to be? And they'll say something like, I want to play in the NFL, and you're gonna be like, You're probably not um gonna do that. I s I know your parents. And sorry, the it's already decided. The gene pool's set. Like it is what it is. You know, pick something else. You can't say that to like a first grader or a first grader's parents who think that they are gonna play in the NFL, even though they're both five-five and can't run a mile. That's fine. Just let them believe I'm just teasing. Um, but like, no, that's how kids are, right? Kids hope big, but it's kind of ignorant. It's not based on the reality of what it's actually gonna take to be there. Like a kid might say, I want to be an astronaut. Like, are you good at math? No, it's okay. Um, that's probably you're not probably gonna be an aerospace engineer, then, which is usually the path. But whatever. It's it's like an ignorant hope. But when we deal with disappointment and frustration and we endure and we keep our eyes on Jesus, we develop a hope that is not ignorant. It's tested, it's refined, it's strong, it's a character. That, by the way, is one of the reasons that we trust Jesus so much. Because Jesus got tested. Because Jesus went through it. Like whatever you've experienced that's hard, you can look at Jesus and go, yeah, he probably dealt with that. Like loss, if you've dealt with loss, Jesus dealt with loss. If you read the stories of his life, his his father, his earthly father, Joseph, he's there all the time, right? Jesus is born, there's Joseph. He's a good man. There's a story of Jesus when he's he's young, he's like a preteen, and he gets lost in Jerusalem, and Joseph's there, and he's super involved, and then you just never hear from Joseph again, ever. In all of Jesus' ministry time, his mother's there, his brothers, his sister, but where's Joseph? And the simple reality, this is almost universally agreed upon with biblical scholars, that somewhere between Jesus being 12 and 30, Joseph died. And think about what that must have been like for Jesus to bury his father, knowing that he had the power to raise him from the dead, but it wasn't the right time. It wasn't his time to come forward yet. That would be that would be more difficult, I think, than any loss I could experience, knowing that he had the power to do that, but he didn't. Jesus understands loss. Jesus understands hardship. He worked manual labor for 30 years of his life. He knows what a hard day's work feels like. Jesus understands disappointment. Jesus understands rejection, like none of us could even imagine. Jesus understands what it's like to be betrayed. He understands what it's like to be accused, to be lied about. He understands what it's like to be tortured and to be murdered. We have a God who's been tested. And he came through that testing, refining process, and we get to see how strong he actually is. Not because he avoided the hard things in life, but because he took them on, he dealt with them, he defeated them. Jesus has a real character, but it had to be refined. The same happens for us. If we choose to endure, God will develop a strong character inside of us, we'll be ready for more than we can imagine. And that leads to our final little piece, which is hope. But confident hope. We'll go back and look at verses four through five. Endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment, for we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. Because of Jesus, we can have a confident hope. Now, in our culture, the way that we tend to speak, the word hope is not a confident word. Like if someone asks you, hey, is that gonna happen? and you say, Man, I hope so, that that usually doesn't mean you're confident, right? You saying, I hope this happens, typically means I don't think it will. But I hope it does. That is not the kind of hope that Paul is talking about here. There's a confident hope. There's this unbridled optimism. How many of us in the room would be honest enough to say that you're kind of a pessimist? Maybe you'd say a realist, you can have a tendency to get cynical sometimes. Anyone like that at all? I can be like that a little bit. Some of you are too cynical to even raise your hands. I get it. That's fine. Those of us that can get in that kind of mode, like, you know when you meet someone that's just hyper-optimistic, how annoying they are? You know what I mean? Like when you want them to commiserate with you and you like say, oh, this is really bad, and they won't take the bait? Like you try to get them to complain about, oh, this, look at what's happening in our country, look at this, and they're just like, oh man, I just know good things are gonna happen. You're like, shut up. Stop it. Why are you so happy? Right? Stop it. Like you, it's just there's something about like that kind of optimism when you're not in that place that can be really grating. If you would have hung out with the apostle Paul, who wrote who wrote Romans and a lot of the books of the New Testament, if you're like a pessimistic person, he would have he would have driven you nuts. Because Paul, like, if there's anyone that should have quit on Jesus, it would have been Paul. He had a pretty good life before he started following Jesus. Things were going well for him. He was successful, he was respected, he follows Jesus, his life just becomes a nightmare in every type of circumstantial way you can imagine. Most of the letters we have that he wrote, many of them at least, he wrote while in prison, awaiting execution, for what? Following Jesus. But listen to things that he says in like Romans chapter 8, verses 18 through 25. And this has a lot of theological stuff that we're not going to get into because we'll be in Romans 8 before too long. Um, but I just want to read this and note the optimism. Note the enduring, confident hope, even when it doesn't really make sense. He says, what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. What is he talking about suffering now? He's talking about being ostracized from society, having people try to kill you everywhere you go, being thrown in prison, being beaten, all that kind of stuff. What we suffer now, it's nothing. It's nothing compared to the glory that he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to this present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory. For we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering, we too wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he's promised us. We were given this hope and we were saved. If we already have something, we don't need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don't yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently. Paul was always filled with hope, eager hope. He'd get tortured, put in prison, and then you'd see him, like, How are you doing? Paul, he's like, I'm doing great. I have Jesus. And I'm not saying that he wasn't a real person, he didn't have emotions, he didn't get down, he didn't get discouraged, but he he had an enduring, confident hope. It wasn't shaky, it wasn't flimsy, he wasn't like, man, I really hope God comes through. Probably not, though. You know? Like that's not, that's not from God. The kind of hope that we're talking about, guys, it's a confidence that no matter what is happening, God has a way forward. As Jesus followers, we're supposed to be defined ultimately by three things faith, hope, and love. Faith, hope, and love. And faith and hope, they get a little bit confused sometimes. I heard someone explain it once by saying faith looks backwards and remembers what God has done. Hope looks forward to remember that God will do it again, and even greater so. As Jesus followers, we're meant to have hope. And here's what that means, and this is really important for us as Christians because there's a tendency right now, not I'm saying, not you guys in the room, it's all the other Christians out there, okay? Um, not you guys watching, it's everybody. I'm just saying, like, in America, there's this tendency for Christians to just have this attitude of like everything is just going down the tubes. It's just all, look at it, it's all going down thehill. It's all, it's America. It's just, you know, used to be great, now it's not. And that, I'll just be honest, all jokes aside, that is not from God at all. It's just not. You think God's done doing great things? You think he's even gotten started? Like we we have to get over this sort of pessimism that has infiltrated our faith because it does not belong. It should just be hope and hope and more hope. One of the interesting things about our faith right now, at least those of us who are who are Jesus followers, is that we're like the first generation or few generations of Jesus followers who have not looked forward to Jesus coming back. It's like a bad thing. You'll hear people say, like, what if it's the end times? That's good. That's a good thing. Jesus coming back is like the best part of the story, right? And and before the last hundred years or so, Jesus followers would wait with eager anticipation, like, Lord, come. Come soon. But but we live pretty comfortable lives, at least compared to most of people in most of human history, and so there's like, oh, I don't know. Like, I hope it happens, you know, to my grandkids or something. You know what I mean? Like, not to me. No, it's a good thing. There's no room. What I'm saying is, there's no room for pessimism in our faith. None. Like, if if if you believe that Jesus Christ died for you, and everything you've ever done wrong, every thought you've ever had that the person sitting next to you doesn't even know you had, and if they knew it, they'd be like, scooting a little. Every little thing like that, that he has forgiven, if you really believe he's forgiven you for all of that, what you've done, what you will do, what you could do. If you really believe that that's the truth, you should be like the most optimistic, joyful person in the world. You should live with like wonder, like, oh my gosh, like you got away with something, that kind of thing. You know, I have kids when they get away with something, they they have this look on their face, like, what'd you do? You know, like you're too happy right now. What happened? Something happened. If you really believe that, there should be this joy inside of you, this hope, because it's like, look what God's done. He's not He's not finished, He's just getting started. But when disappointments come our way, we have to choose to endure and to let Him strengthen our character and to develop in us a hope that is eager and patient and confident. And when you have that hope, here's the deal. Disappointment doesn't win. Disappointment doesn't deal with you, you get to deal with disappointment. You get to say to disappointment, hey, look, I'm really sorry. Uh it's just not your day. Because nothing, and I mean nothing, will stop me from living with the hope that my God who loves me has filled me with his spirit. And I haven't even begun to taste. I haven't even begun to experience what he's going to do. It says at the very end of that section that we're reading, it says, Why do we have this hope? Why we know how dearly God loves us, and because he's given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. Worship team, you guys can make your way out. He's given us his spirit, he's filled us with his love just so that we can have a taste of what he's done for us. And look, I'm telling you, if you haven't, if you haven't experienced that, by the way, if you haven't had a moment where you have actually felt and experienced the love that God has for you and it's it's hit you, I'm praying for that right now. Pray for that today. You need that. You're not meant to just intellectually believe in God, that's important, but you're meant to experience his presence. And I it's one of the reasons that we love to worship, because we do get to experience that in worship in unique ways, and and we experience that in prayer when we get on our knees. You know, disappointment sometimes brings us to our knees a little bit. Let it bring you to your knees in prayer. And thank God for what he's gonna do ahead of time, even when you're dealing with disappointment, because you're meant to live with hope. Not an ignorant hope, not a flimsy hope, but a hope that endures, a hope that strengthens, a hope that's resolved, a hope that's been tested, and a hope that is unshakable, a hope that is confident. That's what you're meant to live with. And how good, by the way, would life be if that's what defined you? Like if confident hope was what defined your outlook on life, how good would that be? That's what you're meant for. But but don't forget that to get there, you got to go through some disappointment. So here's what that means. If you're if you're struggling right now in some area of life, it doesn't mean you're failing. In fact, it might just mean that you're you're experiencing what Jesus is promising. Trouble, trials, pressure, disappointment, give it to God. Let him let him use it to shape you. Believe for a moment, really believe that God's not done with you yet, that that you are stronger than you know, that you're you're stronger than you've you've ever been. You just haven't gotten there yet. And he's developing that in you right now. So sometimes we we look at our struggles and go, I think I'm failing in life. You might not be failing, you might actually be in the exact place that God wants you to be so that you could become the person you're meant to be. But you got to believe that. And what that means is that when you're in the midst of disappointment, you go to God and you give it to him, you hand it over to him. This is an analogy that comes to my mind pretty often. Uh I get weird analogies at weird times, but my wife loves to uh yeah, that was good. Um, my that you guys, do I need to be done? Is that what that was? No. I get it. I'll finish. This is fast. Uh my wife loves to watch like cooking competition shows. You guys ever watch those? There's a lot of them. There's a lot, there's so many of them. There's too many of them. Um, it was fine seven, eight years ago. Now there's too many. One year, actually, side note, um, we were we were recording, we had like D VR and stuff. We don't even have that anymore, but we were recording Top Chef. And because of our schedule, we wouldn't watch it until like two days later. But I would secretly watch all the episodes, and then I would predict at the beginning when we watched it together who would win. And Megan was like, you're amazing. Like she's I was like, I would and I didn't pick it right every time because I was like, that'd be suspicious, but I was like 85% of the time, I'd be like, man, I just feel like that person's going home today. And she'd be like, Wow, you got it right. I was like, Yeah, you could just tell. You know, you could really tell it wasn't their they didn't bring their A game. Um I waited till the season finale to tell her. She's she was not amused. Um, but when you watch these, these, these cooking competition shows, it's interesting because I'm a terrible cook. Who else is a terrible cook? You just admit it. Own it. Today's about owning stuff. We're cynical, we're terrible. That's what we're doing today. Welcome to church. Um, I'm a terrible cook. If you bring me the best ingredients, I will find a way to ruin it. Like you could bring me the freshest, choicest ingredients, and I'm like, I just I made this into dog food. Right? But if you watch those cooking competition shows, you take a really good chef, like a master chef, and basically what all those shows, it's the same. It's like, ha ha ha, here's a bunch of garbage, cook with this. And then they do, and they make something that you look at and go, I would eat, I would eat that. Like a master chef can take pretty crummy ingredients and make something good. Well, well, here's the deal: God can take your disappointment, your heartache, your frustration, your struggles, your pain, your embarrassments, whatever it is. He can take all that stuff, and if you give it to him and say, Lord, here it is. I can't do anything with this of value. God can look at you and he says, I can't. So give it to me. Take whatever disappointment you're dealing with today, major, minor, it doesn't matter. Take it to God today. Pray about it. In fact, we have two people getting baptized here in a second, which is awesome. Really excited about that. We're gonna finish with that. Um and something that uh something that we're gonna start doing every Sunday is just leaving this room open. It's always been open. We just never said it is. You don't have to leave. Um, it's one of the great things about being a one-service church. You can linger. But we're just gonna leave the big room open and have some worship music playing in here after you guys, after we pray. And uh feel free to stick around here and pray for a while. Maybe you need to deal with some disappointment today, here. Maybe stick around and get prayed for by someone on the prayer team. Deal with it today. You don't have to wait. But what it means is you take your disappointment to God, you pray, and you say, Lord, I'm struggling with this. I can't, I can't figure out what to do with it, but I'm gonna give it to you, and I'm choosing right now to endure, and I'm choosing to believe that you're gonna shape my character, and I'm choosing to believe that you're gonna give me hope. Telling you guys, watch what he does with it. God does not disappoint. Confident hope in God does not lead to disappointment. It does not. He always comes through. Sometimes he comes through in different ways than we imagine, but he always comes through. Anyone experience that? Show of hands for that. How many have experienced God coming through in ways you could have never even imagined? He's real, I'm telling you. He does it. So, with that said, let's pray. Father God, I want to thank you so much for the hope that we have in you. Lord, sometimes there's there's messages that uh I don't want to I don't want to write and I don't want to give because I know how badly I am struggling in those areas, and that has been how this week has been for me. You know my heart, Lord, and you you know how my week went and how much I procrastinated and pushed off dealing with this because I knew that writing this message would mean having to deal with some disappointments that I just wasn't in the mood to deal with. But Lord, I'm I'm grateful that sometimes you make me deal with stuff that I don't want to deal with. And so, Lord, personally, I'm just saying I'm I'm bringing my disappointment to you right now. You know my heart, and you know the hearts of every person in this room, you know the hearts of every person who's watching right now, Lord, who's listening. So, Lord, take my disappointment, take my feelings of failure, take my lack of confidence, take all of that from all of us right now in this moment, and replace it, Lord, with confident hope. Help us be people who endure, who allow you to refine our character, to strengthen us through our struggles, to make us into the people that you created us to be. We love you, Lord. Help us endure, help us trust you. We pray this in your name, amen.