Hope as Help

6 · Establishes the inverse principle: misaligned hopes drain spiritual energy like a phantom battery drain, leading to exhaustion, increased susceptibility to temptation, and eventual crisis

And false hope, I would argue, is sort of like what happens when you have an old car that has, like a phantom battery drain on it. And what that means is, is that if you just kind of don't start it every single day and so forth, you're running a highly inefficient system and your battery is going to go dead. You're like, well, how did this go dead? It's like, well, you've been draining yourself for a long time. When our hopes aren't properly aligned, instead of being regenerative and sort of feeling energy and joy and renewal that comes from hoping properly, when our hopes are improper, we start to get tired, we start to lose energy. And one of the things that that will do as we get tired is we start to become more susceptible to additional temptations. And it's kind of a cascading effect. So you've got your hopes misaligned, you're weakening, you don't have a lot of encouragement, the inner dynamo isn't really working like it ought to. You become more susceptible to additional temptations, you start doing dumb things. And usually what will happen and maybe the reason why someone would talk to you is there's some kind of a crash that happens.

7 · Expounds Romans 5:1–5 to establish God's redemptive design: the world's friction and entropy exist to produce self-inflicted suffering when hopes misalign, which then teaches recalibration through the suffering-endurance-character-hope cycle

You could trace all of that back perhaps to some kind of a hope misalignment, that instead of their hopes being proper and they were getting energy and joy, their hopes were improper and they were wearing down. As they're wearing down, they're looking for dopamine, band aids and whatever else, they become spiritually dumber. You know, it's just a thing. I've been there many times and the thing that will eventually get me to talk to someone or get most people talk to someone is there's usually some kind of train wreck where you're like, okay, things have gotten bad enough for me to now be open to talking to somebody. Now my contention is that that is the world as God has designed it. What I just described is why the curse exists, why there's friction in the world, why there's entropy, why the second law of thermodynamics, you know, so on and so forth. My, my contention is, is that God has created a system where when your hopes get misaligned and you start losing energy, it will lead to a moment of self inflicted suffering, typically. And that that suffering will actually teach you to recalibrate your hopes. So I get that from Romans 5:1 through 5, which I'll read. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we obtained peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

8 · Offers a personal hypothetical tracing how a pastor's subtle hope misalignment (trusting his own efforts instead of the Lord for the church's care) leads to exhaustion, irritability, increased temptation, and eventually a significant self-inflicted crisis

So let me see if I can just make this really personal and I'll use myself as a case study. This is on the fly, so I won't be able to get super specific. But let's just say slowly over time. I'm a pastor, right? So let's just use that over time. I am no longer hoping in the Lord to care for my church, but I'm, I'm hoping in my own efforts or I'm hoping in some plan I have, you know, so I've got a hope misalignment there and it's very subtle. You know, there was never a moment when God dropped a sign down from heaven so I would know that I had done this. I just have done this. And so now I'm off of the regenerative life giving track and I'm starting to have some kind of a battery drain. My hopes are misaligned. I'm starting to get tired. The joy isn't there. And I don't know that the reason for that is because my hopes are messed up. I'm not aware of this yet. Well, in this state I start getting testier and testier, you know, because what I don't realize at the time is I'm trying to do this myself and so on and so forth. And so now I become more susceptible. Maybe I'm just like ungrateful. And so like the temptation to go like binge on some McDonald's or, or to yell at someone or something like that starts to creep in. You know, things I know are wrong but like my defenses are down a little bit because my hopes are. My hopes aren't right and I'm getting tired. Well, that's kind of low grade stuff really. No one's going to notice. But if I keep on that trajectory, eventually I'll do something that will really force me to have a hard experience. I'll be in a suffering moment, a self inflicted suffering moment.

9 · Clarifies that the Romans 5 cycle applies to all suffering—self-inflicted or sovereign

And Paul says here, and this is suffering of all kinds, whether you caused it or God just has decided that hey, you have cancer. However this plays out. Suffering, Paul says, produces endurance, produces for character, and character produces hope. So what I think God is doing essentially is he's created a system that even when our hopes get misaligned, the machine starts to slowly break down. We crash into a tree, we're suffering, we're suffering self inflicted often. And we start dealing with this. Well, just getting out of the situation we caused ourselves. We'll actually wind up producing because of the Lord, his kindness. It'll produce endurance and that'll produce character. And, and that character will produce hope. And now we're back into hope realignment.

10 · Synthesizes the entire counseling framework: from pre-crisis to resolution, biblical counseling is exclusively about realigning hopes

That's my argument that the whole counseling experience from before the person even knows they have a problem to, oh my goodness, I have a problem to. What you're doing in their life with them is, it's just all about getting these hopes set in the right places. And when you're done, you're done. There's a really, this is the difference between biblical counseling and therapy. Like we're not, we're not trying to find problems so we can bill your insurance. Just we really kind of would like you to be done with the problem and we don't want to be done with you and so forth. But we have no motivation to keep you navel gazing and staring deep into your own neurosis. We just want to help you as much as we can and hopefully get the hopes all stacked back up.

11 · Uses chiropractic adjustment as an analogy for hope realignment, then illustrates how people-pleasing can function as a long-term misaligned hope that drains without causing immediate crisis

Mixed feelings about chiropractors, but I don't think it's that off to say, to think of, you know, a vertebrae and to think about this idea of just getting everything back to where it needs to go. And God can do that for us. We might have gone a long time though with our hopes misaligned and we might actually have hopes that are, have never really been properly aligned. And so there's this constant drain. I don't think that a lot of people know how much they hope in pleasing other people because you can go a long time without crashing your car with that particular sin. You know, you can go a long time without some creating some kind of massive self inflicted thing, but it'll happen. Usually it'll happen when you can't please somebody that you're really trying to please. That's my experience. But you can go, you know, a good chunk of your life not realizing that that hope is misaligned. Your, one of your major kind of hopes in life is to win friends and influence people. That's a survival strategy for you. And you haven't given that to the Lord like you need to. So sometimes counseling can be a deep thing because we're dealing with 20 years of things. We're dealing with people who learned certain behaviors from their parents, so on and so forth. But I would argue that in the end of the day all we're really doing is we're just dealing with hope.

12 · Transitions to the mechanics of false hope by defining the distinction between ill-founded and well-founded hope as a central biblical concern

That's, that's all we're doing to skip, not to skip ahead, because I don't want to skip ahead, but I Point I put at the end here as cheesily as possible. Biblical counselors are hope dealers, not dope dealers. We're hope dealers. I put a Z at the end of dealers because that's how we talk on the streets. That's really all we're doing. Sarah found it. She's like, oh my goodness. I tried to find like graffiti clip art that said hope dealers, but I couldn't. No one, no one's done that yet. Yeah, yeah, dollar sign. Yeah. All right. So my argument is, is that God has the, the cataclysm at the end of this cycle to throw his back into the Romans 5 cycle. And we start working our way back and getting all of our ducks back in a row. And then like we, we have another good stretch until some other. Until something else. Right? But God is good. All right. To understand hope, I think one of the things we need to do is we need to understand what false hope is. So let's think about that. Understanding hope at the beginning of first page. True versus false hope is a major concern of the Lord. The biblical writers distinguish, one author puts it, distinguish between hopes that are ill founded in vain and hopes that have a sure foundation. The range of ill founded hopes is as wide as the human capacity for self deception. It is vain to place one's hope in military might and one's own wisdom or righteousness in riches or even in the temple or the law of Moses. All of these are inadequate basis of hope. And indeed for the unrighteous person who trusts in such thing, there is no hope. Thus the majority of scriptural references to hope elucidate the only true foundation of hope, God in this. There is a remarkable continuity between the Old and New Testament. So actually when you really read the Bible with a view to hope, you'll see that God is just talking about this constantly. But he doesn't always use the word hope. He'll say trust, you know, lean not, you know, these ideas. Now I want to talk about the mechanics of hope for a minute because hope has something to do with promises.

13 · Establishes the core mechanics of hope: (1) people have desires, (2) objects/circumstances appear to promise fulfillment of those desires

And I want us to talk about this so we're. So it soaks in. Hope is downstream of a promise. Let's break this down into a few components. Firstly, people want certain things. Sometimes those are physical things, sometimes those are emotional things. We all, we've all been created with a series of needs and appetites and so on and so forth. Secondly, in a twist of God's creation, and this could be traced to Genesis 3 and also Romans 1, people, objects, circumstances seem to make promises to give us things we desire. Okay, so Someone read Genesis 3:6. Okay, so let's break this down, try to figure this out. Is the tree telling Eve, eat me. I'm good, kind of. Right. It looks attractive. It's communicating visually. But there's one thing. There's one desire here that Eve is putting. Believing about the tree, right? What is that? The fruit has the ability to make one wise. That's not. The tree's not saying that. The serpent's saying that. So sometimes we can learn the wrong lesson about an object and. But we can believe that. That's the lesson.

14 · Uses personal vulnerability about Midwestern Baptist food culture to illustrate how false promises are learned and attached to objects

I made a commitment to myself when I prepared these counseling conversations to be extremely vulnerable. Because I want you to see that and I want you to, but I want you to think about this. Here's an example of something vulnerable. I grew up in mid Missouri Baptist culture. So what does food actually say? To me that's true. But then what have I been potentially taught about food that isn't actually what food promises? Say some things. Say some things out loud. What kind of bad Baptist. Midwestern lessons about food that aren't really true. But what kind of things? Clean your plate. Clean my plate. What else? Comfort. Make me happy. That's very Baptist. Yeah, they're like. They're like, don't dance, don't drink. But type 2 diabetes is A. Okay, yeah, so. So those aren't true messages, but you can be taught. There's a verse in First Peter that we've been redeemed from the feudal ways of our ancestors. People teach us things, and so then we get associations with certain objects and. Or certain things or certain circumstances, and those just become like, they. They appear to present messages to us.

15 · Engages the congregation in participatory application, soliciting examples of objects and circumstances that carry false promises (identity from social sensitivity, success from college/career, worth from beauty)

Can we think of another object or another circumstance like that? What? Okay, go. I'm going to get a stool. So talk. How. How does that. How does that. What. What message does it preach? Okay. Okay. And who's teaching that to us? Okay. Yeah, yeah. What else? Okay. Identity. Yeah. Okay. I mean, one of the ones that I'm. I'm thankful for to some respect, but it was not the right exact message was like, I was taught how to be extremely sensitive to the room and fit in. Don't impose. Understand your place. And I actually think that's not a terrible thing. But there were messages about social situations that weren't necessarily about the truth. They were just a little off. Or maybe the reason why would want to do that, you know, classic one for most unbelieving families is just like, go to college, you know, Get a good job, you know, all that stuff. That's what success is for a lot of parents that teach their kids. So your understanding. Maybe we need to do two. Two. Let's do two or three more other things that. That are like this. Yeah. Like, we're looking for things that promise. Maybe they don't promise, but we've been told that they promise certain things. We're looking for things that people hope in, like a car, like work. Like what? Beauty. Yeah. Beauty. Yeah. How you look. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

16 · Synthesizes the interactive exercise into the key diagnostic framework: hope mechanics = object (broadly defined as things, circumstances, relationships, states of being) + promise

Okay. So what I'm trying to draw your attention to is that the mechanics of hope are. An object and a promise make sense, but object needs to be. You need to keep that more loose because it's not just a thing. It can be circumstances. If you are having trouble having kids, like, that becomes one of these things. Right. If you want to lose weight, like, you can really think your life is. Oh, my goodness, like, my life would be amazing if I was X pounds smaller. There's a promise that you've attached to this state of being. So hope has to do with. I'm saying objects very generally, but it can be circumstances, relationships, whatever, and a promise. And I want you to understand that because if we're going to help people get their hopes realigned, those are the things we're paying attention to. And it's like, okay, there's a lot of cloudy thinking a lot of times, and people need that. They need to say these things out loud so that. And then they sort of need to say them out loud a few times. And then you have a conversation with them, like, why do you think this equals this?

17 · Illustrates inverted hope mechanics (discomfort-as-compass) to show how false promise patterns can work in reverse, then connects Genesis 3:6 to 1 John's triad of lusts as parallel formulations of disordered desire

I had someone the other day, and I didn't bring this up in the sermon because it'd be kind of a confusing point, but I had someone the other day assure me that they knew they were doing the right thing because of how uncomfortable they were. And so that person was like, essentially arguing that discomfort is a compass. In the same way I was saying the other way in the sermon, which we do that too. Some of us actually cause problems when we're comfortable because we use. Our compass is upside down. Sarah's pointing at me. Anyway, so this person was like, no, no, you don't understand. Like, I know this is the right thing because I don't want to do it because it's painful. It's difficult. Well, somewhere along for them, you know, the message has been difficulty equals righteousness. Which would really be a bummer to be married to that person because just when you're Relaxing on the couch. They've got to cause a problem. Okay? So that's key. We're going to go back to this over the next months. But you got to understand the mechanics of hope, and it works. I think if you study Genesis 3. 6, you will get most of the way there. And then you can actually notice that that pattern shows up in a lot of other places. First, John the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. That's just a reformulation of Genesis 3. And those are all like hopes, Those are all desires. Okay, before we get into helping someone, one of the things that I've noticed that seems to be worth discussing is that sometimes people will go numb. Let me just read this to you. I wrote this the other day. When misplaced hopes fail, people will feel weary, undone, uprooted. Someone. Look at job 1910, real quick. Job 1910. This is the most poetically true statement about someone who has lost hope that I've heard. I've read. So Job is complaining like he is lost all hope when he's a tree that's been pulled out of the ground. You know, when someone loses hope, they're kind of rootless, they're not getting the nutrients. This is my whole argument about hope, that it's a life giving thing and when you don't have it or when your hopes have been crushed, you feel really off. Really off.

18 · Identifies a critical diagnostic pattern: people whose hopes have repeatedly failed often abandon hope itself as a defense mechanism rather than reevaluating the objects of their hope

A pretty common response for a person who has a bunch of broken hopes is to abandon hope in general. So my argument is, is that one of the survival techniques that people have is to just go numb. I think that's, you know, clinically true also. So what I will find sometimes with someone who has had all their hopes stacked wrong is that their defense mechanism involves abandoning hope itself, because that's actually less indicting on them than the reality, which was you just got your hopes wrong. You just put your. You just listened to the wrong things, you valued the wrong things. You just. If you, you know, five minutes of being honest with yourself, you'd probably be fine. But you'll play these games. And one of the games people will play is they could simply reevaluate the objects that they place their hope in, but instead they develop a negative attitude toward hope itself. It's as if out of some effort of self preservation, they would prefer to lose hope in hope rather than to just critically evaluate the things they place their hope in.

19 · Explains the logic behind the defensive abandonment of hope: repeated failure creates a pattern where the person identifies hope (or love) as the problem rather than their own choices

This makes sense to some degree from an earthly perspective. If you're just really walking in the flesh, maybe you're not a Christian at all. Or maybe you're just really. You're in a down period, you know, Think about it this way, just from a logical perspective. You hope in nine different things and all of them fail. You're like, what's the common denominator? Well, you. But you won't see that because you're sinner. It's. Hope is the common denominator. Because at some point you lose hope. You get your heart broken enough, and you start thinking the problem was love. The problem. The problem wasn't the people I was loving, the ways I was loving, or anything. Problem's love. Same with hope, right? And so what you'll find is that some people are in this numb state. This is actually a problem, because until they hope again, they're not going to make progress. It's a rough place to be where someone is afraid to hope.

20 · Issues the primary application for counselors facing hope-numb individuals: give free hope repeatedly and unstintingly in early transactions

But this is why it is so crucial for the early transactions in a caring discipleship context to simply be you giving free hope. You need to be rich in hope. And you just need to be, like, not even nonplussed about it. Just be like, here's more hope, here's more hope. Because hope is the thing. It's going to pivot this. We're going to. We're going to escape this by getting our hopes realigned. And someone who is abandoning hope itself, you know, that's rough. And you're going to need to speak into that eventually. Not, not. Not immediately. Immediately. Just give hope. Just give hope. Just give hope. Maybe they'll. They'll think, well, that feels pretty good. They'll also have to deal with the fact that you seem relatively okay and you're a hopeful person, which, you know that. That helps them reevaluate. But this is the main qualification, I would say, of being biblical counselors, being a person who, who is. Who has hope, because you have to have enough to give away. So here's a number of. Of verses that are related to you just being a hopeful person. 1st Peter 1:3. Having been born again, we are told in 1st Peter 1:3, we are born again to a living hope.

21 · Establishes that hope is a defining Christian characteristic available to all believers, then uses 1 Thessalonians 1 to show the Thessalonians had a reputation for hopefulness

So if you're saved, this is a thing you can have. You can be a hopeful person. First Thessalonians 1, 2, 3. Paul says that the Thessalonians have a reputation for being hopeful people. That's what you want to be. You want to be. You want to have a reputation for being a hopeful person. That's a very helpful person. A hopeful person is a helpful person.

22 · Prescribes the core preparation for hopefulness: cultivating a personal testimony of radical grace like Paul's in 1 Timothy 1

One of the ways I would counsel you to get most optimally prepared to be a hopeful person is you need to have some version of Paul's testimony in First Timothy, chapter one. I was the chief of sinners, but I received forgiveness so that through me the chief of sinners guide my display. You need to have that story because you need to be able to say, listen, I was really toast and God, I didn't think I was getting out or I didn't deserve to get out or whatever your version is. And God saved me and he took care of me and he restored me, and so on and so forth. When Jesus tells us in Matthew 7 to pull the plank out of our own eye, he's doing that. He actually says, pull the plank out of your own eyes so that you may see clearly to help your brother. One of the functions of someone who has lived a repentant life and they've sinned and they've dealt with it sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, they fought, they fought different sins, they fought different sins in different ways. They've had periods of long insolence, they've had quick repentance. This is the product of someone who is mature. What is maturity? I mean, one of the best ways to maybe define maturity is someone who's gone through the grace cycle a lot.

23 · Explains the mechanism by which personal testimony produces hope: witnessing God's persistent grace despite your own hard-heartedness and inherited struggles creates deep experiential confidence in his mercy

This is what will make you a hopeful person, is when you see God's grace to you was not in vain. When you see that the mercy that he's given you, when you see how hard headed you've been, how, how many things that you've had to deal with, how many things you've had to deal with, that you weren't necessarily chosen by you, they were given to you by your family or your culture or whatever. A person who keeps getting redeemed and keeps getting forgiven daily, that's a hopeful person.

24 · Offers a personal spiritual practice as an illustration of hope-building: asking forgiveness specifically on account of Christ's blood makes both sin and salvation feel more concrete, because it anchors forgiveness in God's love for Christ rather than in the speaker's own merit

You know, some time ago, I don't know how many years ago, I tried to start making the practice of not just asking God for forgiveness, but, but of asking God to forgive me on account of the blood of Christ. And that's not from some, you know, charismatic superstition about the blood of Christ. I just want to have a conversation with God in which I understand I'm not being forgiven just because I'm being forgiven because he shed his own blood for my soul. What does that do for me? Well, it makes sin feel more serious, that's for sure. But it also makes salvation feel far more concrete and real. Because as foul as I know my sin is to God, I know how much he loves Christ, and it's far superior to the offense of my sin. That's the basic math of the gospel. And so these are the things that will make you a hopeful person, is you just have to realize you're a butt head and that God keeps forgiving you and like that he just won't give up on you. You know, if you walk with him for long enough, you, you realize that there are just times when you've probably low key, tried to walk away from him, maybe consciously, maybe subconsciously. And then, you know, you felt that, that pull and you, you know that wasn't you. That this is, this is where hope comes from. It's this I will never leave you nor forsake you kind of thing. That's from Hebrews. Why is that? The context of that is about a misplaced hope. Does anyone remember the misplaced hope? Money. Yep, yep, yep. Don't, don't put your trust in money. For he has promised, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So money offers a promise. Someone told us this. Maybe we reasoned it out ourselves, that if I have lots of this, here's a promise of safety. There's a promise of security, status, whatever. And that passage in Hebrew says, no, that's, that's not the thing that you want to hope in for that you got to get your hopes realigned. Jesus is the, is the reason.

25 · Synthesizes the preparation section into a single governing principle: helpfulness flows from hopefulness, and hopefulness flows from having been forgiven much

So the, the big, the big thing I want you to see is that your key to being helpful is to be hopeful. And your hopefulness is really just a function of you being one of those people. He who has been forgiven much, loves much. He who has forgiven much, hopes much. It's the same, it's the same idea. Another way to think about this is have you ever had the word of God make a dramatic difference in your life quickly? And then also, have you ever had the word of God make a dramatic difference in your life almost imperceptibly over a period of time?

26 · Tells the story of a friend whose entrenched selfishness melted imperceptibly over years of gospel preaching without her taking any specific action beyond faithful exposure

Like, I have a friend who's a little older than me, and she is just, I love this woman. And she, she, I think I've told you this story before. She had a period of time where she just realized that she was very selfish. This is when she was maybe in her 30s and she just was like always calculating every situation, every opportunity by herself. And she just really was convicted. She just wasn't loving. She's very selfish. And she lived with kind of a lot of shame over this because she realized it was pretty bad and she'd pray about it. So on and so forth. But she was going to a gospel preaching church, a church that really, to be honest, like, probably only preaches the gospel. I think they maybe fail sometimes to preach the whole counsel of God's word. But point is, very gospel preachy church. And she told me that, you know, like, three or four years into going to this church every Sunday and going to the Bible studies and doing all the things you do, she realized that this iceberg of selfishness just wasn't like it was. It was maybe still there, but it was. It had melted a lot. And she realized that she had never really done anything. She'd prayed about it, but she's like, how many times do you think when I would hear the gospel, a little bit of that iceberg got chipped away without me knowing it. And time and time again. So just a person who has had different experiences with sins somewhere like. Or different experiences with the word of God, sometimes the word of God's just like, boom, you're different. And then. But there's all this other sense that you have to have this hope of, like, constant exposure over a long period of time changes things.

27 · Concludes the section on the counselor's personal preparation by reiterating that both sudden and gradual experiences of God's transforming word build hopefulness

This is how you become a hopeful person. So that's just you being hopeful. Now let's talk about you giving hope. And this would be within mind of that initial conversation.

28 · Defines biblical hope formally ('the expectation of good based on God's promises'), then uses the boys' pizza party scavenger hunt as a concrete illustration

And I'm at the bottom of page three. There's two good definitions of hope. Biblical hope is the expectation of good that is based on the promises of God. So, yeah, we're okay. I have to make sure that the boys aren't here when I talk about this. I had the boys do a scavenger hunt. And the end prize, it took me forever to get it done because I kept forgetting. But the end prize was a pizza party. Now some boys, I think the. I think the kangas boys, they just like, literally tried today. I don't know if they've really been sweating this or not. William, you know, he's been in and out. You know, the cone boys had been all in for. For like a year. Anyway, they figured it out today and they were like, well, what is it? And I walked them through the clues and I explained what the clues were. I was like, this basically means that whoever did this gets a free pizza party on me. And they were like, all jumping and hugging each other. And so I have to coordinate with all you because have to feed your kids pizza now.

29 · Extends the pizza party illustration to show how anticipation itself produces joy and conversation—the boys will 'annoy their parents' about it because the promise generates present excitement

But what's beautiful about the gospel, amongst other things, is like, you know, there's the parable that Jesus tells of the guy who went to work in the morning and the guy who went to work at night and the pizza party guy gets to decide who gets the pizza. And I'm like, they're all in. No, anyway, having that sense of, I'm going to have pizza party, they're going to talk about this, they're going to annoy their parents about this. They're going to have a pizza party. It's funny because we put those two words together and it's like, what are they. What does pizza party mean? Everybody has some sense of, like, what a pizza. It's just pizza, right? It's pizza with a festive attitude, you know? You know, but these kids, these boys are all excited about having a pizza party and they're going to talk about it, and then that's going to be the next thing they're going to bug me about until we get the pizza party figured out.

30 · Synthesizes the pizza party illustration into the full theology of hope: biblical hope is dynamic, not static—it warms, produces joy and purity, and functions as trustful anticipation

And anyway, I'm thinking about taking one for the team. I was thinking about pulling the submit card and making Ange take all of them to Chuck E. Cheese. Like, honey, Sorry. Anyway. But no, they have this thing they're looking forward to and it will affect their heart, it will affect their attitude, so on and so forth. Biblical hope is the expectation of good that is based on the promises of God. But that expectation of good is not static. It actually does stuff to you. It warms you up, it gives you joy, it produces purity, and so on and so forth. Another way of talking about is a concept involving trustful action. Biblical hope is a concept involving trustful anticipation, particularly with reference to the fulfillment of the promises of God. Anticipation is a massive part of essentially all of the important things that we do. Anticipation is a part of eating good meals. It's a part of sex. It's. I mean, it's. Anticipation is a function. It's a. It's a part of God's plan for enjoyment, and it's actually a very important part of God's plan for enjoyment. So when you give people biblical hope, you're getting them back into this beautiful experience of being a human being underneath the hand of a beautiful, lavish, kind God. And you're getting them back into this rhythm of walking with a God who promises to do good to them and promises to bless them and promises to take care of them and promises to forgive them and so on and so forth. So you can see how, like, man, if I can get somebody back into this things, things get sweet.

31 · Issues the central application for the initial counseling conversation: assume every conversation is ultimately about hope

So we're talking about first five minutes to talking to someone who's just struggling. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to assume this is a conversation about hope. Ultimately, that's what the Lord's doing. However they, however the person presents it. Let's just assume for the, for the next year at least that we're mostly just talking about hopes. And what do you do, what do you do when you talk to somebody? Have hope for them. Not hope in them. Not hope in their odds. Not hope in. Well, you'll figure it out. Not hopes in. Hope in. Well, you know, most people are okay after this hope. Have hope for them in the Lord model. I'm not looking to your health. I'm not looking to my smartness. I'm not looking to a program, I'm not looking to a book. I'm not looking to objects and taking promises and believing promises that they present. I'm not even looking to friendship or community because that's the, that's one of the idols of younger people. They think community will do too much for them and then they get super disappointed. But community is beautiful but subordinated. Get our hopes aligned. Not hoping in community, not hoping in the church, not hoping in. Not open in their smarts. Your smart so on hope in the Lord for them. And this is why having maybe a go to verse. This is where we'll end. We'll have time for questions. This is why having a go to verse might be good. So just to memorize a hope giving verse, I think Matthew 11:28 is pretty great. Come unto me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

32 · Elaborates on why Matthew 11:28 is effective: it promises rest but requires work (taking Christ's yoke), which sets realistic expectations

Now what I like about this promise is that it is not a quick fix and it implies what is true. And that is that you'll have to work. It's funny because Jesus says, are you tired? Are you weary? Let me give you some work. Because work's not optional. That's just part of how. That's just life. We're going to do stuff. We're just going to take effort. So I like this one because it's like you will this, this will work. But you're going to have to work and we'll do that together. But I honestly think sometimes people are despairing of hope because they've been told for too long that, you know, you just have to like, repent and it'll get better or just have to confess and it'll get better or whatever. And they think it's going to be quick. And a lot of times it's not. It's not super quick. It's not super long either, but it takes work. I like Psalm 34 a lot for and for a lot of people that are really just really run up against it, really rough moment in life. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed Spirit.

33 · Offers Psalm 46 as another go-to verse emphasizing God's immediate availability ('very present help') in times of trouble, providing another promise to lend in crisis moments

Psalm 46 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

34 · Recommends Hebrews 12:11 specifically for situations where the person recognizes their own sin, framing consequences not as punishment but as God's loving discipline that will yield righteousness

And Hebrews 12:11 can be very powerful if the person already understands that they screwed up. Hebrews 12:11 can be really helpful in that situation because you're just helping them remember that their screw up is going to have some consequences. We're going to walk through those consequences together. But that no discipline, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

35 · Demonstrates how to apply the Hebrews 12:11 promise in the first counseling session: explicitly reframe the person's discipline as God's loving means to restore them to the Romans 5 cycle

Now, what we know about our mechanics of hope conversation is that that promise, that expectation of good brings immediate good. So someone who believes Hebrews 12:11 I'm being disciplined. I sinned, I made some bad choices. And the consequences of those choices are a part of my life right now. And it kind of stinks. But. And God is allowing me to experience discipline not, not because he's mad at me, but because he is aiming to get me back in that Romans 5:1 through 5 loop. And he's going to let this discipline yield a peaceful fruit of righteousness. And so what I will do, like on the first session, this isn't the first convert, like the first five minute conversation, but the first hour conversation, I'll just say something like, I promise you this, if you'll submit to the Lord, obey him, do what he's calling us to do, you'll look back at this not as an unfortunate event, you'll look at this as a event that God used to accelerate your growth in Him. And you will be thankful at the end that you went through this. That's just me giving hope.

36 · Closes the teaching with an invitation for questions, signaling the formal teaching has concluded

Right? Okay, so that's some stuff about hope. Any questions?