Our Eternal Hope

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I'll see the heights of glory, and I'll know He lives. ♪ ♪ Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. ♪ Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because Jesus lives, all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future. And life is worth the living just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Come open the doors and make way. The King is in the room. The King is in the room. Expectant for strongholds to break.

Because we know what you can do. We know what you can do. We're going to see lives changed, souls saved, and broken hearts made new. The King is in the room. The Lord, we enthrone you upon our praise. The King is in the room. There's freedom and life anywhere you reign. Jesus, we bow only to you. We're laying down all of our crowns. The King is in the room. The King is in the room. Come see all the captives run free. He's tearing down the walls. He's tearing down the walls. There's grace and power in His name. The name above them all. Your name above them all. The King is in the room. The Lord, we enthrone you upon our praise. The King is in the room. There's freedom and life anywhere you reign. So Jesus, we bow only to you. We're laying down all of our crowns. The King is in the room. Let's lay this together. Fear has to flee. Shame has to leave. Has to. Before the King.

Before the King. Chains have to break. Dry bones awake. Prepare the way. Fear has to flee. Before the King. Before the King. Chains have to break. Dry bones awake. Prepare the way. The King is in the room. So Lord, we enthrone you upon our praise. The King is in the room. There's freedom and life anywhere you reign. Jesus, we bow only to you. We're laying down all of our crowns. The King is in the room. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ We pray the Lord together. Welcome the Father into this place. ♪♪ What can wash away my sin? What can make me whole again? Nothing but the precious blood of Jesus. ♪♪ For my pardon, this I seek. For my cleansing, this my plea. Nothing but the precious blood of Jesus.

♪♪ Oh, precious is the flow that washes white as snow. No other fount I know. Only the blood of Jesus endure. Through Him I'll overcome. By this I'll reach my home. No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. ♪♪ Nothing can force sin atone. Nothing good that I have done. Nothing but the precious blood of Jesus. ♪♪ This is all my hope and peace. This is all my righteousness. Nothing but the precious blood of Jesus. Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that washes white as snow. No other fount I know. Only the blood of Jesus endure. Through Him I'll overcome. By this I'll reach my home. No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Lamb of God, who hung upon the tree, His blood has set us free. Righteous one,

He sheltered for the poor. Heaven's open door. We sing glory, glory. Hallelujah. This blood, it will never lose its power. Oh, it will never lose its power. Oh, precious is the flow that washes white as snow. No other fount I know. Only the blood of Jesus endure. Through Him I'll overcome. By this I'll reach my home. No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. No other fount I know. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. No other fount I know. The sun was darkened and the heavens thundered And for a moment death had thought it conquered But it wasn't over till you said it's over Your word is greater still The perfect sacrifice, your body broken As you restored to us what sin had stolen Once and for all you tore the veil wide open Your power is stronger still All praise, all praise

To the name above all names Jesus, you reign You're the name above all names You turned the grave into a new beginning Our God is risen, you're alive and breathing There's nothing that can rise against your victory Your name is higher still Your name is higher, your name is higher still All praise, all praise To the name above all names Jesus, you reign You're the name above all names There's no name higher, there's no name greater The cross still stands, the blood still flows The work is finished and hell still knows That the grave is still empty, the stone is still rose And you're still high and lifted up You're still seated on the throne The cross still stands, the blood still flows The work is finished and hell still knows That the grave is still empty, the stone is still rose And you're still high and lifted up You're still seated on the throne All praise, all praise To the name above all names Jesus, you reign You're the name above all names Hallelujah Every voice will proclaim, there is no higher name Hallelujah

Age to age we will sing, there is no higher name Hallelujah Every voice will proclaim, there is no higher name Hallelujah Age to age we will sing All praise, all praise You're the Name above all names. That's Jesus. Jesus. Yeah. You reign. You reign. You're the Name above all names. You're the Name above. You're the Name above all names. You're the Name above all names. God, I pray that you would return us to our first love, that you would remind us of our first love and the way that you captured our hearts and drew us to you. God, we repent of times where our faith has become stagnant and stale. And God, we pray that you would just heat us up with the fire of your Spirit and that you would draw us to you. But we are nothing apart from you, God. God, we so desperately need you. And so we pray for more and more of you in this place and less and less of ourselves. Just have your way, God. God, I pray that you would always be the center in this church, that it wouldn't be about anything but you. And just at the name of Jesus, we fall and we worship you.

God, you are so worthy, and we sing of your goodness this morning. And we reflect on your truths. And God, we want to apply these truths to our life. We want to be changed by being in your presence today. And so, God, I pray that you would speak into our hearts, speak into our lives. Bring change where it's needed. Bring conviction and repentance where it's needed. Bring healing where it's needed. I pray for those who are hurting today. You would be that comforter, that helper that's needed, that counselor that's needed. God, I thank you for each person that's here today. You have each one, and you called each one to be your own, your son and your daughter. God, thank you for this opportunity just to open your word and to hear more about you and your ways. We pray all this in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen. I want to start by asking you a question, kind of one of those statements that's a true or false statement. And I want to hear what you have to say, true or false. So true or false, God will never give you more than you can handle. False. You hear people say that sometimes as they're trying to encourage someone else. They say, well, God will never give you more than you can handle. Not true. That is false. Sometimes God gives you more than you can handle in your own strength, so that you will rely on him and his strength and his power. And Jesus said in John 16, 33, he said, Guaranteed, you will have trouble in this life, in this world. But then Jesus goes on to say, Pastor Jeff was gone last week and this week and next week, and we're doing this mini series on Romans chapter 8.

And talking about Romans. Romans is a great book of the Bible, an important book of the Bible. It kind of sums everything up. It's kind of the theology book of the Bible. You have the Old Testament. You have the 39 books of the Old Testament, talking about the history and the law and the prophecy of the Messiah to come. And then we get to the Gospels. And in the Gospels, the Messiah, the promise is fulfilled. And there's the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And then we get to the book of Acts. And we see the history of the church, the beginning of the church. The church comes to life. And the church is filled with the Holy Spirit and it spreads out. And then we get the book of Romans. And Romans, written by Paul, who was previously Saul with his conversion in Acts chapter 9. And Paul is summing it all up. He's giving us the theology, theology is the study of God. And in Romans we get, this is what it all means. This is how it all comes together, Paul talks about in Romans. And we've been looking at Romans chapter 8. And I said last week that Romans chapter 8 is really the Mount Everest of the Bible. It is the crucial, crucial and hopeful chapter in the Bible, Romans chapter 8. Last week we began in Romans chapter 8, we got through the first 9 verses and it called the message, freedom of our faith. And specifically we focused on Romans 8, 1 that says, therefore there is now no condemnation. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Well today I want to move further on into verse 14, let's get down to verse 14. And I want to get through verse 25 today, Romans 8 verses 14 through 25.

So if you have your Bibles, get your Bibles out and turn there to Romans chapter 8 beginning with verse 14. And when you get there, I want to try something today. When you get there to Romans chapter 8 verse 14, out of reverence and honor for God's Word, would you stand for the reading of God's Word? And if you don't have your Bibles, it's on the screen. Verse 14 says, for all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons and daughters of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by which we cry out, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the suffering at this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the eagerly awaiting creation waits for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only that, but also we ourselves having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of the body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see through perseverance, we wait eagerly for it. This is the Word of God. You may be seated.

Great Scripture here. And I want to look specifically at one verse that we just read. It's verse 18. Verse 18, Paul says this. Paul says, for I consider that the suffering of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Paul writes that. Paul understands what it means to have an eternal perspective. Not just a perspective of the here and now, but Paul understands what it means to have an eternal perspective. There's a very popular movement in Christianity called the Prosperity Gospel. And the Prosperity Gospel says that God just wants to bless you. He just wants to bless your life and so if you do good, you do good things, you work really hard and do good things, God will bless you. God will bless you. It may also send a message that if bad things are happening to you, then you must be doing something wrong. Because doing good means blessing. Doing bad means suffering. And you can see why the popularity of the Prosperity Gospel, you can see why it's popular. Because we don't like to suffer. Who likes to suffer? Any liars here? No one likes to suffer. We hate suffering. We like comfort. We like comfort. we definitely don't like suffering. But suffering is a part of life. And the Bible talks a lot about suffering.

And the Bible talks a lot about suffering people in the Bible. Of course, when you think of suffering and you think of the Bible, automatically you think of Job in the Old Testament, how Job suffered probably more than anyone else. But throughout the Bible, you see the apostle Paul and Peter and James and John, they all suffered. And we can relate to them because we too suffer. We all suffer. Every single one of us has suffered. And you may even be suffering right now, going through something. There's a report of cancer. There's heart disease. There's the death, the loss of a loved one. You go through emotional or mental distress, which I could probably make the argument that emotional or mental distress is even harder than anything that we could go through physically. And I know that there's a lot of hurting people in our church today. There's a lot of people that are in the hospital or have loved ones in the hospital or loved ones have passed away. There's a lot of suffering people. So the question is not, will I ever have to suffer? The question is, will I suffer with or without Christ? And will I suffer with or without hope?

So today, what I wanna talk to you about is how to find hope in every single hurt. And so here's some principles. The first principle is this, and you have this on your notes. Hope comes from your intimacy with the Father. When we have intimacy with the Heavenly Father, that is where we find hope. In this text that we read in verse 14 through 16, it says, for all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons and daughters of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by which we cry out, Abba, Father. Abba, Father means daddy. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. You see here in these scriptures that Paul doesn't hide it. Paul tells us clearly how we can have hope. No matter what we're going through, we can have hope. And the Holy Spirit reminds us that we are God's children. We are His sons and daughters. We have been adopted by Him. He has chosen us and He loves us and He cares for us. We're His children. We are His sons and daughters. And you know, I have three daughters and I love my daughters. And you know, they say that when you have a daughter,

you have a friend for life. I can see that because I just love my daughters and I would do anything for them, maybe too much for them. I would do anything for them. And when they are hurting, when they are struggling, when they're going through something difficult, I want them to come to me. And I want them to know that they can come to me and say, daddy, I've got this issue, help me. Abba, daddy, by the way, they're not allowed to call me dad, it's daddy. I don't care how old you are, it's daddy. But I want them to come to me for anything that they need. And I want to be there for them and I would do anything for them. And we as sons and daughters of heavenly father, of our Abba father, sometimes we hurt. Sometimes we go through challenges and we cry out Abba father. And He is sympathetic to us. And He is compassionate to us. And He reaches out to us. See, when we hurt, He's not distant. He's not absentee. He's not unattached from whatever it is that we're going through. He's right there for us. Just like I love my daughters and would do anything for them I had a great dad, a wonderful dad that was so good to his children.

He had three great daughters and one exceptional, extraordinary son. Just ask, you could have asked him. No, but my dad was great. Dad was a great, teaching us about God, just being there for us. for us, and my dad was, you know, for a good dad, a dad is like a hero to their kids. And my dad was like my hero. He was larger than life to me, meant so much to me. My dad had this one kind of quirk, this interesting quirk. When he was a kid, he had some sort of nose injury, and he had this sniff. So just randomly, he would sniff all the time, just randomly, to the point of, you know, when you're a part of the family member that has something like that, you kind of just grow accustomed to it, it's no big deal. He just sniffs all the time. And so I remember one time, it was late at night, and I was just a little kid, and I was laying in my bed, wasn't able to sleep, it was late at night, and I heard someone come in the door. And I heard them come in the door, and I heard them walking down the hall, and I started to get scared. I was full of fear. I thought, there is someone robbing our house, and they're gonna steal all of our stuff, and they're gonna, you know, hold all of us hostage

or kill us, there's terrible things that are going through my mind, of all these bad things that are gonna happen. Someone is invading our house, I'm thinking in my mind. And then I heard the sniff. And then right away, it's my dad. And there's nothing to fear. There's no reason to be afraid. It's dad. And he's our protector, he's our strength, and everything is okay. That's the way it is with the Heavenly Father. He's our Heavenly Father. And in our times of fear, in our times of struggle, he brings peace. He takes all of our fear away. See, hope comes from intimacy with the Father. He knows you, he loves you, cares for you. Second truth is that hope comes from companionship with Christ. We have hope when we have this companionship, you could say friendship with Christ. Again, a very important life question is not, are you going to suffer in life? Because we know that suffering is a part of life, but the question is, are you going to suffer with or without Christ? That's the question. Verse 16 of this passage of Romans 8 says, See, here's the interesting truth.

Christians actually can find meaning and purpose in suffering. In the midst of suffering, we find meaning, we find purpose. When I'm counseling someone who's going through a difficult situation, I think about the most important truths for them to understand, the most important theological truths. I'm trying to connect them to God, and I'm thinking about what are the most important truths that they need to know about God in this time? And I think the most important truth that anyone needs to understand about God is that God is sovereign. That is so comforting to know that God is sovereign. What that means is that God is in complete control. He's not caught off guard. He's not imprisoned by time. There's no time restraints. He's in complete control. He's not surprised. He's not caught off guard. He's in complete control. Nothing happens that doesn't pass through his hands first. He has meaning and purpose for everything. God is sovereign. That's such a great truth. Another great truth for people to understand is that you're never alone.

You're never alone. He is always with you. Even when you go through difficult things, he promises to never leave you, to never forsake you. It says in Hebrews 13, five. When I think of that, I always think about Daniel and in the book of Daniel, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who got thrown into the fiery furnace. These three young boys got thrown into the fiery furnace, but they don't burn up. And in that fiery furnace, there's a fourth figure in there with them. Scholars believe that that was Jesus with them. His presence was there with him. Reminding us that even in our fiery furnace, even in our great time of suffering, He never leaves us. His presence is strong in our life. Have you found that to be true in your times of suffering? That God is real, that God is present in your life? I think about hard things that I've been through in my life, suffering experiences. I told you about my dad, who's my hero, but really in his 60s, about in his 60s, he started getting dementia. And he had what they call frontal temporal dementia, where he completely changed. His whole personality changed. And we watched as my dad just pretty much lost who he was.

His brain just wasn't able to function anymore. And when you have a loved one that goes through Alzheimer's, dementia, it is horrific. It's a horrible thing to watch. And my dad got that at a pretty young age. And we watched him just deteriorate. And I remember just thinking, this is not supposed to happen. It's not supposed to go down like this. This is my dad. He should live a full, long life. This should not be happening. This is a very intelligent man, a man that taught Sunday school and was just very, very intelligent. He shouldn't be losing his mind like this. He shouldn't be going through this and just being so desperate for something to happen, for healing to take place, but instead watching him die. It was horrific. But God's presence was so strong. God was so real to myself and to my family as we went through that. God's presence was so there with us. Another thing that I went through was going through a divorce and having a wife of 14 years tell me, I don't want to be married to you anymore. I'm with someone else and having an affair, not coming back. And our three-year-old son, he's not yours. He belongs to this other man. And I was devastated.

I was crushed. And again, how could this be happening? Marriages are supposed to last. Marriages aren't supposed to end like this. There's not supposed to be infidelity. We're supposed to stay together. We're supposed to work things out. It's not supposed to be this way. And just questioning, having expectations that this wouldn't happen. But God's presence was so strong. God was so real. And his comfort was so real to me and helpful and just guided me through and gave me the strength that I needed. I could feel God's presence going through those times of suffering. And if you've walked with God for a while, you know what I'm talking about. You go through those times of suffering, but you know that God is real and his presence is strong in your life. And sometimes I wonder, how do non-believers go through times of suffering? How do non-believers do that? How do they go through it when they don't have relationship with God, they don't have a church family? How do they go through it? No meaning or purpose, no hope. How do they go through that?

Hope comes from companionship with Christ. And then the third truth is that hope comes from a biblical worldview. Hope comes when we have a biblical worldview. And notice I said biblical worldview intentionally. I did not say a Christian worldview. I used to say Christian worldview, but now so many people use Christianity in a bad way. They lump in false teaching with Christianity. So we have to say biblical. What does the Bible say? A biblical worldview. There's so many people living without hope. And I would say even Christians, people who claim to be Christians, people who have relationship with Jesus are living without hope. How can that be? How can people be living without hope even when they know Jesus? Because a lot of times we look for hope horizontally. We look for hope and have expectations for things that are unrealistic. We look for hope in people, places, and things. We look for hope in other people. See, all of us have a God-sized hole in our heart that can only be filled by Him. And no person will fill that hole. And when you start looking to other people to fulfill you, to give you meaning and purpose,

you will end up being so discouraged. And so we look to other people, or we look to what's the next trip? What's the next fun thing? What's the next exciting thing I'm gonna do? And that's where you look to for hope. Or you look to things. Maybe when I get that car, or I get that job, or we live in that. house or this or that, when these things happen, then I will have this joy that I've been looking for. So we look for hope and all these horizontal things instead of looking for hope vertically to the Lord, to the one who truly gives us hope. The other reason is we look in the here and now. We get so much where we become prisoners of the moment and we look at what's going on right here and now and we think, um, this is all it is. This is as good as it gets. And we look, this is it. I'm going to make the best of it right now instead of having an eternal perspective. And here's an illustration that I thought of a couple weeks ago. I went to a student camp and I was like, man, I haven't been to student camp in like at least 25 years. I haven't been in a long time. And I looked around the camp and I thought, wow, this is weird. I'm actually the oldest guy here at camp. Man, that's humbling. That's really humbling. And it was at this camp called Boxwood. And so there's these boxcars and they've turned these boxcars into cabins and they have all these bunk beds in this cabin. And the mattresses are like this thick. And so the people that have been to camp before, they were smart. So they brought extra padding. They brought extra mattresses or they were grabbing other mattresses and piling them up to make it more comfortable. And so they were trying to make their experience as good as possible. Camp was going to be as good as possible as far as they were going to have comfort right there. I looked at it in a totally different way. I looked at it like, you know what, I'm only going to be here three nights. It's just three nights. And my bed was right in front of the air conditioning, which sounds good, but they had the coolest thing and it was blowing right on me the whole time. And I had a thin blanket. So I basically didn't get any sleep at all for three nights. But my expectation was, I'm not going to get much sleep. I'm not going to sleep comfortably,

but who cares? I'm at camp. I'm going to have a great time with these kids. I'm going to pour into their lives. We're going to have a great time together. We're going to make friends and we're going to learn about Jesus and decisions are going to be made and we're going to have a great time, but it's all temporary. And eventually we're going to leave this place and we're going to go home and I'm going to get to my comfortable bed. I'm going to get to be with my wife and daughters and everything's going to be good again. This is just temporary. You get it? Camp, uh, what do they call it, glamping. You go to camp and it's like, oh I can't suffer. I can't. We used to camp and it was just suffering. It was struggling. But it wasn't about the camping. It was about the destination. Camping is just camping just to just to get to your destination. This is not our destination. Our destination is heaven. This is all temporary and any suffering, any struggle here, this is all temporary. We have a home waiting for us with the Father in heaven. Doesn't that help you to put up with things? See, Christians are never without hope. We know that God is in control. We know where suffering started. We don't have unrealistic expectations because we know about Genesis chapter 3. We know that there's sin in the world and so we don't have unrealistic, unrealistic expectations. We know that people are going to do bad things. We know that bad things are going to happen to us because we live in a fallen world. Because we know about Genesis chapter 3. But you know what? We also know about the gospel and we also know what God did through His Son Jesus. And we have hope because we know that He defeated death because the grave is now empty. And so we live with hope. Paul wants us to have a biblical worldview. God created a perfect world and then sin entered the picture. And then Christ came into the world and He became a perfect sacrifice for us. And He was resurrected and He is coming again. That's the message. So we have hope. I love what Skip Heitzik says. He says, you take the whole Bible and there's two key events in the whole Bible. You can study the Bible inside and out but there's two key events, Skip Heitzik says. Number one is Jesus coming. And we celebrate that. Christmas, we celebrate Jesus coming. That Jesus, living in perfection, living in heaven, puts skin on and came into the world and lived a perfect life. Became that perfect sacrifice for us. So Jesus coming and then second, Jesus is coming again. And so we wait for Him to come again. Go down to verse 18 of this text. It says, for I consider that the suffering of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the eagerly awaiting creation waits for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope, that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only that, but also we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of our body. Again, that verse 18, I think is the key verse. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. See, Paul is writing this, and Paul understood suffering. If anyone understood suffering, it's Paul. Paul understood suffering. At one point he said, I've been beaten with rods. I've been whipped. I've been imprisoned. I've been stoned. I've been shipwrecked three times. I've been in constant danger. And through it all, I clung to Jesus. Because Paul had a perspective, a good perspective. He had that perspective that says, this too shall pass. This is temporary. His life was eternal. And so he had optimism. He had great joy knowing that none of that suffering was forever. So hope comes from a biblical worldview. And then finally, the final way that we can have hope from this text is hope comes from confidence in the future. We can have confidence in the future. And as we have confidence in the future, we have hope. Verse 22 of this text says, See, Christians are eternal optimists. We have eternity in mind.

There's a great saying that we say. We say, I don't know what the future holds, but I know who holds it. And we as Christians, we are constantly looking forward. We're looking forward to something better because our hope is not here. Our hope is in heaven. And I have to warn you because I know that I'm not talking just to Christians. There's people here that have never put your faith and trust in Jesus. And therefore, in this chaotic world, you don't have a lot of hope. And I want to warn you that there will be a judgment day. And there is two places. There's heaven, but there's also hell. And it's all based on what you do with God's son, Jesus. God will say to each and every person, what did you do with my son, Jesus? And that will determine whether you have heaven or you have hell. We will live forever, but it's in one of these two destinations. For those of us who have a personal relationship with Jesus, who have received Jesus Christ, we're excited about heaven. Curious, maybe. And I hear a lot of people say, what will heaven be like? I hear that a lot. There's a lot of curiosity about heaven. I notice that when people have been married for a long time, you know, 40, 50, 60 years. And their loved one passes away, they get real curious about heaven. And that brings them comfort. The more they learn about heaven, they're comforted. And so a lot of people question, what will heaven be like? I remember John Ortberg was telling the story of this man that he knew that was so curious about heaven. He was always asking about heaven. What is heaven like? What is heaven like? What is heaven like?

And finally, one day, he passed away. And John Ortberg said, and now he knows. And now he knows. There was a book written several years ago called Heaven is for Real. And I admit it. I got into the fad. I was reading it. And Brooklyn was little at the time. it to Brooklyn, I don't recommend that you base your theology on this book. It's not, I don't think a really like clear description of heaven. It's a little boy that passed away, had a vision of going to heaven or believes that he did go to heaven and came back to life and then he tells of his story and it turned into a book. Five million copies sold of this book, Heaven is for Real. It just shows you how curious people are about heaven. They want to know what is heaven like? The book that I would recommend is Randy Alcorn's book, Heaven, and maybe it's not perfect theology, but Randy Alcorn's a really good writer and he has a very thick book about heaven that I think is a great book about heaven. Are you looking forward to heaven? Excited to someday get to heaven? See, here's what we know as Christians. Funerals are not final. The grave doesn't have the final word. Your problems don't have the final word. You can have eternal hope. Hope comes from intimacy with the Father, from companionship with Christ, from having a true biblical worldview, and hope comes from confidence in the future. A few verses down, there's this great verse. This is a verse that you've got to know.

It's Romans 8, 28. It's a great verse. Whatever you're going through, whatever things you're struggling with, whatever things you're dealing with in this world, Romans 8, 28 is a great verse. And we know that God causes all things to work together for the good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. We don't always understand. We don't see how it's going to work itself out, but somehow it works. God works it all out and He works it out for our good. Now we come to the most important question of all. Have you turned from sin and selfishness and given your heart and life to Jesus? Listen, if not, today is the day for you. Just pray this simple prayer from your heart. Lord Jesus, I need you. I know that I'm a sinner and I can't save myself, but I believe Jesus that you are God in the flesh. I believe you died on the cross for my sins and rose again from the dead. And right now I ask you to forgive me and save me, come into my life, change me, make me the person you want me to be. I surrender my life to you and I promise to follow you all the days I have left. Now, if you pray that kind of prayer and mean it, the Lord will come in and your life will never be the same. Listen, I would love to hear from you. So please contact me and share with me what's going on so we can pray for you. And if you are ever in the Texarkana area, we would love for you to visit us live and in person at FBC Texarkana. Listen, you really are important to God and you're important to us and we're here for you.