Choose Hope Part 3: Hope over Despair

This sermon series invites you to believe that hope is not wishful thinking — it’s the power of Jesus rewriting our story. Each week will highlight a different victory He makes possible: hope over pride, fear, affliction, sorrow, guilt, and shame. 

This week we look at God's promise to bless those who CHOOSE HOPE over DESPAIR.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I can't remember exactly how old I was when I was in elementary school and I I talk for a living, right? I speak for a living, so I was a talkative kid as well. And I used to, you know, push that maybe to the limit sometimes in school. And it was probably third or fourth grade when I really got talkative, and uh my teacher one day kept telling me, quiet, quiet, Patrick, you know, calm down. And I'd, you know, whisper a little bit, but then it would get louder and louder, and she was like, all right, enough. Come up and stand in the corner. It's the first time I'd ever had that done to me. I did not know what to do. She was like, stand in the corner, put your face in the corner, don't say. I felt like humiliated. I was in the corner. What was I supposed to do? It felt embarrassing, hopeless. I am in this corner corner. Oh, the despair of my life. You know, as a third grader, what am I to do? Five minutes felt like an eternity until she told me to go back to my seat. And I don't know about you, but sometimes in our life we feel like maybe we get stuck in a corner, stuck facing, and everything's gone wrong in our life. We're not where we're supposed to be. Things seem to be falling apart. And today we continue our series called Choose Hope. And not just as a feeling, not just as optimism, but a true choice. Every day, whether we realize it or not, we stand at the crossroads where we can choose which perspective will shape our lives. Will it be hope or something else? And today our focus is on choosing hope over despair. We looked last week about how fear looks forward and worries about what might happen. The week before we talked about pride and how taking everything on myself can lead us to losing out on hope. But despair is when we lose hope in God's character, promises, and even his presence. It's a temptation to give up rather than trust God. Despair looks back and says what I was and says, I can never be anything but that. And the truth is every day we we all have things in common. We're gonna struggle with things like guilt and grief, disappointment, betrayal. And we're gonna have these seasons where we're gonna have to choose, to either choose things like hope or despair, hope or resignation, hope, shame, cynicism, and discouragement, or hope that pride, and says that I can handle this myself. And yet, wherever, whatever crossroads you find yourself in, I want you to know that you and I have the God-given ability every time to choose hope. To choose hope. But we struggle, don't we? We struggle to choose hope because it's more than just a mental choice, it's actually a choice of surrender, it's a choice of faith, a choice of letting control go. And Easter stands is God's eternal answer to this choice between hope and despair. Because the cross, even though it looked final and the silence of the tomb felt absolute, hope didn't just feel delayed. In that moment, it felt buried. And yet, resurrection arrived. And Scripture invites us into different ways of living, a life where hope is not rooted in our own strength, but in God's strength. And that's why this verse out of Isaiah 40 that we've been using as our key passage is so important today. And it says this those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. When Isaiah, the prophet of the Old Testament, tells us to hope in the Lord and that it will renew our strength, he is not just offering some poetic sentiment. He's inviting us to anchor our lives in the unshakable promises of God. And that's where true hope comes from. The promises of God. Anchoring our life into those deep promises of God. And if we embrace these promises, hope stops being something we just reach for occasionally and becomes the posture that we live by. And if that's true, it brings me to a question, is the question we asked every week so far is then what are these hopeful promises of God? What are these promises? And as we talk about that, we're going to look at this definition of hope and what hope is. Hope is first and foremost the confident expectancy that God will bring good out of every circumstance, because he is faithful, powerful, and always true to his promises. That's a great definition, but that's a tough definition. He will bring good out of every circumstance? Or what about this? What about this time? What about every circumstance? His promises, hope, say that he is faithful, powerful, and always true to his promises to bring good out of every circumstance. So what are these hopeful promises of God? We're going to look at a promise today that is really anchored in a truth that helps us overcome despair. Jesus spoke these words on the night before the cross, when despair was about to collide with the hearts of his closest followers. Jesus spoke these words. This is John 16. It says, Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice at what's coming. You will be sorrowful. Here's the promise, though, but your despair will turn to joy. Your despair will turn to joy. Jesus promises in John 16, 20 reminds us of something critical about hope. It's rarely instant. Rarely. Sorrow does not disappear the moment that words are spoken. Grief doesn't vanish in a single breath. Instead, Jesus promises a movement, a journey, a story where sorrow and despair leads us somewhere, somewhere new. And this has been the actual heartbeat of this entire series, right? We don't see hope as a switch that we flip or a feeling to manufacture. We see hope playing out through stories. Stories of people who lived in the tension between pain and promise, waiting for joy to arrive. And because hope doesn't always change our situation immediately, often it changes us over time. And if we're honest, that's how most of us experience life. It's not in an instant of healing, not in an instant answer, an instant miracle, but it's in seasons where hope feels fragile, in moments where despair whispers loudly, and yet something within us refuses to give up because we can hold to the promise of God. So today we're going to look at one of those stories in the Bible. The story of a woman who knew despair intimately, a woman who had been written off, a woman who had believed hope was no longer meant for her, and yet the story did not end in despair. Today we're going to walk through the journey of one of Jesus' followers, a woman who moved from darkness to light, from sorrow to joy, from despair to unwavering hope. Because her story reminds us of this truth. When Jesus promises that despair will turn into joy, he is inviting us into a story. And that story might be unfolding in our lives right now, and we don't even know it. So let's step into the story of a woman named Mary, lost in the shadows. Let me tell you about Mary. Maybe not the Mary you might picture from the paintings or stained glass windows, but a real woman who lived in a fishing town called Magdala. It was on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Magdala was busy, loud, and rough around the edges. Fishermen shouted across the docks, and Roman soldiers patrolled the streets with the kind of authority that made people keep their heads down. The markets were crowded, life was hard. People worked from sunrise to sunset just to survive. Many grew up in that world, and that Mary did as well. She had a family, a community, and a future that she could imagine. But somewhere along the way, something inside her began to break. At first it was just sleepless nights, then came the fear, sudden, suffocating, and unexplainable. Then came confusion, then the voices, and then darkness. In the ancient world, mental torment wasn't understood. There were no doctors, no counselors, no language for trauma or psychological suffering. People explained what they didn't understand with spiritual language like demons or unclean spirits or affliction. And whatever Mary was experiencing, it was severe, severe enough that people believed she was completely overtaken by it. The scripture said she has seven demons, which in the Jewish culture meant total domination. Her mind was no longer her own, her identity was swallowed by despair. People whispered about her, they avoided her, some feared her, some pitied her, but most simply gave up on her. And Mary began to believe what everyone else believed that she was beyond saving. So when Jesus showed up in Magdala, she actually didn't run to him. She didn't even approach him, she hid. She had been disappointed too many times. People had prayed over her, restrained her, shouted at her, avoided her. What would this man do any different? But Jesus saw her. Not her brokenness, not the reputation, not the fear. He saw her. And when he stepped toward her, Mary froze. She expected him to recoil like everyone else, but he didn't. His eyes held compassion. Not pity, not fear, but genuine compassion. He spoke a single word of authority, and the darkness that had ruled her life shattered. The torment fled, and her mind cleared like dawn breaking over the sea for the first time. And for the first time in her life in years, she could breathe. And she began to weep. Not from sorrow, but from relief. Everyone else had abandoned her. Everyone had accepted her suffering as permanent, but Jesus brought hope where hope had died. He didn't just heal her, he restored her. He gave her back her life, her dignity, her future. And from that moment on, and from that moment on, Mary followed him. Not because she had to, but because she had finally found the one who saw her worth. Mary's story begins in the shadows, unseen, unheard, and convinced that whatever was broken inside her was beyond repair. And before we rush past this moment, we need to pause there because Mary's despair is probably not foreign to us. Her story isn't just something we observe, it's for many of us something we recognize deeply. Because despair rarely starts loud. It starts quietly, it grows in isolation, it settles in when hope feels exhausted and disappointment has become all too familiar. And long before Mary met Jesus, she had already come to believe the lie that her story was finished. That's why the part of her journey matters so deeply, this part. Before hope rises, before healing begins, before joy comes, there are truths we have to confront and understand. So out of Mary's story and out of this place of despair, we're going to see some points to help us understand why we struggle with despair. And the first is this we struggle with despair when our suffering isolates us. We see here Mary just didn't suffer internally. She was cut off from her community. In the ancient world, these mental, emotional, and spiritual torments carried enormous stigma. She became a woman living on the margins. And we can experience this too. When we feel misunderstood, abandoned, or unseen, despair whispers that we are alone and always will be. Mary's healing began the moment Jesus saw her, something no one else had done in a long time. And I want you to catch this key thought. Despair grows when we suffer alone, but healing begins when we let ourselves be seen by God and by others. Isolation will grow, despair. There are moments when darkness feels like our closest companion, Psalms 88 tells us, yes. When human connection feels absent or unsafe, yet even there, God makes a promise that reshapes our despair. He says, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted in Psalms 34. And while others may pull away, God draws near. And while isolation whispers abandonment, Jesus speaks a deeper truth out of Hebrews 13, when he says, I will never leave you or forsake you. Mary's healing did not begin with a crowd, a ritual, or a dramatic moment. It began when Jesus saw her. And healing often begins in our life, not when circumstances change, but when presence returns. When we invite God's presence back into our despair. But we also struggle with despair when we believe that our brokenness defines us. Mary's torment was so severe that people labeled her by it. In her culture, suffering was often seen as punishment. People assumed she was cursed, sinful, and beyond help. And we can feel this way too. Shame convinces us that our failures, wounds, and struggles are our identity. That's how we are defined. But Jesus never defines people by their brokenness, only by their belovedness, their ability to be, to experience his love. And here this key thought Despair takes root when we look at our broken when we let our brokenness become our identity, but hope begins when we allow God to name us instead. You're not abandoned, you're not broken, you're not worthless, you're loved. A child of God, chosen to be in relationship with Him. The third thing that we can struggle with is that just when we have this despair, we can when we fear we are beyond repair. I'm just not fixable. Mary hesitated to approach Jesus. And Jesus, because she assumed he would treat her like everyone else, when we've been hurt enough times, hope feels dangerous. We can feel this too. Our wounds feel too deep and our past too messy, and we fear God might even reject us. But hear this truth despair grows when we assume Jesus will treat us like everyone else has, but hope begins when we trust that his heart is different. You are not too far gone. God doesn't reject you. You are not beyond healing. Jesus Himself declares this. In Luke 19, he says, the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. Psalms 147, he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Stop assuming Jesus will treat you like others have and start expressing and experiencing the love that he brings. These three truths have laid the foundation for Mary's healing. Jesus saw her isolation, but he refused to define her by her brokenness. He moved toward her when he expects she expected rejection, but healing didn't end in a single moment. It began a journey. And because hope doesn't just meet us at our lowest point, it walks with us forward as well. And from that day on, Mary followed Jesus. She listened, she watched, and little by little hope took root. Not because her past disappeared, but because she began to see who Jesus really was. Let's see Mary as she begins to follow Jesus. After Jesus healed her, Mary's life changed completely. She became one of the women who traveled with him, something that was unusual in that culture in that day. Women weren't typically disciples of rabbis, but Jesus welcomed her. He valued them and he taught them. He included them. Mary saw things that would change anyone. She saw him touch a leper, something no Jewish teacher would ever do. And she watched the man's skin clear instantly. She saw him calm a storm on the Sea of Galilee with nothing but a command. She saw him raise a little girl from the dead. Every miracle felt like a piece of the world being put back together, and Mary felt herself being put back together too. But healing didn't erase her past. There were nights when the old fears whispered aloud again, nights when she wondered if the darkness might return, nights when she felt the shadows of her former torment lurking at the edges of her mind. And whenever that happened, she looked at Jesus. His presence steadied her and his words anchored her. Do not be afraid. I am the resurrection and the life. Your despair will turn into joy. She didn't understand everything he meant, but she held on to every word like a lifeline. As one Passover approached, Jesus turned toward Jerusalem, the center of Jewish life. The city of the temple and the place thick with political tension. Rome ruled this with an iron fist, and Jewish leaders were wary of anyone who stirred up crowds. The air felt charged, but when Jesus entered the city, the crowd erupted. People tore branches from palm trees. They laid their cloaks on the road. They shouted, Hosanna, a cry for salvation. Mary felt hope swell within her. This was it. This was the moment. The world was finally seeing what she had seen all along. Jesus. Jesus. But the joy didn't last long. The city was divided. Some welcomed Jesus and others plotted against him. Mary saw the tension in the disciples' faces. She heard the whispers in the temple courts. She felt the unease growing like a storm on the horizon. Then came the night of the betrayal. Judah slipped away into the darkness. Soldiers came marching with torches, and Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, and Mary's hope trembled. She followed him from a distance as he was dragged before the high priest, then Pilate, then Herod, then Pilate again. And the crowds that once shouted Hosanna were now shouting, Crucify him! And the world turned upside down as she watched. She watched Jesus be tried, convicted, beaten, tortured, mocked, and eventually nailed to a cross for no reason other than the political and religious ambitions of others. Mary stood at the foot of the cross. The one who had healed her now hung dying. The one who had given her hope now bled beneath the crown of thorns. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. She wanted to wake up from this nightmare, but she stayed. She stayed because she couldn't leave him. She stayed because his word still lived in her. She stayed because even in the darkness, she could not forget the light that he had brought into her life. But as the sky darkened and Jesus cried out in agony, something inside Mary began to unravel. Old thoughts, the ones she thought were gone forever, crept back in. Maybe I was never really free. Maybe the darkness will return. Maybe I was foolish to hope, and maybe I'm still the woman I was before he found me. And when Jesus breathed his last, Mary felt something inside her collapse. Her hope didn't just falter, it shattered. She stood there trembling, feeling the old darkness circling, threatening, waiting. But even then, even in the darkest sorrow she had ever known something inside her refused to die. A memory, a whisper, a promise. Your despair will turn to joy. She didn't understand how, and she didn't know when, but she held on to the promise like a thread in the dark. You know what? When we get to this part of the story, standing at the foot of the cross, when she believed everything had fallen apart, despair welled back up in her life, and it can do that in our life too, when things come flying in our life that we don't expect. What happens? How do we struggle with despair? We struggle with it again in a couple of ways when our expectations collapse. We struggle with despair when our expectations of what will happen collapse. And despair deepens when our expectations collapse, but hope is restored when we trust God with a story bigger than our expectations. But there is a story larger than what you're experiencing. Right now, in despair. But we can also lose hope and struggle with despair when suffering feels senseless or unfair. Mary stood at the foot of the cross and watched the one that had healed so many be put to death. A righteous, perfect man be put to death. Senseless, unfair. And maybe there's something that's come into your life that is senseless and unfair, and it just causes your faith and your hope to collapse. I want you to hear this. While despair grows when suffering feels senseless, hope is sustained when we trust that even in those moments, God is still present even when we don't understand it. Even when we don't understand. And finally, we struggle with despair when old fears start to return in moments of crisis. This trauma that has a way of resurfacing when brokenness comes, when unexpected trauma comes. Loss awakens old lies, and we can experience this too when life hits hard and we fear that we're just falling back into despair. But when despair resurfaces, our old fears return. But hope endures when we anchor ourselves in God's presence instead of our past. In his presence instead of our past. Because even when the darkness whispers again, hope doesn't matter. It's still waiting to be chosen. All of these truths bring us to a sacred edge in Mary's life, the play where this place where despair has said everything it can say, but hope has yet to speak. Mary had faced isolation, identity shaping shame, shattered expectations, and senseless suffering, and the return of old fears. If despair ever had a moment to claim victory, this was it. The cross stood silent, the tomb was sealed, and the promise Jesus had spoken, your despair will turn into joy, felt impossibly distant. And yet even then the story was not finished. Because hope does not always arrive on the time that we want it to. Sometimes it arrives through obedience, through faithfulness, through getting up when the night still lingers and moving forward. And it's there in this quiet, trembling moment before the sun rises that we find Mary again. If the day of the crucifixion felt hopeless, the Sabbath of the crucifixion after the crucifixion felt endless. Mary tried to rest, but her mind would not quiet. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the cross. Every time she tried to pray, old fears whispered again, You're alone, the darkness will return. Hope was never meant for you. When the first hint of dawn touched the sky on the third day, Mary rose and she gathered spices with trembling hands. She wasn't expecting a miracle, she simply wanted to honor him, Jesus, to do the last thing she could for the one who had done everything for her. As she walked toward the garden, her heart was a battlefield. She remembered the day that he healed her, how she had hesitated, afraid that he would treat her like everyone else. She remembered the nights when old shadows whispered and he spoke peace into her fears. She remembered the road to Jerusalem when hope soared and then crashed. She remembered the cross the moment she felt her heart break in a way she didn't know was possible. All of it swirled inside of her as she approached the tomb. And then she froze. The stone was rolled away. Her breath caught, her pulse quickened, and instead of hope, panic surged in Mary. Someone had taken him. Another cruelty, another loss. She ran to find Peter and John, his disciples, and they returned alone, unable to leave the place. Then she returned alone, unable to leave the place where her hope had once been buried. She went inside to look for him, and two angels sat where his body had been, and the angel said to her, Woman, why are you crying? Why? Because everything she had hoped for now seemed lost. Because the one who had saved her was gone. Because she could only see the negative, the loss, the emptiness, the absence. They've taken my Lord, she whispered, and I don't know where they've put him. She turned. And she saw another man standing behind her. And he said, Woman, why are you crying? Whom are you seeking? She thought he was the gardener. Her grief was too heavy, her fear too loud, her sorrow too binding. She couldn't imagine resurrection. She couldn't imagine joy. She couldn't imagine that Jesus had truly overcome death. All she could see was what was missing. All she could fear was what she had lost. All she could believe was the negative. She said, Sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've laid him, and I will take him. Her voice cracked, and then the man stepped closer. And he spoke her name. Mary. Everything stopped. The sorrow, the fear, the old whispers, the darkness, that voice, she knew that voice. It wasn't, it was the voice that had called her out of torment and Magdala many years ago, the voice that had steadied her when old fears returned, the voice that had promised her joy even out of sorrow and despair, and she lifted her head and said, Rabbonai. And her heart burst open. Her sorrow shattered, and her hope was rebuilt in an instant, not fragile this time, but eternal. In that single moment, every doubt she had ever felt became a stepping stone toward joy. Every fear became a reminder of how far he had brought her. Every shadow became proof of the light now standing before her. Jesus was alive. Death was defeated. And the promise he had spoken, your despair will turn into joy, became her reality. Promise fulfilled. He reached toward her, his eyes full of the same compassion as the first day he saw her and held her. And he said, Go to my brothers and tell them what you have seen. Mary rose. She was breathless, radiant. The world around her seemed to glow. The garden felt like Eden reborn. She ran not in fear, but in unstoppable joy. Bursting into the room where the disciples hid, she declared the words that would echo through history: I have seen the Lord. And from that moment on, hope never left her, not for a day, not for a breath. Because the one who had overcome her despair had now overcome death itself. And the woman once defined by sorrow in the shadows became the first witness of a joy that would change the world in eternity forever. Mary's story reaches this turning point in the garden. And I don't know about you, but I understand the first part of the story where she can't see what's happened. She can't see good because so much bad has happened in her life. And that's not just Mary's story, it's ours. Because there's some quiet truths about despair that we can miss the good news not because it isn't real, but because our hearts are too wounded to receive it. Why do we struggle to believe the good news sometimes? Just here's some quick thoughts. We struggle to believe good news because grief narrows our vision. When we lose someone, something or something precious breaks, our hearts grow heavy and we stop looking at anything but the pain. Grief narrows our vision, but hope grows when we trust that God is still present, even when we can't perceive Him clearly. We also struggle to believe good news because we don't expect life, we expect loss. We expect loss instead of life. Mary had lost a lot over those few days. She had lost a lot in her life at points, and she was just expecting the worst to keep getting worse. And while despair takes hold when pain trains our expectations to experience loss, hope is restored when we allow Jesus to redefine our reality. That's what resurrection is. It's a redefining of reality. Death became life. What we expected to never happen happened. We have to let him in. And then finally we struggle to believe good news until Jesus actually speaks to us personally. That's what happened with Mary when she heard those words. That word Mary. Everything changed. And hope is reborn when truth becomes personal. When God's voice breaks through the despair and calls you by name. And that's why hope is still alive today. Because God meets us personally wherever your despair has taken root. Wherever you've lost sight of what could be and just thinking about what has been, God meets you there and calls you forward. And this is the promise, right? Out of John 16, 20, that your despair will turn into joy. We come back to that. Those aren't just words in the Bible, that is a promise of God. That no matter where you find yourself, in the shadows, struggling to be seen, feeling like you are broken beyond repair, or uncertain when un about your future when uncertainty comes in, or even unable to see the good, God says your despair will turn to joy. Mary's sorrow did not disappear overnight. It was transformed. Death did not win, darkness did not remain, despair did not define her story. Her journey reminds us that Jesus' promises are not these abstract comforts, they are lived realities. Because resurrection always follows the night, and we believe that Mary carried this new hope with her for the rest of her life. We don't know much about Mary's story after this, but I imagine that it changed her in ways that we will never understand. And I maybe went like this. Years passed, but Mary never forgot the sound of her name spoken in that garden. Sometimes when the nights were quiet and the lamps burned low, she would close her eyes and hear it again. Mary. Not as an echo or memory, but as a living truth that still wormed, warmed her heart. The moment had changed everything. It had rebuilt her from the inside out and turned her sorrow into joy, just as he promised. After the resurrection, Mary had stayed close to the community of believers. She prayed with them, she served them, she encouraged them, she took her story, she told her story time and again, not because she enjoyed the attention, but because she knew what it meant to live without hope. She remembered the years when darkness ruled her mind. She remembered the whispers of fear, the isolation. She remembered believing she was beyond saving, and she remembered the moment Jesus shattered all of that. As Mary continued her life, she would often walk along the streets of Magdala, the same streets where Jesus had found her. And she would look for those caught in the trap of despair and share hope with them. The hope she had found in a man named Jesus, a man who saved her, who sacrificed himself for the salvation of everyone lost and without hope. From torment to peace, from despair to hope, from death to life, she would whisper a prayer that others would find the same hope that she had found. The woman once saved from the shadows was now bringing hope into them. And the same is true in our life. Because once you have heard the risen Jesus call your name, you want the whole world to know that hope lives, hope reigns, hope has a name, and its name is Jesus. And that brings us to our question of the day. Where am I still living in the shadows where Jesus is calling me into the light of his resurrection? Hope. Where are you still living in the shadows? Mary's story ends with every story of hope must end, not in effort, not in understanding, not in strength, but in Jesus alive. She didn't find hope because she figured everything out. She didn't escape despair because she tried harder. Hope found her because Jesus stepped into her darkness, stopped the grief, and spoke her name. The cross did not cancel his promises. The tomb did not silence his voice. Death did not get the final word. What looked like the end was actually the foundation of hope. And that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus entered our world of sorrow, betrayal, pain, and despair, and he took the weight of sin, shame, and brokenness and fear upon himself. And because Jesus rose, despair does not define you. Because Jesus rose, your past is not a prison. Because Jesus rose, sorrow truly can turn into joy. That's what Mary discovered in the garden, and that's what stands true for each of us tonight. But sadly, some of us are still standing in the shadows. Some of us are living under the weight of loss, fear, guilt, disappointment, or shame. Some of us believe in Jesus, but we're not living out of the resurrection. We're surviving our pain. And Jesus is standing near asking the same question he asked of Mary, why are you crying? Not in condemnation, but as an invitation. Because hope is not built on what you feel. Hope isn't built on what you've been through. Hope is built on Jesus. Christ alone, the cornerstone. Weak are made strong in the Savior's love. As we close with this song tonight, it's a moment of response. And if you've never placed your faith in Jesus, this is an invitation to trust the one who defeated death for you. If you believe, but yet you've been living in despair, this is your moment to step back into resurrection hope. And if you've been standing on anything other than Christ, your strength, your control, your coping, this is your moment to return to the foundation that never fails. Let this be our declaration. Jesus is our cornerstone. He is steady when everything shakes. He is alive and he is enough. Let's pray together.