If you look at the political situation, the economic situation, the moral situation, the educational situation, the entertainment situation, and just about every other area of our lives in the modern world, we seem to be watching things fall apart at a breakneck pace.

If you aren’t shocked then you are probably drugged. Hopelessness has become an epidemic. There are more cases of suicide today than there have ever been since we have been recording these types of statistics.

Violent crime has exploded. Drug abuse has exploded. There are more people bound in slavery today than at any time in history. Even though Roe v. Wade has fallen, abortion remains a thriving business that kills thousands every single day. The child sex trade is reported to exist in every single neighborhood in America and you can be sure it is in yours.

I could go on and on about the disaster that has become American society. But you get my point and it’s unlikely I’m telling you anything you don’t already know.

All of this mess is producing epidemic hopelessness. And the stats get worse the younger we go with the demographics. You would be astounded to see how truly pessimistic our young people are about their future.

But I told you I had a solution for what is sucking the hope out of you. And I do!

When you look at what is going on in our world, you have every reason to be hopeless.

But Paul tells us something quite shocking about God in this passage that every hopeless person needs to know. Something that would actually break the captivity and power of hopelessness and restore the quality of a hopeless life.

What is it? It is that God is a God of hope.

Let this sink in for a second and don’t just blow through this statement. It is far more radical than you realize.

Most people perceive God as knowing everything about the future. And since I don’t have the space to speak about the balance between our freewill and God’s foreknowledge, I will grant that this is the case without comment.

But understand what Paul is saying here. He is saying that the God who sees all of this mess developing here on the earth is NOT hopeless about the outcome. He IS the God of hope!

The God who knows the future has hope! Now I don’t know about you, but this statement blows me away. God obviously knows something I don’t know. And He sees something I can’t see about the future.

He is not the God of hopelessness! Now surely a God who knows the future would know if He was looking at a hopeless situation. And obviously, since He’s the God of hope and NOT the God of hopelessness, He is seeing something through a lense that is not going to be obvious to me if I am watching the daily newscast.

And here is the secret to the solution for your problem of hopelessness. Instead of looking through your own eyes, start looking through His eyes!

What does He see?

He sees you full. He’s sees you with ALL joy. He’s sees you with peace in believing (not in doubting because of what your eyes are telling you).

He sees you full of goodness. (Now that will mess with a lot of religion right there, but I’m running out of space and can’t expand).

He sees you full of knowledge! You get this by reading His Word and not in those newscasts. If you would read His Word diligently, it would completely transform your life!

And He sees you with the ability to admonish, encourage, and build up one another. Christian, you are powerful and you are meant to communicate that power of encouragement to others.

If you are hopeless, this is simply a symptom that is showing you that you are looking at the world through the wrong eyes.

Start looking through the eyes of the God of hope. It will truly change your life and destroy the power of hopelessness.