–D.C. Adkisson  (Redemption)

       “…the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began.”

                    –Titus 1-2 (NKJV)
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When I was a kid I would wait, rather impatiently, for my Mom to come pick me up.  Perhaps once a week she would come by and we would go to the Dairy Queen (malts were thirty cents) or maybe I would spend the night with her.  She would tell me she was on her way from work.  I would wait…and wait…and sometimes wait even longer.  I’m sure glad we didn’t have cell phones in those days or I would have called her a dozen or more times, but no matter how long it took, she would eventually show up.  I thought about those times upon reading the following from Romans.

          “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
                    –Romans 5:5, NKJV

     Hope, according to Vine, is “favorable and confidence expectation.  It has to do with the unseen and the future.  It describes the happy anticipation of good…”   Hope is not fantasy or wishful thinking; it is not as Barclay translates the verse, “hope does not prove an illusion.”  What we hope for will come to pass.  I might add here that hope is always linked with faith, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, NKJV)  Harbuck puts it this way, “Now faith is the assurance of things we hope for and expect and an inner conviction of things not seen [though perceived as a present reality].”
     If we read the first four verses of Romans 5 we see the development of character which produces hope.  “Two men can meet the same situation.  It can drive one of them to despair, and it can spur the other to triumphant action.  To the one it can be the end of hope, to the other it can be a challenge to greatness.” (William Barclay)  One man has become weak in his faith; he is a spiritual sluggard.  The other meets the situation with “eyes aflame with hope.” (Barclay)  Barclay adds to this, “The character which has endured the test always emerges in hope.”
     It is important that we see hope and faith together, but also hope and endurance or patience.  “Hope never disappoints…” (Harbuck)  I am speaking of true hope, not wishful thinking, not false dreams, not illusions but true, honest to goodness hope that we have because of the love of God and the administering of that love by the Holy Spirit.  That is one reason why positive thinking is humanistic.  I am not downplaying the importance of being positive, but man’s hopes will fade.  There is nothing for a foundation; the love of man can never be the surety of the hope for no matter how great the person is there is the danger of failure.
     Barclay tells of human hope in the poem by Omar Khayyam in his thinking about hope:  

          “The Worldly Hope men set their hearts upon
          Turns Ashes–or it prospers; and anon,
               Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
          Lighting a little Hour or two–is gone.”

Hope based upon man can come to pass or it can shatter.  When hope shatters, I ask then what becomes of faith?  As a child I hoped to look out the window to see my Mom’s car approach,  When it arrived there was the proof of that hope.  It was now a reality.  But what if she didn’t follow through with her promise?  What would happen to hope the next time?  “When a man’s hope is in God, it cannot turn to dust and ashes.  When a man’s hope is in God, it cannot be disappointed.  When a man’s hope is in the love of God, it can never be an illusion, for God loves us with an everlasting love backed by an everlasting power.” (Barclay)
     Let us not despair of hope.  In this godless time in which we live we are to renounce ungodliness and the evil that we see in the world.  We are to live godly, righteous lives, more so as “we wait for the Blessed Hope of the radiant Appearance of our Great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.” (Titus 2:13, Harbuck).  Now we wait, expectantly, for His coming.  He promised and He will never disappoint.

                    –Mark 4:41 (NKJV)
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                    “Listen to the wind,
                     Wonder what he’s saying…
                     Wonder where he goes….”
                            –Bob Nolan

Last week I wrote a little on the idea of the wind as a symbol of the Holy Spirit.  Since March is the “windy” month I thought it fitting to write some more.  So far we haven’t had any raging winds, but I did see that in the Sierra Nevadas of California they had wind gusts exceeding 150 miles per hour.  One of the problems with the Panhandle fires is that continual Panhandle wind.  
       The wind comes and goes.  You can’t see it, you can’t taste it, you can’t touch it, and you can’t smell it.  However, you can see, feel, and even smell the effects of the wind.  It can bring a welcome breeze or a hot breath that burns up the grass.  That is the essence of the wind.
       The wind is mysterious in its working as is the Holy Spirit.  Solomon writes, “As you do not know what is the way of the wind…” (Ecclesiastes 11:5, NKJV)  It comes and it goes.  It brings other weather and also pushes weather away.  If you’ve ever seen the brown haze over Denver that is smog and the only way it goes away is by the wind.  Perhaps our lives are like that, full of pollution, dust, dirt, toxic air.  Then the blessed Holy Spirit will come as the wind to blow all that dirt, evil, and grim away.  We read in John that the wind and the Spirit goes where it wishes.  Harbuck puts it this way, “The wind blows (carries a breeze) where it pleases, and though you hear the sound of it, you don’t know where it comes from and where it is going…” (John 3:8)
       We must also know that the wind is powerful.  It can bring devastation and death.  The same is true of the Spirit but in that He also brings deliverance and life.  Acts 2:2 speaks of “a rushing mighty wind.”  I really like Harbuck’s description, “Suddenly a sound came from heaven [into the upper room] like a powerful roaring wind–or like an intense windblast [similar to the sound of gushing waves of the sea reaching the shore]…”  Christ breathed upon His disciples when they were commissioned to proclaim Him and the Gospel to the world.  It is this “wind” that pushes us, drives us along to do His will.  We see the power of the wind in hurricanes, tornadoes, and mighty gusts coming down through the mountain canyons.
       Above I mention how the wind comes to clear the smog from Denver.  We see this in the Book of Job, “Even now men cannot look at the light when it is bright in the skies, when the wind has passed and cleared them.” (37:21, NKJV)  When the wind comes the air becomes pure, refreshed, and clean.  I have seen the massive snow drifts removed and dried from a Chinook wind that comes in overnight.  When the turbulent wind of a thunderstorm brings in the front it can be fearful, but after it has passed, and who knows how long that will take, there is that wonderful aroma of refreshment and cleansing.

               “Lord, let Thy love, fresh from above,
               Soft as the south wind blow;
               Call forth its bloom, wake its perfume,
               And bid its spices flow!”
                     –John S. B. Monsell

                    –Genesis 18:14 (ESV)
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Thirty-two times we see the following in the Bible, “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”  We know them as the Patriarchs of Israel.  However, in my life I have heard or read very little of Isaac.  Who was this man?  Why is he included in the same breath as his father Abraham or his son Jacob?  Does he just fit in or is there more to the story?

          “And the LORD visited Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as He had spoken.  For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.  And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him–whom Sarah bore to him–Isaac.”
                    –Genesis 21-1-3 (NKJV)

       Here Isaac finally makes his appearance.  He is the child of promise.  There is some contention before his birth between Abraham and God as there is some mockery on the part of Sarah.  You know the story; it begins when Abraham, then Abram, told God, “But Abram said, ‘Lord GOD, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?'” (Genesis 15:2, NKJV)  Since he has no son he is making the preparations for his eldest servant to receive the inheritance.  A noble gesture, but it was not in God’s plan.  God speaks plainly to Abram, “And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, ‘This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.'” (Genesis 15:4, NKJV).  
       Impatience, anxiety, or was it unbelief?  Either way, Abram and Sarah took it upon themselves to aid the Lord in His promise.  Oh, don’t we get into trouble to try to do the work of the Lord our way. (statement not a question)  They decided that Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar, would be the one to bear the promised child.  One thing we see here, besides the unfaithfulness of Abram and Sarah, is the faithful servant Hagar.  Using a surrogate may have been culturally accepted, but when Hagar became pregnant Sarah paid an emotional and mental price.  Ishmael became a comfort to Abraham for fourteen years, but we have to wonder when we read of the bitterness of Hagar.  Being rejected, trying to flee, almost dying, being hated by Sarah, would she not have passed on that bitterness to Ishmael who would in turn take it out on his half-brother Isaac?
       Take time to read the story of how God protected Hagar and her son.  Then go on to read of Sarah and Abraham and the birth of the promise–Isaac.  Isaac for sure was born into strife and trouble.  It was not his fault that he was to be bullied by his older brother and that he was the one who would receive the inheritance.  Yet, he had to face the circumstances.  He was the result of the promise of God–the result of a miraculous birth, and more than that he symbolized the birth of the One who is to come in the future.  “This miracle son who symbolizes the Christ must not come from the desire of impulse of man, but entirely as a result of the plans, purposes and direct intervention of God Almighty.” (Michael Bell).
       Note the lessons:  First, nothing is impossible with God.  Laugh like Sarah but God did and still does the impossible.  Read what the angel told Mary.  Second, there is an appointed time for His miracles to come to pass.  It is not in our time, nor should we try to make it so as did Abraham and Sarah.  It is solely up to God.  And third, we see that faith is tested, and patience is learned.  We see the words of James clearly in the life of Abraham, “Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.  But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:3-4, NKJV)
       When we read of this we have the tendency to think of Abraham and Sarah as fools.  We see that much of the trouble in the world today is the result of trying to do the will of God, man’s way.  There is still strife between the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac.  But, stop, think of your life.  Would we have done things differently?  We have the record in front of us and we scoff at Abraham and his impatience, but are we any better.  Do we wait upon God?  Do we take His promises seriously, and maybe more important do we act upon them according to His will?  Do not mock or ridicule the promises of God.  Do not become impatient when His promises do not come out the way you desire.