Hope For The Hopeless Archives

September 4, 2022October 9, 2022

Don’t Believe The Lie

¹⁷The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. ¹⁸The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. ¹⁹The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; ~ Psalms 34:17-19

Every 40 seconds, someone dies from suicide (World Health Organization statistic). Many of these are bible-believing Christians who couldn’t find hope in this world and thought it would be better if they were dead. So many believe that the only way they will ever find peace is if they take their own lives. As a Church, we have failed to address this and find a way to help those who struggle with anxiety, depression, and suicide. Suicide is a worldwide problem. There could be a number of reasons why someone commits suicide, but we believe they all stem from one root: self-hatred.

Self-hatred can be planted because of the loss of a job, leading to hopelessness or feeling useless or worthless. It can also be because of traumatic experiences, leaving one to feel worthless, disgusting, or all alone. Such as bullying, rape, sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental or emotional abuse, and much more life-altering events such as divorce, death of a loved one, and loss of a job that leave a person feeling as if suicide is the only way to find peace. But is that the truth?

I believe that the Scripture is plain in explaining that suicide doesn’t save the person from their pain, nor does ease that pain. Instead, it adds to it, for if our bodies are not our own, then how can we commit suicide and it be counted as anything other than murder? I don’t say that to discourage, hurt, or cause anyone pain. I say this in hopes that you may have hope, for there is no hope in believing a lie, but in believing the Truth, there is nothing but hope. God has promised that if His people turn from their sin and cry out to Him, then He will not only forgive their sins but comfort them and give them peace. God promises that He will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can withstand. And if Christ has overcome all, that has to include suicidal thoughts, depression, and anxiety.

Verses of Encouragement and Hope

Here are a few verses to quote when you are being mentally attacked by the spirit of suicide, depression, or anxiety, for you can overcome anything and everything through Jesus Christ. You can overcome. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Keep fighting.

¹⁷ The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. ¹⁸ The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. ¹⁹The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all;
Psalms 34:17-19

¹³For You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.Wonderful are Your works; my soul knows it very well.
Psalms 139:13-14

¹¹For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for [good] and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. ¹²Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. ¹³You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:11-13

²⁶But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. ²⁷Peace I [Jesus] leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
John 14:26-27

³³I [Jesus] have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
John 16:33

¹³ I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:13

⁶Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, ⁷casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.
2 Peter 5:6-7

If you need immediate help, call the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, for free, confidential help. Click here for a list of crisis centers around the world provided by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

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Hope in His Power

¹⁴But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. ¹⁵For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. ¹⁶But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ¹⁷‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸ And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy. ~ Acts 2:14–18

The blessed Holy Spirit rushed upon all mankind when the Day of Pentecost came, yet there are people, pastors, and religious teachers who claim that the outpouring of the “Power Holy Spirit” was only for that time. Please take special notice of the time frame that Peter indicates:

In the last days.

If Peter was living in the last days, which he indicated that he was, then how much more are we who live in the 21^st century, living in the last days? The power of God didn’t dwindle nor run cold. God still performs miracles, healings, signs, and wonders. There is still power in the name of Jesus. There is still freedom in His presence.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Hope in His Power.

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Be Ransomed

⁴⁵Then the people said to Saul, “Shall Jonathan die, who has worked this great salvation in Israel? Far from it! As the Lord lives, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he has worked with God this day.” So the people ransomed Jonathan, so that he did not die. ~ 1 Samuel 14:45

Saul spoke death over whoever ate, not knowing that his son Jonathan hadn’t heard the charge and ate. When the people of Israel found out that Jonathan would die for the sin that he didn’t know he committed, they cried out to Saul and ransomed Jonathan from death. Jonathan was ransomed from a sin that he committed unknowingly.

2,000 years ago, Christ ransomed us from sins that we didn’t realize we even committed, as well as sins that we intentionally committed. During the time of Jonathan, no one took his place, but 2,000 years ago, Christ took our place. He took our punishment and paid our debt Himself. He didn’t have to. Jonathan had just saved the people of Israel, while we did nothing of the sort for God. God took our punishment upon Himself because He loves us. You don’t have to accept the death warrant against you; Christ has already ransomed you; all you have to do is accept His free gift of salvation.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Be Ransomed.

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Follow The Man Jesus

⁵Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. ~ Philippians 2:5-11

Paul wasn’t speaking on his own authority but according to the Spirit of God. This is important to understand that Jesus, while on earth, acted as a man. He lived as a man. He felt pain, sorrow, and temptation as a man. He had to get up and pray to receive strength to make it through His days. Why?

Because if He overcame sin by being God, then we have no hope of overcoming sin because we will never be God. This is why Jesus said in John 8:28, I do nothing of my own accord. Because He had to learn. He didn’t come down omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. He was in His Father’s house, learning from His Father. When He was baptized, the Holy Spirit came upon Him.

This is also why He says in John 18:28 that He has to return to the Father because the Father is greater. As Paul explains in great detail in Philippians 2:5-11, Jesus had set aside His Godliness to come down to the earth and become man. So, Jesus, as a man, had to return to the Father in order to present Himself as the sacrifice so that the Father could accept His sacrifice and elevate Him to His rightful place in order to forgive the sins of all who believe and repent so that He could send the Holy Spirit. If Jesus overcame the world as God, we would have no hope, but because Jesus came as a man, all men now have the opportunity to overcome the world through Him. We now have hope.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Follow The Man Jesus.

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Be Distinct

⁷Answer me quickly, O Lord! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. ⁸Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. ~ Psalms 143:7-8

David described the LORD shining His face upon us as a distinction between those with hope and those without hope. We aren’t like the world that lives in darkness, and their prayers aren’t heard by the LORD. We may also live in the same dark world, but we are not a part of this world, nor are we alone in the darkness.

We Christians are guided, surrounded, and filled with the Light of the World. We have hope because God is with us. We have a purpose and a plan for our lives. We have hope in the LORD God.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Be Distinct.

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The Hope of The Cross

²³ and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’ ~ Hosea 2:23

There was a time when we gentiles were not a part of the people of God. We weren’t a part of the chosen people, but 2000 years ago, we were given hope. When Jesus gave up His Spirit as He hung on the cross, He opened up the gate for those who were not born into the bloodline of the Jews. We gentiles now have the same hope of salvation as the natural-born Jews do because God does not show partiality between people.

He is the same God of the Jews as He is the same God of the Gentiles. He made a way where there was no way. We are not without hope, for we have now been chosen and called by name. We are now a child of Abraham by faith and, therefore, a child of God. And if a child of God, we now have the right to the inheritance of Eternal Life in Christ Jesus our LORD and Savior.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Hope In The Cross.

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Await The Future

²³And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. ²⁴We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. ²⁵But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.) ~ Romans 8:23-25^NLT

We don’t live in a hopeless world. We aren’t alone. The God of the Universe dwells in us and guides us through our life. Then one day, He’ll come back to get us, and there we will be with Him always. So, when life feels hopeless, and the world feels only dark and cold, cling to the hope of Jesus’ return. Don’t let the worries and trials of the present keep you from the future glory that awaits us.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Await The Future.

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Hope In The Light

²³Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep His promise. ~ Hebrews 10:23^NLT

The world is only getting more and more evil. There’s war and murder everywhere you look. There seems to be no hope around us as the darkness tries to squash out the light, so what do we do? We hope in the light that can never be overcome.

The light that raises the dead and makes the blind see. The light that came into the world and overcame the world. That is what we hope in, Jesus. We hope in the rock that cannot be shaken nor moved. The rock that holds the world in His hands. We hope in the name of Jesus because it is at His name that all knees will bow and every tongue will confess that He is LORD.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Hope In The Light.

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Hope in the Cross

¹⁸For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ~ 1 Corinthians 1:18

Many people mock Christians for our love of the cross. They say Jesus wouldn’t want us to wear or remember His murder weapon, but that wasn’t Jesus’ murder weapon. No one took Jesus’ life from Him; He gave it up freely. The cross isn’t a symbol of tragedy but of victory. If there was no cross, there would be no death, and without Jesus’ death, there could be no resurrection. We would have no hope if it wasn’t for the cross. So, the cross isn’t a horrible, murderous symbol. The cross is the symbol of hope, for it was on the cross that Jesus paid our debt and overcame the world.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Hope in the Cross.

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O Death

²² The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. ~ Luke 9:22

For three days and three nights, all hope had seemed to vanish. The Son of God had been crucified and lay dead in a tomb; the world itself darkened without its light. But the story didn’t end there. On that third day, when everything seemed hopeless and bleak, the Son of God rose from the dead, conquering not only sin but death itself.

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

We rejoice this Resurrection Sunday (Easter Sunday) because our hope, the Light of the World, is no longer dead. Our God is alive and well. He is seated on His throne in glory and honor. He prepared the way for us. He overcame the entire world, even death, for us. And because He rose from the dead, so shall we. Because death had no power over Him, it shall have no power over us. Because He overcame sin, so shall we overcome sin through Him. All things are now possible for those who believe in the power of the LORD Jesus Christ, for He Was, He Is, and He Is To Come.

He is coming back, but this time it won’t be to die. It’ll be to resurrect us from our dying bodies and then to bring the righteous wrath of God upon those who refused to accept His loving sacrifice.

Oh LORD God, thank You for Your loving sacrifice. Thank You for each stripe on Your back that brought us healing, every piercing and every bruise that brought us forgiveness for our transgressions and iniquities, every chastisement that brought us peace, and especially every drop of blood spilled for it is by Your blood we have been washed clean. Thank You for Your sacrifice. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Category: Hope For The Hopeless

Don’t Believe The Lie

Verses of Encouragement and Hope

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Hope in His Power

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Be Ransomed

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Follow The Man Jesus

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Be Distinct

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The Hope of The Cross

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Await The Future

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Hope In The Light

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Hope in the Cross

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O Death

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