A Hopeful Heart - Women's Gathering 5/4/24
This is an audio recording from our Women’s Gathering on May 4th, 2024. The teaching is by Abi Kozak and is followed by a Q&A facilitated by Abi.
We are going to be talking about a hopeful heart this morning, so you might find my first question a little bit strange, but stick with me.
Have you ever felt daunted? Maybe it was a full schedule, college finals, a big athletic event, a diagnosis, or a big work project that left you with that sinking, “How am I going to do this?” feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Well, when I come to 1 Peter 3, I sometimes get that sinking, intimidated feeling in my stomach. I remember feeling that way in February when I listened to Andrea’s talk on a beautiful heart, but specifically how a gentle and quiet spirit takes work to cultivate. It’s not something we can put on and take off like make-up. A quick fix like that would be nice! But no, our beautiful hearts take cultivation that can be challenging and usually costly. Later this year we are going to hear from Joanna on submission even to unbelieving husbands, then from Linda on not fearing anything that is frightening. I don't know about you, but at face value each of these propositions are daunting!
This leaves me to ask, how can we cultivate the beautiful, submissive, and courageous heart that Peter talks about in 1 Peter 3? It seems beyond our strength and abilities. Well, spoiler alert, Peter doesn’t leave us in the dark on this. He answers it with just three little words in verse 5: “Hope in God.” So, that is what we are going to focus on today: a hopeful heart.
But first, let’s go to the Lord and ask for his help. Father, I just thank you so much for the opportunity to come together as sisters and to open your Word to see what you have for us this morning. We ask for your Spirit to be here with us and to show us deeper and deeper riches of who you are so that our hearts can overflow in hope to you. We love you, Father. Amen.
Defining Biblical Hope
Before we dive in, I want us to consider how we typically use the word ‘hope’. We use the word ‘hope’ often in conversation, probably more often than we realize, and it is often not how the Bible uses the word ‘hope.’ For example, I am 35 weeks pregnant. In the past few weeks, I have found myself saying and thinking things like, “I sure hope that I am not still pregnant past my due date.” What do I mean by that? Well, I desire something that I am not sure will happen. I hope baby boy will make his appearance before the beginning of June, but come mid-June, I very well might still be pregnant.
But that’s not the way that the Bible uses the word hope. So, in order to really understand our passage and what Peter is saying, we need to ask the question, “What is biblical hope?”
Hebrews 6:11 says,
“And we desire each one of you…to have the full assurance of hope until the end.”
He calls hope “full assurance”.
John Piper expands on this, defining biblical hope as,
“A confident expectation in God’s good for us coming in the future.”
So, hope is confidence. It’s not wishful thinking, it’s not an unsure desire. Biblical hope is confident.
An example may help us grasp this. I am not a huge “in-store shopper.” I don’t love going to real stores; I find it inconvenient. I do, however, frequently buy things on Amazon. I love Amazon because I can go in, search for my item, find reviews I like, and then I can just checkout because of course my card and address are already saved on the account. And then, I have the item in my hand, right? Well no, not exactly. I have to wait. So I just spent money, I will see that come through on my credit card statement, but how can I be sure that my item is coming? Well, it’s because I have a confirmation code in my email. So when I order something, I am sure that my item is coming.
That is kind of what it is like to hope in God, to have biblical hope. We can be confident of God’s good coming to us in the future because we have the confirmation code of God himself, his character and his promises.
So with that in mind, let’s turn to 1 Peter 3 and read verses 3-6:
“Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.”
Today we will explore a hopeful heart. We will first do that by looking at the object of a hopeful heart and then at a picture of a hopeful heart.
The Object of a Hopeful Heart
Peter is very clear about where our hope should lie in verse 5. He says “the holy women, who you should emulate, hoped in God.” It is natural for us to ask, what does that mean exactly, Peter? What does it mean to hope in God? This isn’t the first time Peter has talked about hope in this book. In fact, Peter addresses hope many times throughout the book, with the longest exposition on hope being found in the first few verses. It’s like Peter is saying, "Before we can talk about the practical outworkings of your lives, you need a foundation. You need to know what your hope is.” In the first chapter of the book, Peter shows us that God is our hope in our past, our future, and our present. Let’s look at 1 Peter 1, verses 3-6.
First, verse 3 says:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”
The first phrase we see here is: “Blessed be God.” This is a cry of praise that comes from a heart that was desperate and hopeless and then was rescued.
It’s like the cry of a mother whose child was severely choking. The mother tried all of the maneuvers she knew, but she couldn't dislodge the object. Shortly, the child became unresponsive and blue. The mother was desperate. She didn’t know what to do. She screamed for help. She was hopeless. But then a rescuer came. He performed CPR and had the equipment to remove the object right out of the child’s windpipe. The child’s breath returned, the pulse quickened, and the color returned to her face. What does that mother do? She turns to the rescuer and cries, “Thank you, thank you!” or like Peter says “Bless you!”
This is us. We were dead in our sins and without hope. The only confidence that we had for our future was death and destruction. And then he came to us in his great mercy and breathed life into our dead hearts. We now have a living hope. So, we can turn, and we should turn and exclaim “Bless you, our Father! Thank you for your great mercy!” He is our hope. His great mercy is our confidence because he sent his rescuer, Jesus Christ, to save us from our sins.
Peter then goes on in verse 4 to say we have:
“An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,”
Not only has God rescued us, he has made us his daughters and thus heirs to an inheritance that he himself is keeping for us. The most beautiful parts of this world, the little glimpses he gives us–the laughter of our children, the warmth of the sun, the comfort of our favorite foods, the beauty of the flowers–they pale in comparison to the perfection and the joy we will experience in heaven as we get our inheritance. Most of all, we will have perfect communion with the one that our souls were made for. We will see Jesus and our souls will find complete and undistracted rest in him. Our future is secure and our eternal joy is certain because God himself is keeping that for us.
I think the coming of spring demonstrates for us how the promise of heaven really does fuel our hope. Usually around March every year, I get a little bit sick of winter. The days are dark, long, gray, and cold, and they have been for a while. The once bright white snow has turned gray with dirt or gravel that has mixed in with time. Bundling up myself and my daughter to just get out of the house has gotten a little old, and I’m just over it, frankly. But because I have lived in Minnesota for year after year after year (almost my whole life), I know that spring always comes. The snow will always melt. The green will always come again to the dead trees. The gray above will turn to bright blue skies. And I will feel the warmth of the sun on my face again. It happens every year. And so this confidence that spring is coming helps me get through the last cold weeks or months of winter each year.
And this is what God’s promise of an inheritance can do for us now. We can have hope through the often dark days in this life, because we are confident that our inheritance is secure. It is unfading, it’s undefiled, it’s not going anywhere. It is being kept by God for us in heaven. It is coming. Each day brings it closer. So, our hearts can have hope now because God has promised this bright and glorious future for us.
Finally, we look at verses 5-6, and we see that this hope on our road to heaven is in God’s power alone. Verse 5 says (paraphrasing a little),
(We are being guarded) by God’s power through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last times, in this you rejoice, though now if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.
I don’t need to tell us that this world is broken. We long for friendships and find relational difficulty. We desire children and encounter infertility or loss. We yearn for a spouse, but then experience long seasons of waiting or a breakup. We ask for healing, yet our bodies or the bodies of loved ones succumb to disease. This leads us to ask the question, “How can our hopeful heart endure in the midst of so much struggle and difficulty?” Peter tells us. Sisters, we can have hope now, in these days, because God’s own power is what is guarding us on the road home to see him.
This is like the image of a bodyguard. Whenever I think of a bodyguard, I immediately think of Queen Elizabeth. I know a lot of people have bodyguards, but Queen Elizabeth especially highlights this point for us. Queen Elizabeth lived to her nineties, so in her old age her body was frail and weak. She could not withstand the threats that came against her, so she had bodyguards at her home. They also went with her to social engagements, guarded her in the car, on planes, or were her shadow as she walked with friends in the park. They were always there, mitigating the threats that she was not able to handle on her own.
Isn’t that exactly what God does for us? Even with our new hearts that he has given us, we can’t withstand the temptations and trials that we will encounter in this life. Our strength is small and our power is weak. Our only hope is in God’s power guarding us and keeping our faith.
As the hymn “He Will Hold Me Fast” says,
“When I fear my faith will fail, Christ will hold me fast ... I could never keep my hold through life’s fearful path for my love is often cold, Christ will hold me fast.”
To conclude our detour to chapter one, the object of our hopeful hearts is God.
Our hope is in his redemption in the past, his promise to us in the future, and his power over our present. Chapter 1 is by no means an exhaustive list of God’s attributes or his promises to us, which leads me to a quick point of application.
Our days can be so full. They’re full of school drop-offs, homework, activities, work projects, or social engagements. All of the things that fill our schedules can cloud our eyes from what our hope is. To cultivate a hopeful heart, we must be daily reminded of God’s character and promises. It is his Word that displays to us who God is and what he has said to us. So, we must search after him day after day.
And guess what? That doesn’t mean we need to have long, beautifully curated, quiet times with our coffee, a journal, and quiet worship music playing in the background. That isn’t always the reality in which we live. Whether it’s an audio Bible on the way to work, or not-so-quiet-time with children sitting next to you, or maybe nursing a baby in the middle of the night, finding pockets of time to go to God’s word is what is going to bring a renewed sense and understanding of who God is, what he has promised you, and thus help your heart to reorient on him.
Each chapter of the bible, arguably each verse, displays an aspect of who our God is. So in pursuing the cultivation of a hopeful heart, I encourage you to come to the text with questions like, “What is God showing me about his character in this verse?” or “What is he promising in this chapter?”
Once you have found a bite-sized truth about your God, I encourage you to write it down and repeat it to yourself. Or maybe find a song lyric that encompasses that truth and have it playing it in the background of your day. Regardless, we must be steeping ourselves over and over again in who God is and what he has said to us in order to keep that in the forefront of our hearts. This will recalibrate and refuel our hope in God for each and every day. As we dive deeper and deeper into knowing and experiencing who God is, the more our hearts will grow in hope to him.
This leads us to our last point. Peter knows that we will grasp the concept of a hopeful heart best through an example, so he shows us a picture of a hopeful heart.
A Picture of a Hopeful Heart
Look again at 1 Peter 3:5:
“For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him lord.”
Peter points way back to the holy women, specifically to the life of Sarah, to get a picture of a hopeful heart. So we’re going to go all the way back to the beginning of the bible, Genesis Chapter 12, where we first meet Sarah.
Sarah, then called Sarai, lived in UR (which is in the Middle East) with her husband and her family. It seems they were prosperous. They had everything one could want, yet one thing was missing. We see that they had no children. Her womb was empty, and we see in the next few chapters this left a longing and a large hole in her heart.
When Sarai was 65 years old, the Lord came and asked them to go to a new land, which he promised to give them and make them a great nation. I’m sure Sarai thought, “Oh children at last! And not a moment too soon, because I am 65 years old after all.”
Trusting God’s promise, Abram and Sarai moved to a whole new land. I know some of us have made some big moves in our lives. So we might know that moving is very difficult. You must pack up all your possessions and have painful goodbyes with loved ones. Then, once you arrive you must create a new home, find new people, and adapt to a whole new culture. Even the cultural change from one US city to another can be difficult.
How much more for Sarai? She didn’t have any nice highways to travel on or hotels to stay in. She most likely walked or rode a bumpy donkey each and every day. At night she would unpack everything, set up for the whole group, and then pack again in the morning. It was a large and arduous process for her. This obedience had a true cost for Sarai. But she was confident that God would do what he said. She hoped in God and continued to walk.
Sarai and Abram eventually made it to the land. Yet, Sarai still didn’t get pregnant. I’m sure the same questions that had plagued her for years were on repeat in her head. “Okay, we obeyed…how much longer must I wait? Has God forgotten his promise?”
God didn't answer those questions for a long time. About 25 years went by with relative silence. Sarai was now 90 years old. She was an old woman with gray hair, wrinkly skin, and a crouching back. She no longer had a monthly cycle giving her a possibility of pregnancy. The time had passed, it seemed.
But then, God came to Abram and changed their names. Now, I imagine the name-change conversation must’ve been a funny one between Abraham and Sarah. Abraham came in and was like, “Sarah, Sarah,” and Sarai looked around like, “Who is Sarah?” and Abraham explained, “God changed your name to Sarah because you will be the princess or lady over many houses, a great nation. Oh and by the way there are like three messengers we have to feed so can you grab the flour and make some bread for us?”
I can imagine Sarah’s eyebrows went up in surprise and her mind started to turn. As she mixed and kneaded the bread, she wondered, “I have waited on God’s promised child for over 25 years and now there doesn’t seem a way for my body to conceive. How can I be the mother of a great nation?”
So she finished the bread, scraped all the dough off of her fingers, and delivered it. She was very curious about what the messengers were going to say, so she went over to the tent wall and listened through the fabric. This is what she heard:
“I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” (Genesis 18:10)
“What?” Sarah laughed to herself,
“After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” (Genesis 18:12)
This is the statement that Peter wants us to pause at. Peter did not point to Sarah and say, “Look, ladies. A woman who hopes in God never doubts. She never sees her circumstances as hard, or sorrowful, or seemingly impossible.” Instead, Peter points to a real woman with real fears and questions, struggling in the fight between hope in God and hope in what she can control and understand. How does that fight for hope end for Sarah?
Well, Genesis goes silent concerning Sarah for the next three chapters. In fact, the next time we hear Sarah speak, she is holding her newborn son at the age of 91. Sarah says:
“God has made laughter for me, everyone who hears will laugh over me.” (Genesis 21:6)
So what changed from Genesis 18’s doubt to Genesis’s 21’s praise?
Hebrews 11:11 tells us,
“By faith, Sarah herself received the power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”
Sarah’s heart turned to God and said, "I may not understand how I will have a child or why your promise has taken 25 years to fulfill, but I know who my God is. He is faithful. He is powerful.” That is what it looks like to have a hopeful heart.
Sarah’s hopeful heart looked at God, not her circumstances.
Sarah found herself in a fight for hope. Isn’t that where we so often live our lives? We all have a struggle that is currently weighing heavily on our hearts. Think for a moment. What is that for you? How does a hopeful heart respond in the midst of that specific waiting, difficulty, or pain? Well, we see from Sarah that a hopeful heart allows us to take our eyes off the circumstance in front of us and move them upward to God.
A hopeful heart says, “God, you will keep my faith until I see you in paradise. I will hope in you. My father, you have promised never to give me more than I can handle. I will hope in you. You have said that you count every tear that I cry, none of them go unnoticed. I will hope in you. You have promised a rich inheritance that is waiting for me. This struggle will not have the last say over me. It is creating in me a beautiful heart that is precious in your eyes. So today, I will hope in you.” A hopeful heart finds God more real than anything else.
Sarah’s hopeful heart overflowed in joyful obedience.
How often does obedience feel more like a duty rather than a delight? We know that our God calls us to serve others and deny ourselves and so we just do, do, do. Serve, serve, serve. Suddenly, our obedience is driven by drugging duty instead of joyful obedience and delight.
But if we look back at our passage in 1 Peter 3, we see that Peter specifically highlights Sarah’s submission as an expression, or an overflow, of her hope in God. Her hope comes first. He then goes on to say and we are her children if we do good and do not fear. We see that the overarching point is that a hopeful heart overflows in obedience to God’s commands.
I think a little physics example can help us understand this point. When I was around 10, my mom gathered supplies to do a science experiment with us. We took a liter milk carton, and then my brother and I attached popsicle sticks off the end and strapped a rubber band between the two popsicle sticks. We then slid a rectangular piece of cardboard through the rubber band as a propeller. Finally, our boat was complete and ready to sail. We filled the bathtub and set the boat in. And guess what, it didn’t move at all because we missed a step. So, we took the cardboard propeller and started to twist it. As we twisted the propeller, the rubber band began to twist and stretch until it was taut and twisted on both sides. Then we released the propeller and all the power built up in the stretched rubber band was let loose, spinning the propeller and pushing our cardboard boat forward.
Our hopeful hearts are like the power built up in the twisted rubber band. Our hearts hope in God and as the rubber band twists and twists, the more tension and power builds up. And then that hope, that power, propels us forward in joyful obedience.
Peter calls this obedience “doing good” in verse 6. What a beautiful and all-encompassing term that is! As we work hard in our homes and workplaces, we do good. As we show hospitality, we do good. As we share the hope we have in us with friends, coworkers or neighbors even in the face of reviling, we do good. As we sooth sleepless babies, serve crabby toddlers, or draw out struggling teenagers, we do good.
But all of it must be an overflow from a heart that has a confident expectation of God’s good coming for us in the future.
Sisters, let us press on each and every day to cultivate a hopeful heart. Let’s end with the benediction from Romans 15:13:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”
Amen.
Application Questions:
Think of a situation either now or in the past when your hope has been tested. What is a verse or promise that you can rehearse to yourself that will help you hope in God?
Peter shows us an example of a hopeful heart in Sarah knowing that examples bolster our hope. Can you think of a woman who exhibited a hopeful heart (present or past)? How has this example been an encouragement to you in cultivating a hopeful heart?
When does obedience feel more like a duty rather than a delight? How can a hopeful heart reorient your attitude in the act of obedience?