Hope-based Security for Homeland Insecurity!

The events of September 11, 2001 shattered American illusions of security and invulnerability based upon our size and strength. However, most Americans still believe that Big Government is the basis of our security. As a result another bureaucratic agency, The Department of Homeland Security, was established by President Bush in 2002. This agency now has 230,000 employees and an annual budget of over 40 billion dollars.

In spite of more security personnel and technology than ever in history, the typical American’s security and confidence in the future has been badly shaken. The American dream is on the verge of becoming a nightmare for many who are not religiously tolerant and politically correct in their worldview.

Medicine has made many advances, yet there is still a one-in-four chance that you will get cancer. Science has invented many time saving devices, but it has also given us such massive weapons of destruction that time for the whole world could be ended in a blinding, burning flash. On the economic front, many remember when we were so confident of our currency that we would describe a healthy condition as being as “sound as a dollar.” Today if the doctor told us we were as “sound as a dollar,” we would start making funeral arrangements. No one’s job, savings account, or property is safe and certain anymore. Our government is no longer of the people, by the people, for the people, but over the people in the name of the people.

From a purely human perspective, sixties folk singer, Joan Baez was right when she declared: “We are the orphans in an age of no tomorrows.”

Where does one find true hope and security in such an insecure and despairing world?

We seem to forget what the first pilgrims who came to America remembered so vividly, that it is faith in a Big God, and not faith in Big Government, which serves as the only basis for real hope-based security.

God’s great desire is to give us Hope-based security for our Homeland insecurity. He wants His people to feel secure as they center their hope in His person, purpose, love and power. Everything else in life is very insecure — health, wealth, family, job, economies, nations, nature, societies, and our world, are all so fragile and uncertain as to cause one to feel like we are living in the most insecure and uncertain times in the history of mankind.

While visiting the Menninger Clinic, (a Psychiatric Hospital) Pastor Bruce Larson asked some of the doctors, “What is the single most important ingredient in your treatment here?”

The doctors answered, “We know it is hope. We don’t know how it comes or how to give it to people, but we know that when people get hope, they get well.”

Hope will get us up, even if it’s a false hope, (this is the principle behind placebos) but only true Biblically defined, supernaturally wrought, and personally experienced hope can keep us up.

Biblical Hope is the Confident Expectation and Desire for Something Good from God in the Future with the Expectation of Receiving It!

In spite of all the fake news and bad news, there is good news and that is that we can have hope-based, eternal security in a loving, all-powerful God. However, we must understand that this omnipotent God threatens our security in everything but HIM. If you find your security in health, the God of the Bible is a threat to you. If you find your security in big government, in your family, or job, or money, or education, the God of the Bible is a threat to you. Moreover, in threatening all these utterly inadequate foundations of security, the Spirit of God drives us persistently and lovingly back to the one and only eternal and unshakable foundation for security — a living hope in the only true, living and loving God. All the threats and warnings of the Bible declare with one voice: sin is an effort to feel secure in anything other than God.

Christians have hope for living because Jesus Christ came into space-time history, assuming our likeness, accepting our sin liabilities, and acquiring our liberty and security by dying as our substitute on the cross, and then rising triumphantly over death and the Devil. The coming and conquering mission of Jesus made possible our receiving resurrection life, and that brings hope. We have hope that we can not only face, but also conquer any obstacle this world can present. We have “other-world” power. We offer hope to the sinner for forgiveness. We offer to the addict the hope of deliverance and freedom. To the sexually confused, we offer the hope of wholeness.  To the lonely, we offer the hope of a family who cares. To the oppressed, we offer the hope of justice and to the guilty, we offer the hope of mercy. In fact there is no human dilemma too great for the power that raised Jesus from the dead, and that power is in us who believe Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

We have recovery programs for every type of bondage, alcohol, drugs, gambling, sexual addictions, etc. But I declare that what we really need is a massive recovery program of Biblical hope which alone can provide hope-based security for all of our homeland insecurity!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!