Where Is Your Hope?Sample

The Only Thing Strong Enough to Bear the Weight of Our Hope

Immediately after Jesus’ encounter with the children, a rich young ruler comes to Jesus asking how to inherit eternal life. The response for most who have grown up in the church might be surprising. First, Jesus recites five of the ten commandments. When the man says he has followed all of these since he was young, Jesus tells him he’s just missing one thing: sell everything, give that money to the poor and follow Him. The encounter ends with the man intensely grieved and Jesus pointing out how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.

This entire journey to Jerusalem is all about faith – where people put their trust. With every encounter, Luke is drawing out where people’s security lies. By definition, as a rich young ruler, this man had all that life could offer – wealth, health, and status. And yet, out of all of the people that seek out Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, he is the one that misses it. The good things that marked his life were too safe, too certain to exchange for the unknown risks of following Jesus.

Reading the passage and casting judgment is easy. But haven’t we all been here? Haven’t we all experienced the devastation when the securities we didn’t even realize were holding us up came crashing down? Our lives become unstable and disoriented, and disappointments become shattering, not because of the circumstances but because of the worth we placed on things never meant to carry our hope.

The only true safety is in Jesus. And yet, for the rich young ruler, Jesus was too risky, too uncertain. Jesus gives us the same invitation every day. Where are you feeling shaken? What part of life, if it were removed, would make everything feel out of control? Where have you exchanged the immutable God for your own version of safety, stability, security, or identity?

Will you let Jesus be enough for you? He is the only safe place for your hope, not just in the life to come, but today and every day.