The Hope QuotientSample

Our churches struggle today because we’ve developed a watered-down version of the Christian faith that looks nothing like the vibrant, life-changing, world-impacting, faith of the early church. How did their faith unleash hope?

1. Hope-fueled churches take God-honoring risks. The first church was not afraid to take risks, give sacrificially, share their faith or try new things (everything was new!). The main difference between early believers and us is their confident, risk-taking faith.

2. Hope-fueled churches unleash compassion. Our church was turned upside-down after a group of leaders studying Acts chapter 2 comprehended the early church’s pattern for community impact. The pattern is: good deeds led to good will, which led to openness to the good news.

Good deeds: Selling their possessions, they gave to anyone with needs. 

Good will: They had favor with God and people. 

Good news: Favor led to people hearing their message.

Like many pastors of American churches, I had been trying to deliver the good news without good deeds. That one meeting changed everything. We began doing all kinds of things that we had never done before to serve the community. Unleashed compassion started an unchecked, decade-long growth spurt.

 3. Hope-fueled churches are known by what they’re for, not what they’re against. Hope-based Christians realize that revival comes not when people become more religious but when religious people become more like Christ. 

 4. Hope-fueled churches believe that resurrection works best in cemeteries. It’s Easter. Christ is alive—the disciples are a mess. They walk into a room filled with anxiety and walk out confident. They walk in filled with doubt and walk out filled with faith. They walk in crushed by discouragement and walk out filled with hope. 

What did they discover in that room? The angel put it this way, “He is not here. He is risen.” The early church believed “He is risen” are life’s three most important words. Those three words mean that all the hope you will ever need is available.

“He is risen” gave the Christian church the solid foundation of hope to offer to every person on the planet. Those three words signal that death is defeated—for you, for me, for everyone. Those three words let you know that anything is possible. 

Think Up:

“He is risen” gives hope. There is no situation and no person that cannot be fueled by hope.

If God can raise His Son, that same power that defeated death can give you the power to live. That power can raise a dead marriage, career, or dream. It’s the power to let go of guilt, to start over, to bounce back from a broken heart, to become what you were always meant to be in the first place. (Read on).