Hope

Wow! Wow! Wow! I just came back from a friend’s house where we watch two of Louis Giglio’s DVD’s. I will give all my front teeth just to be able to attend one of his seminars. This guy has such an amazing way of seeing God, you cannot help but to tap into his enthusiasm for God. I want to tell you a little of what he said.

He was talking about hope and the greatness of God.

In Joh 16:33 Jesus said the following to his disciples: “I have told you these things, so that in me you will have (perfect) peace (and) confidence. In the world you have tribulation, trials, distress and frustrations, but be of good cheer (take courage, be confident, certain, undaunted)! For I have overcome the world.

What Jesus was saying to His disciples was that they WILL experience TROUBLE, but IN JESUS they will FIND PEACE, because He has already OVERCOME THE WORLD. Note this was said before Jesus was crucified. Jesus new that whether it be yesterday, today or tomorrow, He already won the battle. He was send to earth by His Father who has authority over everything for that purpose.

So what do you do when the ground gets pulled from under your feet and the walls come crushing down? Whether you survive or not depends on where your focus are. Not so long ago I had to try and explain to my son, why God don’t always answer our prayers and why bad things happen to good people. We live in a fallen world where often chaos rules, so it is easy to ask WHY GOD when really bad things happen to us. Why did You not stop it? How do you stay afloat when everything is falling apart in your life? You can’t stop trouble from coming, but you can survive it.

Louis Giglio put everything so nicely together.

He said it all depends on what your anchor is. You anchor has to be the Cross. When you make the preservation of yourself and your family your highest goal in life, you will crumble when this world smashes you into the wall, because you have nothing to hold on to. When you make God your highest goal in life, the world will smash you into the wall, but you will survive because you still have something to hold on to. I know from my own experience that if I didn’t have God to hold on to when my world got smashed, I would not have survived.

1.      To look at the Cross will tell you how much God loves you. Anybody who can offer    His son to take the punishment for our sins must love us very much.

2.      To look at the cross will help us remember that God understands how we feel. There is nothing you can feel that He hasn’t also felt.

3.      To look at the Cross will help you remember that even if it doesn’t feel or look like it, God is in control. The whole crucifixion, from where the crowd chose Barabbas (a criminal) instead of Jesus (an innocent man), right to the end where Jesus the Son of God Almighty was hanging like a criminal on a Cross with no possibility of being saved by His Father, was controlled by God. God decided what will happen.

4.      Looking at the Cross will remind us that God always paints on a canvas. He will always use something bad, and turn it into something eternal. We never see the bigger picture, but it always is there. Looking at Jesus hanging on the Cross, no one saw the bigger picture. They did not see that this terrible thing that was happening will result in us getting the chance to receive eternal life.

Isn’t that just an awesome way to tackle your problems. Never again will I struggle through hardship without remembering to see the Cross. When you make the Cross your anchor in the storm, it gives you hope in the knowledge that you are not alone. That even if you don’t see it, your tears will not be in vain, but most of all you can find peace in the midst of chaos knowing that God is always in control. All you have to do is hold on to Him, take one step at a time and walk through the storm with the sure knowledge that God is with you every step of the way. I know because I have been there. That is the difference between people who put their trust in God and those who don’t. You always have HOPE! There is nothing life can throw at you that you cannot overcome with God in you.

How can we be so sure God can keep things together for us? The answer is simple. He is the Almighty Creator of everything. Louis Giglio showed us just how powerful and big God is. He showed us pictures of 3 stars and 1 galaxy and gave us there dimensions. To help make things a bit clearer I want to mention what a light year is. It is the speed at which light travels in 1 year.

Light second = 300 000km/s, that is 7.5 times around the earth in 1 sec

Light year = 9.5 trillion km/year (9.500 000 000 000km)

Now have a look at these dimensions.

Whirlpool galaxy:      31million light years away from earth

(31 000 000 x 9.500 000 000 000 =

294 500 000 000 000 000 000km)

300 billion stars in galaxy

In the centre there is a black hole that looks like an eye with a cross inside

 

 Sun:     Radius = 696 000km

Diameter = 1.392km

Circumference = 4.366 813km (you can line up a 109 earths across the sun and about 1.3 million earths could fit inside the sun)

It is 8 light min away from earth (300 000km x 60 x 8 = 144 billion km)

Enough golf balls to fill a bus.

 

Betelgeuse:     Over 640 light years away from earth (640 x 9.5 trillion km =                                               6.080 000 000 000 000km)

About 1000 times the size of the sun, twice the orbit of the sun

Diameter = 1.4billion km (1.400 000 000km)

If the earth was a golf ball, Betelgeuse will be 6 times the height of the empire building (443m x 6 = 2,658km)

262 trillion earths can fit inside the star

Can fill up super dome 3000 times with golf balls

 

Canis Majoris:             Biggest star found so far  

If earth was a golf ball, Canis Majoris would be the height

of Mount Everest

5000light years away from earth (5000 x 9.5 trillion km =

47 500 000 000 000 000km)

2100 times the size of the sun

2.900 000 000km diameter   

Can fill state of Texas with golf balls 55.88cm deep

Can fit 7 quadrillion earths inside star

 

 

To give you an idea of what a quadrillion is:

·         A million sec ago = 12 days

·         A billion sec ago = may 1975

·         A trillion sec ago = 29 700BC

·         A quadrillion sec ago = 30million 800000 years ago

If that didn’t blow your mind, have a look at this.

Laminin: It is a protein found in extracellular matrix, the sheets of protein that forms the substrate of all internal organs, also called the basement membrane. Its function is to hold all our body structures together. What is so amazing about this protein is that it is in the shape of a cross.

                                                 

 

Col 1:15-17 ”15Now He is the exact likeness, of the unseen God, He is the Firstborn of all creation. 16For it was in Him that all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen….. 17And He Himself existed before all things and in Him all things consist (cohere, are held together)

Now if the size of those stars do not convince you of the power of God (He created them with a spoken word) and you cannot see the significance of the shape of the protein that is the glue of our bodies, nothing on this earth will convince you that the Creator of all of the Universe and of that same body can hold your life together when the storms of this world hit you.