Are You Willing to Hope Again?

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It's true. We often go through deep, painful disappointments, but are you willing to hope again? It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on The Line of Fire. And now here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. To The Line of Fire, Michael Brown, delighted to be with you and ready to really dig deep today into some difficult spiritual questions and give you some hope and encouragement based on the word and based on the truthfulness of God, not based on emotion, not based on type, not even based only on story and testimony, but on story and testimony that are based themselves on the word of God. Also, there's some important news that I want to interact with. We'll do that a little later in the show, and I want to take calls. Any subject you want to talk to me about at all, things we've been talking about the last few days on the air, anything else, articles I've written you want to interact with, 866-348-7884. So it doesn't have to be on this topic at all, but if you have struggled, if you are having a hard time believing again or finding hope again, then by all means give us a call.

We'd love to speak with you as well, 866-348-7884. I want to take a look at a verse in Proverbs. It's actually Proverbs 13, 12. Proverbs 13, verse 12.

And I want to give you some background in terms of why I'm talking about this subject. Proverbs 13, it's a verse that when we get to it, you'll say, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, I knew the verse. Many times we don't remember exactly where a verse is, but we're familiar with it. Because I have been going on regular prayer retreats the last year and a half, so on average maybe about every five weeks. So I schedule them on a monthly basis and then with travel schedule and other things, maybe it works out to on average about every five weeks.

So 10 or 11 of these prayer retreats in a year. And I just go away for the weekend and just go somewhere local, get a hotel suite or if I'm on the road, extend my stay where I am, and I'll get going on a Friday night, so I have my salad dinner and then spend Friday night in prayer, then all day Saturday, Saturday night, Sunday night. So, you know, take a break for meals.

I'll read the words some. I may write very, very little or just take a break while eating, et cetera. But otherwise, I'm spending hour after hour in prayer before the Lord.

It's just wonderful being with him. And I'm being affected by it, and I know prayers are being answered. And God, for a year and a half steadily, but for years before that as well, keeps laying on my heart to pray through and take hold of promises that he's given me in years past that have been long delayed in fulfillment. And when they're long delayed in fulfillment, or when you have disappointment along the way, or maybe even death along the way and everything is shattered, it's very easy to think it's never going to happen. And you almost don't want to make yourself vulnerable again to believe again. And, you know, why even let my hopes rise if they're gonna come crashing down in the end? Why bother? Why be disappointed again?

I don't want to be deceived. These are real things that human beings go through. People of faith go through this as well, especially when you had such expectation. You were so sure things were going to happen, and they didn't, and some it seems like it's too late for it to ever happen. Like I said, there's death or something else where it's even taken away where your very hope was that certain things were going to happen with you and your spouse, or to a child, and the child's not even here, and how can we believe God for promises where everything's been crushed and dashed? So this is something very real that we deal with. And so many of us lost people close to us during COVID.

It brings us home once again. Can I believe again? You know, how many times am I going to believe again and put my trust in God again only to see it doesn't happen? And for some, you lose faith in God entirely.

For others, it's not that at all. It's just, hey, I love the Lord, but I'm going to forget about contending for these promises. I love the Lord, but let me just be realistic and realize maybe I exaggerate, maybe God never really spoke to me, whatever, but I'm not going to be praying, crying out, fasting for these things anymore. Just they're not going to happen.

Accept it, get over it, and move on. So in my own life, by God's grace, we reach a whole lot of people. And around the world, we hear from people who've been blessed by our ministry, and I'm humbled by any good thing. God knows this.

I know it. Any good thing that comes out of me that blesses you is from the Lord. It is his work. It is his grace. It is to his credit, to his honor, his glory. I am who I am exclusively because of Jesus. That's the beginning.

That's the end. Having said that, the Lord has promised me over the years many things that I have not yet seen. I've seen enough things happen in my 67 years and 51 years in the Lord to fill several lifetimes over. And yet there are things he has spoken to me about that we are to do so that his name will be magnified that we haven't done yet. And they're big, and they're major.

And he keeps stirring my heart again to pray for these very things and stirring my heart to exercise faith for them. For those just tuning in, you say, I thought you were going to talk about political issues. We do some days. I thought you were going to talk about, like, culture wars. We do some days. I thought you were going to talk about theological controversies.

We do some days. We did those things this very week. Culture wars on Monday. Theological controversy yesterday.

Tomorrow, a whole lot of stuff about black Hebrew Israelites. Yeah, so we do all those things. And we don't just do those things. Because we're here to infuse you with faith. We're here to give you hope, not just based on, the guy on the radio told me I should have hope.

Hey, you remember Rush Limbaugh, if you used to listen to him, he would say, I'll tell you when to panic. In other words, people listened and found stability because he gave them hope. But I've got a hope beyond any hope he was giving as an optimistic man and as a man full of insight. I'm giving you hope beyond that because it's based on scripture.

It's based on the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. So this broadcast may be for someone you love. Share it with them. Share it with them. If you're watching on YouTube, just click that thumbs up.

If you're watching on Facebook, just click share. Let's spread this message. It's very important. All right, so we go over to Proverbs, chapter 13, verse 12. And it says in Hebrew, tohelet memushachah makhelev, which is hope, which is elongated. So hope deferred is how we're familiar with it. Hope deferred is a sickness of heart. It's a metaphor in Hebrew. It's not a simile. Hope deferred is like sickness of heart.

It's a metaphor. So tohelet memushachah makhelev. So when you're hoping for something and it's stretched out and it's prolonged and it never happens, your heart gets sick.

Ve'etz chayim tavah va'ah. But a tree of life it is when the thing you've desired comes. So hope deferred sickens the heart, but desire realized is a tree of life. All right, so why is it that so often God allows our hopes to be deferred?

And then he answers. I'm not talking about just I had a dream, I had a thought, I had a desire. No, I'm not talking about my own dreams, desires, your own dreams, desires, but something that God put inside of you, a promise, something that's scriptural, a word that the Spirit spoke to you. And you know it.

You know it's from the Lord. Why does it often take so long to come to pass? And why is it often that we come to the end of ourselves and even come to a point of despair before the answer comes? Now, some of it is obvious that things take time, right? In other words, if you're a 12-year-old girl and you just have this clear vision, the Lord's shown me I'm gonna be married, I'm gonna have a big family, and our kids are gonna be missionaries and doctors. Okay, by the time you get married, by the time you have a big family, by the time you raise those kids, by the time those kids get trained to be missionaries and doctors and go out in the field, it's gonna be many years.

That could be 30, 40 years in the making. So certain things take time, obviously. Certain things take time in terms of us, that we're not ready. We have to grow. We have to mature. We have to overcome certain obstacles in our lives. We have to learn by experience. So there's certain things that just take time in us.

But there are other things I believe God does. So I want you to think with me in Luke 24, you've got the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, right? And they had put all their eggs in this one basket that this Jesus Yeshua is the Messiah, that he's the one. And it's like a dream. We're getting to see it.

This is unreal. Did you hear him teach? Did you see the looks on the people's faces? Did you see how he confounded the religious hypocrites? We were there when he healed a blind man. Did you hear about the dead bird?

Yeah, they walked on war. It's him. We know it's him. And all these people are coming to God that never believed before and they're repenting of their sins. He's the one.

And you're telling everyone. He dies? What? He dies? He dies by crucifixion, the most scandalous death in the ancient world. What?

It can't be. He's the Messiah. Well, he said he was gonna die, right? Well, people just didn't get it.

They were too dense in terms of hearing and understanding. So he's with these disciples. He's risen from the dead. And they said, yeah, we had hoped.

We had hoped. He says, you know, why are you downcast? The Lord asked him, why are you downcast?

It doesn't matter. Jesus, we thought he was the one and God confirmed the word indeed that he was the Messiah. But then he was killed. And now there are reports that he rose from the dead.

What's going on? We really thought it was him. And then he begins to open up the scriptures. How fools the slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Didn't the Messiah have to die before coming into his glory? And he speaks to them and doesn't, he doesn't reveal who he is until he's ready to leave and then disappears from their sight. And then they realize it was him. And as he spoke, their hearts were on fire.

The words were burning in their hearts. But, but think of this, that their hopes came crashing down for, why, why, why does it often happen like that? We really thought this was it.

We really thought they're breakthrough was here. We really thought the healing would come. We really thought God would bless the mystery. We really thought this endeavor was something we were called by God to do. And now everything's in shambles.

Why? Many times it's so that we come to the end of ourselves. We come to the end of self-dependence. We come to the end of self-confidence. We come to the end of being able to figure things out.

We come to the end of that and then we come into resurrection life. And then we know it is only God. It is his grace.

It is his purpose. It is not our strength. It is not our ability. It is not our wisdom. It's all him.

It's only him. And our confidence in self is broken, but our confidence in God is now established. Maybe that's what's happening in your life. Maybe that answer that you prayed for for so many years is right around the corner. Don't give up hope now.

God is trustworthy. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Let me give you my daily reminder, almost daily reminder to download our app if you haven't yet. I know you ride in your car, happen to tune in or pick up the podcast you haven't listened before, hence the frequent reminders. But if you have our old app on Android, you just want to uninstall that and install the new one, Ask Dr. Brown Ministries, A-S-K-D or Brown Ministries.

And of course, it's finally available on Apple for the first time. So be sure to go ahead and do that. And you can listen anywhere, anytime. Just when the show is on, just listen on your phone. If you're out of range from a radio station or you've missed the previous day's broadcast, just click on that. It'll come up. Latest articles, all the materials there. As soon as an article is posted, you'll have reference to it there. So be sure to download it.

Ask Dr. Brown Ministries, A-S-K-D or Brown Ministries. If you like it, give it a good review and then share it with your friends. I'm going to go to the phones momentarily, but let me stay here a little bit longer. It is possible for us to be self-deluded, of course. It is possible for us to be self-deceived. It is possible for us to believe God's speaking to us when he is. And it is possible for us to misapply promises in scripture and make them say things they don't. So I'm not saying that every hope in our heart is necessarily from God or everything we believe he's spoken to us is really from God. I'm saying there are things that you know are from the Lord, that you know he spoke to. Maybe when you were set aside from the work of ministry, there were different people who had prophetic words over you that knew very little or even nothing about you. And they all said the same thing and promised things that you've never even touched, that you've never come near in terms of ministry effectiveness. You think, well, you know, I don't want to be grandiose in my own thinking and I don't want to exalt myself and whatever the Lord wants me to do, I'm happy to do it. Well, that's a good attitude to have, for sure.

But it's not about us, it's about him. If he has a purpose to reach more people, if he has a purpose to touch more lives, if he has a purpose to draw more people to himself through you, then don't put your humility in the way of the greatness of the promise. Instead say, Lord, you spoke those things and when it happened, I knew it because that was in my heart too. And for me, I rejoice in every life we get to touch as we've been able to pour into thousands of students over the years and so many of them bearing great fruit for the Lord as grads all around the world. As I've had the privilege of ministering outside of the U.S., 200 different trips, including over 160 overseas trips, so spent several years of my life out of the United States combined, pouring into others, seeing God do such amazing things, have seen so much good fruit with Jewish people coming to faith in Jesus, the Messiah. So many people we've been able to talk to for 14 years now on daily talk radio and the thousands or millions we can reach through articles and internet.

I'm grateful. I'm profoundly grateful that we've been able to do this and as I said earlier, any good thing that comes out of me, there's only one that gets credit and praise and that's the Lord. That's Jesus Yeshua.

That's our King. He's the one that gets the praise, the glory, the credit. As Paul wrote, that he who sows is nothing and he who reaps is nothing or he who waters, he who plants is nothing, but rather God who gives the increase, he's everything. As Jesus said, without me, you can do nothing, right?

With him, all things are possible. For me, I could just be thankful for what we do and those that we're able to reach, except the Lord keeps stirring me about promises and things he's spoken to me about a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution in America, of changes beyond what we've seen, of coming outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the salvation of many more Jewish people, of our voice reaching many, many more through radio and everything he's spoken to me will happen because he's faithful, because he's God. And I'll lay it aside and then when I go to pray, he stirs me.

He stirs me to pray for it, therefore he stirs me to believe for it. So are you willing to hope again? If you've been through deep disappointment, if your very heart has been stabbed with pain and loss, especially the loss of someone close to you or deep disappointment, what about betrayal? What about deep betrayal? Maybe in the business world, maybe relationally, maybe in the ministry and you got, you're stabbed in the back and that wound is still fresh. Are you willing to trust again?

Are you willing to make yourself vulnerable again? You know, I made a determination after going through a betrayal many years ago and maybe the person involved thought they were doing the right thing in honoring God. Personally, it was a deep betrayal to me and I remember going through that and getting hurt, trusting people in a maybe naive way and getting stabbed in the back and I thought, okay, as I go on in ministry, I could put up walls, run this like a business, keep myself absolutely safe and avoid getting stabbed in the back, avoid getting stabbed at all because no one's gonna get that close to me or I could do my best to walk in wisdom, walk in discernment but walk in love and if I'm gonna get stabbed, it's in the back because I'm not expecting it and I thought that's the only way to live.

The first is just turning things into a non-relational business. That's not ministry. That's not the heart of God. You have to make yourself vulnerable. So, if I'm gonna get betrayed, it's gonna be stabbed in the back because I trust people. Not in a naive way but in a Jesus way of I wanna believe the best, alright, and that's how I'm gonna live. Again, not in a way where you set yourself up to be conned or destroyed. You use wisdom.

You exercise discernment. You know there's certain things you don't do and certain people you don't work with and so on but I'm gonna trust people otherwise in the Lord and because it's the only way to live, maybe you got all these walls up. It's like I can't believe again.

I've just been too disappointed. It's been too many times my faith has been crushed and just too many, it's too painful but now you're a shell of yourself. If you're a child of God, by definition, you are a believer and the word says without faith, it's impossible to please God and the word says that whatever is born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory by which we overcome the world, in our faith. So faith is risky. Faith is saying again, I'm gonna trust again.

I'm gonna open my heart. I'm gonna make myself vulnerable again but faith is glorious because it brings us into that holy connection with God and that's been something the Lord's been challenging me with for several years now. Where's your faith? Where's your faith? Lord, I don't wanna be presumptuous. Where's your faith?

Lord, I don't wanna be self-deceived. Where's your faith? In other words, God's given promises. God's been prompting. God's been moving. The only reason, friend, that God moves on you to pray for something is because he wants to answer that prayer.

The only reason that God stirs you to believe for something again is because he wants to bring it to realization and it is by faith that you take hold of it. Not just by speaking words. You can't create realities by speaking words. I now declare that I have $100 million to give to the poor. It'd be wonderful but that doesn't mean I have it. I now declare that I'm the next president of the United States. Well, that wouldn't be wonderful but that's not my calling but that's not gonna make it happen. I now declare that I have no debt.

Well, if you have debt, you still have it. So we're not talking about just speaking empty words or thinking that by speaking words, I can create realities. No, I'm talking about believing God. Believing what God has said and then speaking in faith according to that, I believe God that it will be as he said. So I live daily with great encouragement in my heart despite the crazy things happening in the world. Despite the fact that the Senate, with the help of 12 Republican senators, shamefully passed, now turn over to the House the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, which will further codify same-sex marriage nationally, which will further remove the possibility of the Supreme Court for undoing their poor decision with the Obergefell case in 2015, that will now make it much more