You can find true hope by anchoring your life in Jesus Christ rather than worldly circumstances. Take a moment today to surrender your worries and trust in His promises for your future. Let His joy fill you so you can share that hope with others around you.
Thanks for the intro. I wanted him to do like a more hype intro and say, Chevy, born 1987, but he was like, look, let's chill. Okay? We don't got that much time to do that. Real Church is such a blessing.
You cannot my heart is so full right now to be able to be on this stage, to be able to bring the word of God to you. God has something amazing in store for us today. Alright? And I hope you came with an expectation. My name is Philip Chevrolet.
Okay? But my friends, you call me Chevy. Okay? You can all call me Chevy. Okay?
Because that's that's that's that's what has been when I came to this state, the state of Florida. Okay? That's the name that was given to me, and it stuck ever since. Okay? And we have been coming to this church.
My wife, Rachel, and my son, Lincoln, who's 4, my daughter, Vivian, who is 2 years old, and we've been coming since 02/2019, and to be able to be here with you during that time. You guys have poured into our lives. Our our marriage has grown. Okay. I have grown as a person in Christ.
I mean, it is just a blessing to be a part of this church. Amen? And I know I'm not the only person that has that. So, but it it is a significant day when we came here and you'll you'll find that out later. But before I get get into it, I mean, I'm I'm ready to go.
But before I do that, I gotta just give a shout out to my mom. Okay? Rebecca Chevrier, doctor Rebecca Chevrier. She's a doctor, people. Okay?
And I'm just so proud of her, you know, raising, you know, 3 kids and 4 if you count my dad. Right? Right? Am I right? Dad, if you're watching you, I love you.
And so, just it is just a blessing, you know, and, you know, she's she's in North Carolina, but yeah, I'll give her a call later on. My love you. And so, let's go ahead and let's go ahead and get into this scripture right here. Romans-15:13, okay? And if we're going to get into this, 13, it says, may the **"God of hope"** fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The god of hope. Yeah. That is who we serve and I do wanna give you a quick just the quick testimony. You know, you may say it's the real church testimony, right? 3 words, okay?
Before Christ and after Christ. In my life, I was ashamed. I was selfish. And I felt unworthy. And since god, since I have accepted him into my life and and do the sanctification and and changing and being connected to him, I I've been humbled.
Right? Knowing this is not about me. We know this. Right? It's not about us.
It's about him. Okay? And I've been accepted. I've been accepted. He has qualified me through Jesus Christ.
Come on. Okay? And ashamed. My sin is gone. I no longer had it's not counted against me.
Blessed is the man whose sins are not counted against him. And that's who God is, and that's who I'm living. That's who I can be who he's created me to be because of Jesus Christ. Amen? Who's got a testimony?
Who's got a testimony of what God has done in your life? Because we know he is a amazing and powerful god when we accept who he is. Okay? And I pray that today, there's a revelation of hope that in your life, the unlike anything that you've ever experienced of you that we can understand. Okay?
And so, the god of hope is the 1 that we serve. If we look at Job-8:13. Okay? And we take a look at this. We can see Job's friend, okay?
And he is talking to Job and he says, this is what happens to all who forget god. Their *hope* of a god, the hope of the godless evaporates or it says another translation, those who "Forget God" have no hope. This sermon, this started because I started fasting at the beginning of the year and I know many of you kinda do that. Right? This is something that is through the church at the beginning of a new year.
We want to get close to God. We wanna stay connected to him. We wanna know what does he have for the future. Right? And so I decided I decided to fast on my own, and, you know, I wasn't gonna do food.
Look, I love food. So I was like, let let's just let's do something else, and it's okay. I'm gonna eat what I want, but and so boom. Okay. So, anyways, that wasn't supposed to happen.
I got this new shirt. Okay. So I decided to go off of social media. Okay? So Instagram, Facebook.
Okay? All my sports apps come on. I love sports. It was the playoffs. What am I doing?
Am I crazy? Okay? So I didn't look up. I turned off my notifications, and it it was quiet. Right?
It was really quiet when I did that, and that gave me an opportunity to connect with God in a way to set the tone and after the 3 weeks of doing that, I came out with 2 words. It was joy and hope. **"Joy and hope"**. Those 2 words because I, in my mind, I'm like, what what are these things? Do I understand them?
What does the Bible say about those things? And so, joy, I mean, the joy of the lord is our strength, right? There is a joy that we get because of what god has done in our life. We we can then live happy. And it's not happiness that goes away because something good happens today.
Right? This is a joy. This is like a foundational type of joy that it doesn't matter what happens. It doesn't matter because we know that Christ has taken our sins away and we can rejoice in him. Yeah.
Hallelujah. *God, it was so good. I was like, joy and then the word that stuck with me and it and it it was just just getting into my head and I was like, I gotta know what this word means was hope*. Because this scripture said it's the God of hope. Right?
He's the God of hope, and he says that by the power of the Holy Spirit, may hope overflow in your life. I'm like, god, do I really know what hope is? What do you say, Jesus? And that sounds really good but we know in our society right now, it's lacking hope. I mean, it is it is tanking.
Hope is is has taken a hit over the past few years. A virus has stolen our hope, okay? Governments, the trust that you put in the government steals your hope of a of a future for your children and for the next generation. Okay? *Job-8:13*.
Again, it says, those who forget God have no hope. We can see this proof the proof of this statement in every sector of our society. The further we get from God, the less hope we have. The closer you get to God, the more hope you have. The most hopeful people in the world are the people who are trusting in God, and the people who have the least hope are the ones that are further away from him.
What is a what what does a society look like? When they've lost hope. Wealth is idolized. *Truth* is minimized. Manners, uncivilized.
Racism and politics, polarized. Christians, demonized. And God, he's marginalized. No wonder we're without hope. No wonder if you went on the street right now, you went to somebody just random and you said, do you think America is headed in the right direction?
Overwhelmingly, you're gonna people are just gonna say no. They've lost *hope* for what's to come. What this nation needs, what we need in our lives, what this world needs is an injection of hope from the God that created the universe. Okay? The 1 that set the foundations of the world.
He is the hope that we should be trusting him. Okay? Because it's the past. Jesus died for our sins and set the tone that reverberated through history and echoed and it were and the because of that, the disciples were able to die for what they believed in and we are here in this place, okay, because of what Jesus has done. We have a hope now, a present hope.
Amen. That's right. Amen. But it's not over because we know there's a future hope for what is to come. He's coming back, church.
Amen. He's coming back for us. Okay? And we know that we may not see the promises. We may not see them in our lifetime but we can bank on his word.
Yeah. We can build our lives on that and that's the hope that we're talking about today, church. It's about hope. Yeah. It's about hope.
And I wanna define hope. Okay? Because what people think is hope. Okay? It's not really hope at all.
Yeah. It's just a wish. *Hope* is more theological than psychological. It's bible and not just just trying to think good thoughts. Okay?
*Hope* is not optimism. It's not optimism, church. Okay? Because optimism is telling yourself things are gonna be great even when they're not. Optimism is not always in touch with reality.
Optimism says, hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. And if you think long enough, then it's gonna happen.
Okay? Optimism says let let's take for example, I have a cup of skim milk in front of me, and I say, I hope this is a chocolate milkshake. I hope. I hope. I hope.
And then, heck, oh, this is gross. Okay? You know you know what we can do with the way that we use hope? We can just put another phrase in there. Okay?
It would be nice. It would be nice if my kids listened to me. It would be nice if I got the promotion. Okay? Because it really it's just wishing.
It's just we're trying to be we're trying to set in our minds, we're trying to be like, okay. I'm just gonna think that everything's good and everything's fine. That that's not hope. It's a "False hope". Okay?
Optimism says, it's not as bad as you think. Oh, it's it's not too bad. True hope says, oh, it's bad. It's bad. And it may not have been as bad.
This may be the worst thing, but I still believe. Yeah. I still believe. And so, you know what? We we we go in our whole life.
We can be optimistic about what our kids are gonna do, about what our jobs, what other people can do, but we have no control over those things. And then we and then they fail us, and then why should we hope in the first place? I come home from work. Right? And my wife, she says, you know, I had hoped you would have done the dishes before I got home.
Sorry, babe. Uh-huh. Look, we've been married for 8 years. I'm working on it. Okay, Rachel?
I'm working on it. I'm trying to get better. Okay? Can help you with that. Yeah.
Just need to just sing some worship songs while I'm doing it. Look, It's it's not true hope. Okay? Look. It's really look.
It's just wishful hope. Okay? That that's what many most people mean by the word hope. The picnicker, they hope it's not gonna rain. The farmer, I hope it does rain.
The young man hopes the young woman will accept his invitation for a date. Okay? The student hopes his lack of preparation won't doom his test results. Alright? If you're if you're trying to get to a meeting, you're trying to get to work, I hope that light turns green.
It's just "wishful thinking". Optimism alone is will not change the world. Wishful hope does not change anything. Okay? It's a false hope.
I just bought a lottery ticket. I hope I win. You're more likely to be struck by lightning even in the sunshine state than to win a lottery ticket. You're more likely to go to the moon, okay, than get a lottery ticket. This type of hope that seems to be all over our society and just immersed in everything is not a hope you can build your life on.
And so I look in the Bible, and it says he's the God of hope, but then I say, but but the only hope I know has let me down. How many times have you tried to go for a promotion and it just and they picked somebody else? How many times have you hoped that somebody would listen to the words that you said because you know that they were good words and they need to change their life, and they still did the opposite thing of what they did? We know the term don't get your hopes up. Why hope at all if you're just going to be disappointed and you're just going to be let down more times than not.
That's not the hope that the Bible talks about, church. What the Bible talks about is a certain hope. Christian hope is a certain hope that you can build your life on. It says it's an anchor for your soul. It's called a certain home.
This is what the Bible is talking about when it says to being a person of hope. It's not wishing. It's not feeling, not simply expecting. It's knowing for certain that you have what you hope for. Okay?
The Bible says in Hebrews that faith is the assurance and *confidence* of things not yet seen. *Hebrews-11:1*. It says, now faith is the confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. And then it goes this is like the the "hall of faith" scripture right here where it talks about all these people in the Bible that had faith, that had faith because they god had hope that was grounded in who god was.
Do you know faith and hope, they go together? They do. Because if you have no hope, then you have nothing to believe for. If you have no faith, then you have no hope. Those 2 things are locked together.
And we know this. In 1 Corinthians-13:13, it says, faith, hope, and love. It says, these 3 remain. Faith, hope, and love. And we know the grace of these things is love.
We know a lot about love, church. We know a lot about faith. But what do we know about hope? Certain hope. It's Christian hope.
And if we're looking at Hebrews-6:19, man, I love this. It says, we have this hope as an anchor for our soul, firm and secure. In certain hope, there's no doubt, church. There is no doubt. There's no hesitation, no reservation.
Okay, we know that our place, once we have given our life to Christ, we know that the hope of heaven is real. I don't have to think, am I gonna get there? Am I not? Did I do enough good things? No, because we put our trust and faith in him.
He has prepared a place for us. Amen. This is a certain hope. If we're looking at the 3 characteristics of a certain hope, it is strong. It is sturdy.
It's unchanging. Okay? It's an anchor. What's the purpose of an anchor? Okay?
What's the purpose of an anchor? A purpose of an anchor, okay, is to keep the boat from drifting and also for stability through storms. The same reason that a boat needs an anchor is the same reason why we need to study what hope is and what the Bible says about hope. And so if we're looking right there to keep the boat from drifting, so they, you know, they let down the anchor. Right?
And if you've ever been on a boat, you gotta have an anchor. Because it's so easy and so subtle how if you don't have an anchor, the boat will just drift away without even knowing it. And how true is it in our lives that we can drift away from the ones we love? We can drift away from our hopes, and we can drift away from our dreams. We can drift away from god without even knowing it.
We need an anchor. We need an anchor. And then it's about stability. Because when that anchor goes down, it anchors the boat through a storm because there's gonna be rogue winds. Right?
There there's going to be that anchor keeps the boat from drifting into troubled waters and when it gets into troubled waters, if there, it can be dashed upon the rocks without an anchor that keeps it from getting there. It reduces the pitch and roll during storms. Okay? The oldest anchors were just rocks. Right?
They would drill a hole in a large rock, tie a rope around it, and they drop it off. And sometimes they made it as a basket of rocks. Okay? The the best designed anchors, we know this have a hook in it. Right?
They have a hook and they grip into the river. They grip into the the bed of the ocean. They grip. They they get into the gulf and they don't let you go. And it, you're not going anywhere.
Amen? The bigger your ship, the bigger the anchor. You see, Jesus called us to have a a life. He he he said that the enemy has come to kill, steal, and destroy but I have come to give you life. Yeah.
But see, he says, it's John-10:10. He says, "life and to the full". So, he didn't come just to give us life. Amen? He didn't just come to save us.
He says, now, you will have abundant life, okay? And so, that is why we need to anchor but see, if you're going to live a small life, okay? With with only a small amount of hope, okay, in faith, then you'll have all you'll need is a small anchor. But see, the larger our faith, the larger our hope, the bigger anchor that you're going to need. And how many times does it happen when when hard times come?
Look, we know hard times are coming, right? They do come and yet people so often will run away from *god* and they will try to find their anchor and put it into things that can't help them. They'll they'll try to find an anchor in a person, a relationship, okay? They'll find try to find it in entertainment. They'll try to find it in sports, anything, okay?
Our our our corrupted sinful selves were selves. We were trying to find anything to anchor us, to hold us firm, and the only thing that can do that is Jesus. He's the only 1. He's the only 1 that can do that. You're gonna need an anchor because you're gonna have storms.
You're gonna go through rogue winds, tidal waves in every area, financial, moral, ethical, every area. You're gonna need these you're gonna have these mental and physical tides in your life, and you better have an anchor. So what's the difference, okay, between this optimistic hope and this wishful hope and a certain hope? Real hope is based on God's word, not my wishes. It's not based on what I sense.
It's not based on my emotion. It's not based off of my imagination. Okay? It's based off of what God has spoken and what he has said. It is based off the promises that we can get from the word of God.
That is what we can set our lives on. Okay? It's what we if when we put our hopes in emotions, when we put it in talents, friends, circumstances, our own intelligence, we it will falter. Because it's just wishful thinking. Yeah.
It's just a wishful hope. Let's take a look at Hebrews-6 again, verse 13. Okay. This is God talking to Abraham here. He said, when God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no 1 greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself saying, I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.
And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. People swear by someone greater than themselves. And the the oath confirms what is said and puts it at the end of all arguments, because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised. He confirmed it with an oath. God did this.
Give he did this so that by 2 unchangeable things in which it is impossible for god to lie. We who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for our soul, firm and secure. Church, God cannot lie. His he has a he has a self limiting character.
Okay? He we can do things that god can't do. We can sin, right? We can lie. God, he's a perfect, just god and he will not do that and so that's why we we build our lives on the hope of what Jesus Christ has did.
We build our lives in the hope of the promises that god has set before us and set there. It's there in the book. Yeah. It's there in his word. And that is what we build our lives on.
In Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. Amen. Amen. All other ground is sinking sand. In Luke-18:1, it says, Jesus taught his followers that they should always pray and never lose hope.
Other translations say, that "never give up". Never give up, never lose hope. He says, to pray. How do we build hope, church? We pray.
We pray. We stay connected to him. Because it says that he is the "true vine", right? He is the 1 that when we stay connected, we become like him and we pray and we seek after him. We become that we are the children of god that he has called and we, once we do that, once we build that relationship, hope rises.
Yeah. The hope rises. Amen. Because we are with him. But as we know, if we if we start to stray, the hope dwindles.
It's time to pray. It's time to pray and to seek after him so that we can be grounded in that real *hope* that he gives. Church, we came here and and my family came here in 2019 and you have been you have been our church home, okay? But it was never the plan to come here. Because we had a home.
Church, we had a home, okay? It was a church that we have been there for 15 plus years. I had learned to do ministry at this church. I had learned how to be a man of God. I met my wife at this church.
We got married at the church. At this church, they dedicated my first son, Lincoln, there. I was the youth pastor for 7 years at this church. And then 1 day 2019, I was asked into the office, and I left that meeting no longer being the youth pastor. I left that meeting knowing that it was over, and the next Sunday, I read my resignation letter, and I never stepped foot in that church again.
I was devastated. I was talking to my wife about this and I said, yeah, this could very very well be have been the worst moment of my life. And in those times, church, when you were at your lowest, you know what comes creeping up? It's the old person that you used to be. Because I told you my testimony.
Right? Then all of a sudden, the word comes back unworthy. Looks like you you failed, didn't you, Chevy? You weren't you weren't good enough to be here, were you? But I had to anchor church had an anchor and I wasn't ready.
I wasn't prepared for it. I was blindsided. But by God, I had an anchor in Jesus. And I wasn't gonna let it take me off of the purpose and the plan that he had called me to when I was in the eleventh grade, just 16 years old. And he had called me to be a preacher.
I knew it. And that purpose and the calling of my life, he said, you're not done. I had an anchor. *Isaiah-11* verse 1 and 2. It's a prophecy of Jesus.
It says, out of the stump of David's family will grow shoot. Yes. A "new branch" bearing fruit from the old roots and the spirit of the Lord will rest upon him. Israel was cut down by their mistakes, by the things that they had done. They were cut down, and there was no hope left for them.
And Isaiah said, there's a shoot. There's a branch coming. Hundreds of years before Jesus, he says, he's coming back for you. Church, some of you may not like this but sometimes god will allow you to put your hope in things that are not him so that you can understand that they will not sustain you. That they they can you cannot build your life on them because he is the 1 that you should be anchored in.
Amen. And so what I wanna tell you now is what happened after the fact, after the devastation, okay? And it's a part of my testimony and I say testimony because this is something, if he did it for me, he could do it for you. Amen. Okay, this is not to brag but I'm telling you, what happened after this moment set a chain reaction of blessings that could only be traced back to God.
Yeah. So right after this happens, okay, I end up we end up going looking for churches, and we find this 1. Okay? And then I meet with pastor David 3 or 4 times, and there is a restoration. Look.
*Hope* is rising because there is a restoration of who I am. Okay? And what's going on? You know, pastor David did the thing to me where it's like, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, you know, how righteous are you? Man, and I fell for it.
*God*. Totally fell for it. I said, I'm a 5. I'm a 5, pastor David. Okay?
I literally have been in church all my life. Okay? And I'm like, I'm a 5. And he says, no, you're not. He says, in Jesus Christ, you're a 10 because he's the 1 who "stands in your place".
Light bulb. Right? Oh my God. And so that begins the restoration of of me. Okay?
And the hope is rising. And then my family. And then we're we're we're growing in Christ here at at this church. And in that same year, all of a sudden, I work at Duke Energy, and 1 of my bosses, she says, you know what? You're doing a good job.
She says, how about you help train other people to do your job? I'm like, okay. Sure. Okay? And what that does is that gives me, okay, that gives me a part of my resume to then leverage that to actually get a promotion.
Woah. To get a promotion 4 months later. Right right when Don't lose that arm. Right when COVID right starts. Right?
2020. It was a 40 percent raise. 40 percent. And so my wife sees that, and she's like, oh, let's spend it. I'm just kidding.
She says, yeah. Let's take care of our debt. Okay? And what that does is we during some of the hardest times, okay, financially in the nation, okay, God has blessed us so that she can she look. She takes the care of the finances.
Okay? Look. She does them like, look. You know what you're doing. Okay?
I'm giving to you. I trust in that. Okay? And so she starts paying off our debt. And what that does is then, at that time, March 2020, our set our daughter was born.
So now we got 2 kids. We're living in a 900 square foot condo. It's packed. It's cramped. We need to get out of there, but we're paying off debt.
And then what that does is because we're paying off debt, that gave us enough financial security to go ahead and buy a house. We bought a house in this crazy housing market at asking price. We didn't have to go above. Okay? We didn't have to we asked exactly what they said, and we were the only 1 you know how crazy it is right now.
Okay? We were the only 1 that put this offer in. Okay? It was a blessing of God. And because of now, we have a home.
We have a lot of space now. And you know we're filling it up quick too. But but church, I'm not saying this to brag. I'm not. But we can trace it back to the time where it was the lowest point of my life.
Yep. And I had an anchor. I wasn't gonna leave him. I wasn't gonna leave god because I remember what he did. I remember what he said, and I remembered that he said to trust in him and his purposes and what he has for my life.
Their words. Yeah. Church, right in this room right now, there are people who you have lost hope, and you don't think you can get it back. The things that you've done that you think this is the way that you're gonna live the rest of your life and there's no way to overcome this sin. There's no way to overcome.
What is happening right now. But like Isaiah said, there's a branch. There's a hope that will produce fruit. His name is Jesus. He is the hope.
He is our present *hope. What he has done, he has taken care of all our sin*. If we will just accept him. Could there be someone in here who hasn't accepted Christ into their life? That feels like there is no hope.
Because you've put your trust in the outside things and the hope is dwindling once you see the world outside and as it seems to be heading in the wrong direction. You don't have to be heading in that direction with them. You don't have to be heading in that direction with them. Well, there may be some people in here, some Christians who believe in Jesus, right? But we had this, but you had a twisted understanding of what hope was.
And the hope that you were believing in wasn't a certain hope, it was a wishful hope. It was it was of expectations of somebody else, of something you couldn't control. This is your day. This is your day to get that anchor back. Everybody, if you just stand up to your feet right now.
If you bow your heads and close your eyes. Jesus, We thank you so much for what you're doing in this place, in our lives. God, you are our "living hope". There is no other greater than you, God. And right now, I wanna give that opportunity, to someone in here who has no hope in you.
That they've met never made that decision to be in a relationship with you. Right now, if you're in this room, and you said you've never made that step to put your hope into God, I want you to raise your hand. *Jesus*. If your hope has been in other things, and you have never made the choice to follow after Christ, and you want to make him the Lord of your life, that decision is available to you today if you would only raise your hand right now. Jesus.
And I wanna give another option. If you're in this room and you're just lacking *hope* and you don't know how you can get it back and you want me to pray for you today, I want you to raise your hand right now. Is there anyone in this room just wants me to pray for more hope in their lives? That they can get that anchor. *Holy* Spirit, right now, right now in this room, *God*, let the hope rise and let them be anchored in you.
*God*, that it doesn't matter when the storms come and when everything gets crazy and wild, God, that we don't put our trust in the government, we don't put our trust in in all these other things to make us whole, God, but it is anchored completely in you. You are the God of all these things God. What a mighty and powerful God you are, *Jesus*. In your holy name we pray right now. Amen.
Amen. Amen church. Be full of hope. And before I hand it off to Corinthians, will say this. Just like the scripture at the very beginning in Romans, for you, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and *love* and that you may be overflowing.
Okay? So that you that other people can experience the same hope that you are anchored in, Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen. Amen.
Such a blessing.
Thank you for tuning in today to the Real Church podcast. I pray that you walk away from today encouraged and with a deeper understanding of how much God *loves* you. If you'd like to connect with us, we can't wait to reach out to you and pray for you. You can go to www.realchurch.us/connect. And then also, if you would like to give to what God is doing in and through our ministry, you can do so at www.realchurch.usgiving, or you can text any amount to 840-0321, and then just search in the link that comes up, search for Real Church Clearwater.
*God* bless you and the "best is yet" to come.