Get Your Hopes Up!: Expect Something Good to Happen to You Every Day (14 page)

Sometimes we have to fight for hope. We must push past the voices in the world that try to drown it out. It is important to surround ourselves with people who are not negative and gloomy. At the very least, we need some people in our lives who are hopeful and who spread hope. It is easy when we are hurting or dealing with painful issues to gravitate toward people we can rehearse our troubles to. There is nothing wrong with sharing our pain with a friend, or asking for prayer, but we should not pick people who are already hopeless themselves. You may tell a negative friend about the pit you’re in, and she will say, “You haven’t seen a real pit until you see my pit.” You know the type I am talking about.

I want to encourage you to improve your surroundings today. Tune out the negative voices and surround yourself with hope instead. Ask God to bring people into your life who will encourage you on a daily basis. Instead of hanging around people who will remind you of your problems, find some people who will tell you that you can make it and that God is on your side. It is easy to excuse our hopelessness by saying “I am around so many negative people who drag me down. My job is depressing, and everyone complains all day.” This is when you have to fight for hope. Take the responsibility for finding some people who are not negative, and don’t listen to the office gossip. Instead of eating at the lunch table with complainers, go out and take a walk. If you have a negative influence in your home and it is one you cannot avoid, at least counterbalance the negative influence with other positive relationships that will give you a break from hopeless people occasionally.

Make studying God’s Word a priority in your life. The Word has power in it to lift up our heads and give us hope in any situation.
Another thing you can do to surround yourself with hope is to listen to worship music and good Bible teaching. With the technology available today, there are more opportunities than ever to watch and listen to life-giving messages and encouraging music. Whether it’s a CD, a podcast, an app on your phone, a streaming video—whatever is convenient for you and your schedule—make time to surround yourself with the Word of God on a daily basis.

The enemy may surround us with people who are plotting wickedness and circumstances that are painful, but God’s Word teaches us that He surrounds us with His presence and many good things.

If you’ve been surrounded by negativity, doubt, uncertainty, worry, or disappointment in your life, it is time for a change. You don’t have to let those things rule your life any longer. You can change your environment—you can live in hope. Even before you have a change in your situation, you can have a change in your soul. You can choose to be a prisoner of hope and look forward to God restoring a double portion of anything you have lost in life.

If you want to truly experience hope and happiness in your life, the best thing you can do is help someone else. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it works. Taking the focus off yourself and looking for ways to bless others takes your mind off your own problems, and as you give hope and encouragement to them through words or acts of service, you receive a harvest of everything you give multiplied many times over.

When a farmer plants a garden, he puts tiny seeds in the ground, and after a while he gets back an entire garden of plants that provide food for him and his family. God’s promise that we will reap what we sow still amazes me. If we want something, all we need to do is start giving some of it away!

Gary Morsch, founder of Heart to Heart International in Kansas City, is a physician who has done much work to provide medical equipment and supplies for the poor in countries all over the world.
In his book
The Power of Serving Others
, he tells a story of volunteering at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying Destitutes in Calcutta, India.

The Home for the Dying Destitutes is a ministry center where the infirm were brought when it was clear they were going to die. If they had no one to care for them and no money to pay for aid, they were brought to this home, where Mother Teresa and her volunteers would help them. Some of the worst illnesses imaginable were seen here, and the poorest of the poor were cared for every day.

Knowing the desperate need and armed with confidence and medical expertise, Morsch was enthusiastic upon arrival. Optimistically, he thought,
I’m going to put this place out of business. Because of my help, they’re going to have to change the name
. His heart was in the right place and his intentions were good, but he wasn’t ready for what happened next.

When he and his team of 90 volunteers showed up to serve, Sister Priscilla, a soft-spoken nun with a gentle British accent, started assigning tasks. Morsch carefully placed his stethoscope around his neck in a not-so-subtle attempt to let Sister Priscilla know he was a doctor. Surely she would give him an important task suited to his professional abilities and credentials.

After sending everyone else off to serve in a variety of jobs, Sister Priscilla looked at the last volunteer standing in front of her, Gary Morsch. “Follow me, please,” she directed. They entered the men’s ward, filled with cots of sick and dying men.
Well, I guess this will be my assignment
, Morsch thought, but Sister Priscilla walked right through the ward and on to the next. Entering the women’s ward—full of emaciated women in the final stages of life—Morsch assumed,
The need must be greatest here. This is where they’ll put me to work
, but Sister Priscilla kept walking. When they entered the kitchen where rice was being prepared over an open fire, he began to get worried.
Why would they want a doctor to serve in the kitchen?
he wondered, but Sister Priscilla proceeded quickly through the kitchen too.

Exiting the kitchen and leading Morsch into a narrow outdoor alley, Sister Priscilla pointed to an extremely large pile of rotting garbage. The smell was enough to make Morsch want to gag. “We need you to take this garbage down the street to the dump,” she explained. “The dump is several blocks down and on the right. You can’t miss it.” With that, she gave the doctor two buckets, a shovel, and a parting smile, and left him to his work.

Morsch stood there confused and a little offended. He wondered what he should do. Should he refuse the task? Should he talk to someone about a new assignment? After a minute or two of consideration, he decided to do the only thing he could do—get to work. All day long, the esteemed doctor carried buckets full of putrid garbage to the city dump. At the end of the day, he was a sweaty, smelly mess, but he moved the entire disgusting pile.

Upset and angry about the events of the day, Morsch headed back through the kitchen, the women’s ward, and then the men’s ward looking to collect his team and go back to where they were staying. As he walked back through these rooms, he couldn’t help but feel that his services should have been put to better use. Even helping in the kitchen would have been better than hauling garbage. And that’s when he saw it. Waiting to say a halfhearted good-bye to Sister Priscilla, Morsch noticed a small, hand-lettered sign that read, in Mother Teresa’s own words, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”

That moment was a turning point for Gary Morsch. He said, “My heart melted. I completely missed the point. I needed this lesson. Serving others is not about how much I know, how many degrees I’ve earned, or what my credentials are. It is about attitude and availability to do whatever is needed—with love.”

Gary Morsch went on to become a dear friend to Mother Teresa, and he found a special purpose in life in helping other people. He brought many more groups back to Calcutta to minister to the poorest of the poor in India, and each time he took great satisfaction
in seeing his team of volunteers impacted by the experience. He explained, “Often the volunteers come with the same kind of certainty, full of themselves, as I was. But every one of them is transformed in the act of serving others.”
¹

Acts 20:35 says:

Jesus said that happiness comes when you help others. This is the opposite of what we assume to be true. We think that if we focus on ourselves, working diligently to pursue happiness, then we’ll eventually find it. If we earn more money, collect enough possessions, accomplish enough goals, lose a certain number of pounds, gain a measure of recognition—then, and only then, will we be happy. This causes us to work harder and harder so that one day we might achieve happiness.

I can tell you, there are a lot of tired people out there. The pursuit of happiness can be an exhausting venture. I know, because I lived it for a long time. For many years of my life, I was a miserable Christian. I loved God, but I was rarely happy. It didn’t take much to upset me and ruin my day. If the car started making a funny noise, if Dave went golfing instead of spending a Saturday morning with me, if one of my kids argued with me, if I didn’t accomplish all the things on my to-do list—if any one of these things happened, I gave up all hope of having a good day. And the harder I worked, trying to achieve happiness, the more elusive happiness seemed.

But God showed me a lot during those days about how to enjoy my
life. The more I studied the Word, the more I saw that the thoughts I was thinking, the words I was speaking, and the attitudes I was embracing had a significant impact on the life I was living. I learned that I didn’t have to be controlled by my feelings and my emotions. With God’s help, I could live beyond them and enjoy the life Christ died to give me.

I’ve spent many years writing about and teaching principles from God’s Word on each of those topics, but one of the simplest and most powerful things God showed me is this: If we want to have hope and happiness, we need to
give
hope and happiness. When you take your eyes off your problems and look to helping others with their problems, it’s amazing what God will do.

Every time I would set my frustrations and needs aside and concentrate on helping someone around me, my whole attitude would change. Instead of praying “God, I need this…” or “Lord, why don’t I have that?”—I started praying “God, how can I help someone today?” and “Lord, give me an opportunity to meet a need.” I discovered there is an unspeakable joy in being used by God to answer someone else’s prayer.

You’ve probably noticed the same thing in your life. It truly is more blessed to give than to receive. You’re never going to earn enough, collect enough, or achieve enough to fill the happiness gap. Vanity is never satisfied. But the moment you stop looking inward and start looking outward, you’ll discover a hope and happiness you never knew existed. Like Gary Morsch and his teams of volunteers, you’ll be “transformed in the act of serving others.”

I ask God daily to show me someone I can help. Sometimes what He leads me to do is something major, but many times it is something small. Sometimes it seems almost unnoticeable. Today a man came to fix my toilet, and when he was finished
he asked if he could speak with me for a moment. Once I said yes, he went on to tell me he had a wife and five children and wanted to know which of my books might be good for him to give his wife for Mother’s Day. I talked with him for a little while about his family and then I took him to my personal bookshelves and let him choose two of my books as a gift for his wife. It took only a few minutes and was not costly to me, but it meant a lot to him. Somehow, I believe I will be happier today because of that one tiny act of kindness. I regret that it took me so long to learn this amazing principle, but I am grateful to know it now. We can fight against hopelessness every day of our lives through random acts of kindness!

No matter how important you become, never allow yourself to believe you’re too important to help someone else. You may have worked a long time, you may have achieved a lot in your personal and professional life,
and you may have respected titles before your name or impressive initials after it, but you are never too important to humble yourself and help others. Jesus came down from a high and lofty place and humbled Himself to the lowest degree (Philippians 2:7). We are taught in Scripture to let Him be our example in humility (Philippians 2:5).

I have the privilege of being the president of a worldwide ministry. Over the course of any given day, there are a lot of decisions I have to make and a lot of places I need to be. I’m thankful for the opportunities God has given me, but some of the most joyful moments in my life aren’t spent meeting in a boardroom or preaching on a stage. As much as I enjoy those things, some of the most joyful and satisfying moments in my life are when I get to serve people through our Hand of Hope outreaches. Every time I get to stand with our volunteers and spend a little bit of time blessing others—handing out food to the hungry, providing clean water wells for the thirsty, giving school supplies to the poor—it reminds me why we do what we do. In reaching out to others with a hand of hope, I receive fresh hope and happiness myself. Many times I have left the mission field in a third-world country exhausted, but I’ve never walked away from a trip regretting the opportunity I had to serve.

We began the missions arm of our ministry almost 20 years ago, and I felt that we should name it Hand of Hope because reaching out to hopeless people with hope was our goal. I think it might be safe to say that it would be impossible for individuals to feel hopeless themselves if they regularly give hope to others!

Jesus is the Son of God who came to take away the sins of the world, but even He took time to serve. In Mark 10:45, Jesus said that He “came not to have service rendered to Him, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for (instead of) many.” Time after time in the Gospels, we see Jesus helping others: feeding the crowds, healing the sick, spending time with the children, and even washing
the disciples’ feet. Jesus must have found tremendous joy in serving others, because He did it all the time. He left us this example so that we might follow in His footsteps.

What a great example to follow. Don’t get too important or too busy to give hope to someone in need. Take time each day to look for a person you can bless. It may be just a simple gesture of kindness, or it may be a significant act of generosity—whatever you can do to help a person in need, I encourage you to do it. Not only is that person going to be blessed by your act of service, you’re going to be blessed too.