Konichiwa. Please turn to page 71.

Let us do this exercise with the little dudes. Close your eyes, and imagine you are part of the LOST bunch. You are on a plane that is going down, and it is going down fast. Then you crash. You do not die. When you regain consciousness or open your eyes again, you see that you have landed on an island. You are alone. How are you going to get out of there? How are you going to survive? How do you feel?

Hopeless?

How often do we feel hopeless in our daily lives? Is hopelessness only limited to emergency situations like in LOST? Do question 1.

Why is hope important?

Without hope, we will give up. Without hope, there is no meaning.

Do question 2. Hope comes from knowing God and His perfect peace.

Read ‘To the Rescue’ and do question 3 and 4.

Read ‘Freedom from the Inside Out’. The following lines speak important truth. We often think freedom in the midst of a trial translates as having all the answers we need. Instead, God offers all the Jesus we will need to get through the trial.

As many of you know, from experience or otherwise, we do not always have all the answers. But more importantly, we do not always have to have all the answers. God sees the big picture, we have the limited perspective, and God only tells us what we need to know; we take all other steps by faith. All we need is Jesus, and we do have Him.

Often we do not immediately turn to Christ when we are in despair. You may think you do, but what we really do first is toss and turn in our pool of frustration and hopelessness. This is mighty odd because Jesus is our guide. He is the answer to our questions, the tour guide to our tourist, the leader to our follower. Isn’t it silly that we do not ask Him for help first and choose instead to wallow and drown in our own hopelessness?

Do question 5 and 6.

Finish with ‘A Dose of Hope’, ‘The Heart of the Matter’ and ‘The Heart of Jesus’.

I think that an important takeaway from this lesson is not just the fact that we need to know who to turn to in our time of need, because I believe that we already know who to turn to. Rather, we need to remember to put our action where our knowledge is. Knowing that you should turn to Jesus is incredibly different from turning to Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t give hope by changing the jungle; he restores our hope by giving us himself. And what could be better than that? God is not interested in shaping your environment to suit your comfort level. He is interested in you, your character, and how you grow and develop to become the person that He intends for you to be. God does not change our circumstances, but our hearts.

Application:

What are some practical steps that we can take to truly experience the freedom from hopelessness that God intends for us to have? (Clarification: He intends for us to have the freedom, not the steps.) What does it mean to turn to Jesus and have hope in the Lord?

Remember, if life is hopeless, life is meaningless. And meaningless is not what life is supposed to be like.

End of lesson.

I checked the back of the book for answers. There weren’t any. So here are my personal answers, not to be taken rigidly:

Question 1

Hope causes sadness.

Hope gives us rest.

Hope is similar to faith.

Question 2

It is utterly hopeless. Hope comes from knowing God and His perfect peace.

Question 4

..He is the way, the truth and the life.

..we are more valuable than sparrows. Just half-kidding. He values us.

Question 5

1. Exporting us out of the jungle would teach us nothing; we need to learn trust and faith.

2. He still needs us to go through the jungle to do His good works.

Extra notes:

Pg 71

Psalm 23:3 “He restores my soul.” What does it mean to restore our souls? We are broken, incomplete. God restores us to our complete and whole selves. He completes us. You may use the reference of the God-shaped hole here.

Pg 72

Ephesians 2:12 “..you had no part in the agreement with the promise that God made to his people.” The “promise” refers to the covenant that God made with His people.

End.