“If I removed faith from Tom, what would remain?” 

• Faith is my connection to God.
• Faith is my direction from God. 

Proverbs 13:12

Hope deferred makes the heart sick

To live without hope is to cease to live.

-- Dostoevsky

Over a ten-year span, it turns out that the one factor most strongly predicate of suicide is not how sick the person in, nor how many symptoms he exhibits, nor how much physical pain he is suffering, nor whether he is rich or poor. 

The most dangerous factor is a person’s sense of hopelessness. The man without hope is the likeliest candidate for suicide…we cannot live without hope.

-- Aaron Kheriaty

2 Corinthians 1:8

We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it.

Matthew 26:38

He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

Lamentations 3:18–20

I cry out, “My splendor is gone! Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost!” The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words. I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. 

SASHET exercise

Sad

Angry

Sensitive

Happy

Excited

Tender

Jeremiah 17:9

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?

Lamentations 3:21

Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this

Definition — Faith is the confidence that Jesus is who he says he is and he will keep every promise he has made to us.

1 Corinthians 6:19–20

You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price.

If my only hope is in just me, there is no hope.

Lamentations 3:21–23

Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. 

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?

-- Martin Lloyd Jones

Lamentations 3:18

So I say, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.”

Psalm 42:11

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Lamentations 3:24

I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for him.”