Assurance

For the past five years, one of the most searched terms on Google has been “hope.” It has outpaced searches for political upheavals, technological breakthroughs, and even the ever-popular “how to make money online.” If Google is the oracle of our collective consciousness, then we’re not just looking for the best oat milk latte near us—we’re looking for something deeper.

But what does it mean? Are people feeling more hopeful or are they…frantically grasping for it? The data doesn’t tell us whether we’re inspired or empty-handed, only that we’re looking….for meaning in a crisis-ridden age

The past few years haven’t exactly been a breeding ground for unbridled optimism. If anything, they’ve felt like a slow-motion apocalypse set to a TikTok soundtrack. Climate anxiety? Check. Economic uncertainty? Check. Social media-fueled existential dread? Triple check. And yet, through it all, people have consistently typed “hope” into a search bar like it was a lifeline.

Historically, searches for spiritual and existential concepts tend to spike in moments of crisis. In 2008, “prayer” surged during the financial collapse. In March 2020, “faith” trended as the world collectively realized we had no idea what we were doing. People look for meaning when the world stops making sense.

But the ongoing years-long trend of searching for hope suggests something different. This isn’t just a reaction to one specific disaster. It’s a constant, underlying hum of uncertainty—a long-term condition rather than a momentary outcry. Right now, the story seems more like…a desire for something bigger, steadier, and more trustworthy than the shifting realities of modern life.

In the summer of 2023, Heather Beville felt something she hadn’t in a long time: a hug from her sister Jessica, who died at age 30 from cancer. In a dream, “I hugged her and I could feel her, even though I knew in my logic that she was dead.”

Like fellow Christians, Beville is sure that death is not the end. But she’s also among a significant number who say they have continued to experience visits from deceased loved ones here on earth.

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 42 percent of self-identified evangelicals said they had been visited by a loved one who had passed away. Rates were even higher among Catholics and Black Protestants, two-thirds of whom reported such experiences.

Interactions with the dead fall into a precarious supernatural space. Staunch secularists will say they’re impossible and must be made up. Bible-believing Christians may be wary of the spiritual implications of calling on ghosts from beyond. Yet more than half of Americans believe a dead family member has come to them in a dream or some other form.

Researchers say most people who report “after-death communications” find the interactions to be comforting, not haunting or scary. Professor Julie Exline says, “They’re often very valuable for people. They give them hope that their loved one is still there and still connected to them. These experiences help people, even if they don’t know what to make of them.”

There are several factors that come into play for a person to turn to supernatural explanations for what they’ve experienced. Prior belief in God, angels, spirits, or ghosts, combined with a belief that these beings actually do communicate with people in the world is one condition. Another factor is the relationship between a person and their loved one—“the need for relational closure” amid prolonged grief. And women are more likely to report the phenomena.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The spiritual realm described in Scripture comes with strong warnings. The text repeatedly advises against calling on spirits outside of God himself, with several Old Testament verses specifically addressing interactions with the dead (“necromancy” in some translations). Deuteronomy 18, for example, decries anyone who “is a medium or spiritist or who consults with the dead” as “detestable to the Lord” (vv. 11, 12).

Pastors can attest that grieving Christian spouses occasionally believe they have seen shadows or objects in the home moving after the death of a loved one. We can rest on the absolute truth of God’s Word that “absent from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). At death, believers are immediately in the presence of the Lord and not wandering the earth (Phil. 1:23).

In an issue of CT magazine, Megan Hill tells her unremarkable conversion story which initially left her with doubts of its genuineness.

Megan has no memory of becoming a Christian. She says, “I didn’t pray a prayer, or walk down an aisle, or have a eureka moment. My Christian testimony of how I came to faith, is downright boring.”

She was raised by godly Presbyterian parents, gave thanks before meals, and recited prayers at bedtime from the children’s catechism. Church attendance shaped the weekly rhythms of her life. By the time she was age three or four she embraced the knowledge that God was her Creator, Jesus was her Savior, the Spirit was her helper, and the Bible was her rule. Megan writes, “But it took me most of my life to appreciate just how extraordinary was the grace I had received in ordinary circumstances.”

In fifth grade, I began to attend a school where dramatic testimonies were a regular part of morning chapel. Week after week, speakers—a drug addict, a party girl, an atheist—told of God’s rescue. But I am baffled that I never once heard a testimony like my own. And so I began to fear that I hadn’t really been saved … at all. Perhaps I was floating on other people’s convictions, happily living in a Christian environment without actually being a Christian.

Yet I was thankful for the church that had validated my testimony. In December 1989, I approached the elders of the church and asked to become a member. They, who had heard all kinds of stories from all kinds of people, declared my testimony to be a work of God. A few weeks later, I stood in front of the congregation and received the right hand of fellowship from those who had been lost but now were found. My testimony may have been boring, but it was welcomed. And I was also thankful for grace.

It wasn’t until I became a parent, at 27, that I began to see that in all testimonies, it is not the outward circumstances that are amazing. It’s the grace. There is no dull salvation. The Son of God took on flesh to suffer and die, purchasing a people for his glory. As Gloria Furman writes, “The idea that anyone’s testimony of blood-bought salvation could be uninteresting or unspectacular is a defamation of the work of Christ.”

For myself, I cannot point to a specific day of spiritual awakening. I can point only to my Lord, who says, “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37). My Jesus, I come. Every day in need of grace. And I find myself not cast out.

Why do people believe they have seen ghosts? Research suggests that the brain may summon spirits as a means of coping with trauma, especially the pain of losing a loved one. Just as most amputees report what’s known as “phantom limb,” the feeling that their detached appendage is still there, surviving spouses frequently report seeing or sensing their departed partner.

One 1971 survey in the British Medical Journal found that close to half the widows in Wales and England had seen their partners postmortem. These vivid encounters, which psychologists call “after-death communication,” have long been among the most common kinds of paranormal experience, affecting skeptics and believers alike.

Experts think that such specters help us deal with painful or confusing events. A 2011 analysis published in the journal Death Studies looked at hundreds of incidents of supposed interaction with the deceased. The paper concluded that some occurrences provided “instantaneous relief from painful grief symptoms,” while others strengthened preexisting religious views.

There’s also evidence that sightings have other mental benefits. In a 1995 survey, 91 percent of participants said their encounter had at least one upside, such as a sense of connection to others.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Afterlife; Heaven – Pastors can attest that grieving Christian spouses occasionally believe they have seen shadows or objects in the home moving after the death of a loved one. We can rest on the absolute truth of God’s Word that “absent from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). At death, believers are immediately in the presence of the Lord and not wandering the earth (Phil. 1:23).

Peter Greig writes in How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People:

I was stranded in Chicago. All airplanes have been grounded by the eruption of an Icelandic volcano, and I couldn’t get home to England. I asked God how he wanted me to use the interruption. Several American friends had already been kind enough to invite me to stay, but as I prayed, I found myself thinking about a particular friend who lived 150 miles west in Madison, Wisconsin. "Hey, I'm in Chicago," I e-mailed. "Can I come crash on your couch?"

I didn’t know that Joe had just received terrible news, nor that his worried wife had asked, "Who do you wish you had on your couch right now?" Those had been her exact words. Nor that he had replied, "I wish Pete was on my couch, but I know that's crazy because he's in England, and he's never even been to our home."

The prophet Malachi says that "those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard" (Mal. 3:16). Sometimes God listens to our casual conversations and receives them as prayers. Within hours of Joe's throwaway line, I had materialized on his couch.

Within its first year, a dolphin develops a unique signature whistle which is the equivalent of its name; it uses this to identify itself to other dolphins. Adults are adept at copying the cries of other dolphins as if calling them by name. This is a fact backed up by a research study in Scotland which concluded that dolphins respond when another dolphin calls out their name.

An American research study concluded that dolphins recognize other dolphins even if they lost contact many years previously. One experiment proved that they could still remember each other’s whistle even after being apart for twenty years. Dolphins are socially complex mammals, and their social bonds with family and friends are very important.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible says that God knows each one of us by name … that we belong to him. We are each unique individuals in God’s sight.

Some of the most insightful secular writers of our time have pointed out that a lot of our drive in life, and a lot of our angst and dysfunction, goes back to a fear that we are not accepted.

The famous playwright Arthur Miller (who wrote Death of a Salesman) stopped believing in God as a teenager. But, decades later, he said this:

I feel like I've carried around this sense of judgment. I could not escape it. I still felt like I needed to prove myself to others: to have somebody tell me that I was okay, that I was acceptable, that I was approved of.

He had replaced the God of Christmas with the "god" of audience approval. He was still looking for someone to tell him that he was accepted, and not under judgment. He never quite found it.

Madonna said this in Vanity Fair magazine:

All of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I'm always struggling with that fear ... My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that's always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I've become somebody, I still have to prove that I'm Somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.

During the hardest moments of a particularly difficult year, Bible searches soared online, and a record number of people turned to Scripture for passages addressing fear, healing, and justice. The popular YouVersion Bible App saw searches increase by 80 percent in 2020, totaling nearly 600 million worldwide.

Isaiah’s assurance to “do not fear,” was the Bible App’s top verse globally this year, also ranked as the No. 1 verse in the US, India, South Africa, the Netherlands, and the Philippines. In Ghana, the top verse was Philippians 4:8 (“Do not be anxious …”), and in Kenya, Romans 8:28 (“in all things, God works for the good …”).

YouVersion founder Bobby Gruenewald said, “Through every hardship, people continue to seek God and turn to the Bible for strength, peace, and hope. While 2020 is a year so many say they’d like to forget, we see it as a year to remember how God used the Bible App to help so many people who are searching for answers.”

Overall, the app tracked 43.6 billion chapters of the Bible read in 2020, with half a billion verses shared, its highest on record.

Stressed out by the overwhelming events caused by the coronavirus in her city, New York City resident Gabrielle Bellot has a thirst for reassurance that everything will turn out all right. Bellot attempts to find comfort and encouragement apart from God.

She writes, that literature on pandemics, such as The Plague by Albert Camus, is never mainly about the disease:

Instead, it examines how humans deal with disease, how our inner lives shift as our outer worlds do. It affirms how precarious our place on this planet is. We move, unceasingly, in a dance with Lady Death. Her … perfume of necropolis grass and old flowers always near. If our life is always a dance macabre, the question is simply when she will take our hand in hers, blue and black nails against our skin, and bring us … into the sunless place beyond our life’s ballroom. Death, plague literature reminds us, is always, always with us.

We are living in a world “that seems to hang on the edge of apocalypse, climate or virus-related” tragedies. She doesn’t know what lies ahead, but “plagues, after all, will always return, whether or not we are ready. I still don’t know if I am. ... The literature of disease reveals the ghostly ballet we live in, ever so close to the grave. But it shows, too, those surprising moments of joy, love, and beauty we can find during disasters, even just briefly.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

In desperate times people search for assurance, peace, and security. In spite of the best man can do with medicine, philosophy, and technology, true peace of mind is only found in a genuine relationship with God.

Philip Poniz needed a well-protected place to stash his collection of rare watches. He had been gathering unusual pieces since he was a teenager and he became an internationally known expert in the history and restoration of high-end timepieces.

At first, he kept his personal collection in his house, but he wanted something more secure. The vault at his neighborhood bank seemed ideal. In 1983, he arranged with his bank to rent a safe deposit box. In the vault were hundreds of stacked metal boxes, each protected by two keys. The bank kept one; the customer held the other. Both were required to open a box.

Then, in April of 2017, he lifted the thin metal lid of his box. His box was empty. “I thought my heart would fail,” Mr. Poniz said. “I was devastated,” he said. “I never felt like that in my life before. I had never known that one can have a feeling like that.”

There are an estimated 25 million safe deposit boxes in America, and there are no federal laws governing the boxes. No rules require banks to compensate customers if their property is stolen or destroyed. Every year, a few hundred customers report that valuable items—diamonds, jewelry, rare coins, stacks of cash—have disappeared from their safe deposit boxes.

Mr. Poniz began piecing together what had happened: His bank had evicted another customer for not keeping up with payments, but bank employees had mistakenly removed Mr. Poniz’s box instead. He estimated that the value of his loss was more than $10 million. That would make it one of the largest safe-deposit-box losses in American history.

“My impression about safe deposit boxes was that it was like you were putting things in Fort Knox,” he said. “Nothing could happen to it.” He doesn’t think that anymore.

Possible Preaching Angle: Assurance; Security; Trusting God – No bank can guarantee the safety of our possessions. Physicians cannot guarantee the length of our lives. Insurance companies cannot promise the safety of our homes in natural disasters. But our eternal Father unfailingly guarantees the protection of our eternal souls and our rewards in heaven.

Researchers recruited 102 undergraduate students who were in “committed romantic relationships.” To begin the test, they watched cute nature videos for one minute to bring down their blood pressure and heart rate. Then they were told to dunk their foot in ice water for four minutes, while the researchers measured their blood pressure and pulse.

Participants were randomized to one of three groups:

-The first group had their romantic partners in the room with them.

-The second group was told to think about their romantic partner who wasn’t with them.

-The last group was told to just think about their day (control group).

The blood pressure of the “partner present people” didn’t spike as much as the control group. The same was true for the “partner in mind” participants. In an encouragement for people in long-distance relationships, the blood pressure benefit was just as strong in the “partner in mind” group as in the “partner present” group. The researchers say the results suggest that loving relationships may act as a "buffer" against stress responses.

This study is only a small part of a larger section of literature showing that loving relationships, including close friendships, are associated with less stress, less impact on the body, and even a longer lifespan. So next time the news stresses you out … think about a loved one, even if they aren’t there.

Possible Preaching Angle: This study reinforces what Scripture repeatedly teaches: In times of stress or pain fix your mind on God our ever-present Comforter and Friend.

Two enterprising wannabe burglars are probably vowing to watch fewer action movies, and instead do more research on the tools of their trade. Local police say that video surveillance footage shows two burglars attempting to cut open an automatic teller machine (ATM) using a blowtorch. And if all you know about crime is what you watch in heist movies, this is a sensible approach. In such movies, blowtorches are a common tool in breaching seemingly impenetrable surfaces, like the metal casing of an ATM.

Unfortunately, their attempt did not go according to plan. Rather than cutting it open, the blowtorch melted the metal, welding the hinges shut. The crowbar-wielding accomplice was left with nothing to do, and the pair quickly left in shame.

Potential preaching angles: Just as these thieves could not breach the ATM, so it is true that Satan cannot breach God’s love for us. The enemy attacks our weakest points, but that weakness is turned to strength when we depend on God. God's faithfulness is displayed when he protects us in the trials we endure.

In December of 2016, a ride at Knott's Berry Farm in California became stuck 148 feet in the air. There were 20 people on board, including seven children. Firefighters tried to reach the stranded passengers by using a massive ladder, but it was too short. Fire crews had no choice. They would have to lower each passenger from 148 feet in the air, harnessed to a single rope.

Fire Captain Larry Kurtz said, "It sounds scary, but … we have very, very strong ropes that have 9,000 pounds of breaking strength on them." He was building the faith of those who were trapped. He was giving them information that if believed would dissipate their fears. It was up to each person to believe what he said and place their trust in the firefighter.

Let's zero in on one of the youngsters, and say his name was Luke. He's seven years old—old enough to feel terror as he looks at the ground 148 feet below. The fire­fighter looks Luke in his eyes, and with a steadying voice says, "Trust me, Luke. I won't let you go. Your life is very precious to me, and I will have you down before you know it."

Luke listens to him and thinks about the "very, very strong rope." He believes the firefighter's reassuring words and trusts him completely. This is his only hope of getting to safety. If he doesn’t have faith, then he doesn't believe that the firefighter cares for him. He would then lose his only hope of reaching the ground. Faith, hope, and love are bound together.

Luke and all 20 passengers were lowered safely to the ground just before 10 p.m. that night.

On a September afternoon in 1870, a party of nine explorers, eight army escorts, and two cooks made its way by horseback along the Firehole River in an untamed corner of Wyoming. Their task was to explore the mountains and valleys of an ancient volcano crater, an area known for geothermal activity. Nathaniel P. Langford, a member of the expedition, later recalled what met their gaze that September day:

Judge, then, what must have been our astonishment, as we entered the basin at mid-afternoon of our second day's travel, to see in the clear sunlight, at no great distance, an immense volume of clear, sparkling water projected into the air to the height of 125 feet. "Geysers! Geysers!" exclaimed one of our company, and, spurring our jaded horses, we soon gathered around this wonderful [sight]. It was indeed a perfect geyser … It spouted at regular intervals nine times during our stay, the columns of boiling water being thrown from 90 to 125 feet at discharge, which lasted from 15 to 20 minutes. We gave it the name of "Old Faithful."

Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park earned its name for the predictability of its eruptions. It's still predictable today. In Langford's day, the only way to witness Old Faithful was to travel to Wyoming, a trip requiring expense, difficulty, time, and danger. But today anyone with Internet access can watch the geyser erupt in real time.

John Ortberg shares the following story:

A few weeks ago, when I was out surfing, there was no one else in the water except for a huge guy practicing martial arts on the beach. After I'd been out a little while, a tiny wisp of a kid came paddling up out of nowhere. I couldn't believe he was out there by himself. He pulled his little board right up next to mine. He was so small he hardly needed a board. He could have stood up in the ocean on a Frisbee. He told me his name was Shane. He asked me how long I'd been surfing. I asked him how long he'd been surfing.

"Seven years," he said. "How old are you?" I asked. "Eight."

Then he said, "What I like about surfing is that it's so peaceful. You meet a lot of nice people here."

We talked a while longer. Then I asked him, "How did you get here, Shane?"

"My dad brought me," he said. Then he turned around and waved at the nearly empty beach. The Goliath doing martial arts waved back.

"Hi, Son," he called out.

Then I knew why Shane was so at home in the ocean. It wasn't his size. It wasn't his skill. It was who was sitting on the beach. His father was always watching. And his father was very big. Shane wasn't really alone at all. Neither are we.

Possible Preaching Angles: At its core, the gospel is the invitation to an intimate relationship with God. It tells us we are never alone.

Bill Gates, the personal computing pioneer and billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, said in an interview that he regrets the decision to make the keyboard combination "Control-Alt-Delete" central on Windows computers. The key combination served as a command both to log in to a computer and force it to quit if it froze up. It was a confusing task for first-time users, and for most people would require two hands to execute.

"If I could make one small edit, I'd make that a single key," said Gates at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York. He had made a similar statement back in 2013 at a Harvard University event. "We could have had a single button. But the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button." Apple's Mac computer have always logged in with a single click. Yet, Gates also conceded, "I'm not sure you can go back and change small things in your life without putting the other things at risk."

Potential Preaching Angles: While the co-founder of Microsoft may regret some of his design decisions years later (even some of the most iconic in the era of personal computing), we can rest assured that God has not and will not ever second guess his design of creation. Each and every one of God's children is fearfully and wonderfully made-and they will remain that way.

In many instances, duct tape is highly reliable—but as a means of water transportation, it may not be a prime choice.

Just ask the Alaskan man who attempted to cross a channel near Juneau on a "homemade watercraft"—more specifically, "an inflatable, duct-taped craft"—complete with a paddle, his dog, and a conspicuous lack of a life jacket.

A local news outlet stated that while the "[w]eather on scene was reportedly calm with 9 mph winds," a local Coast Guard crew still ended up coming to the man's aid: when the makeshift boat started to fill with water.

Having "deemed the craft unsafe," they "transferred it, the man—and his dog—to [nearby] Douglas Harbor."

(Perhaps to guard against embarrassment, the news release "did not identify the man.")

Potential Preaching Angles: This man's "boat" was homemade, patched together with duct tape and carrying no life jacket on board—yet he still trusted it with his life (and even his dog's life). Is there anything in our lives that we rely on to give us health, happiness, and meaning when we should instead be relying on the ship that will never sink, the fortress and refuge in which we trust (Ps. 91:2)?

The Oxford Comma is perhaps the most controversial piece of punctuation in the English language. There are conflicting guidelines governing whether or not the extra comma at the end of a list should be used, depending on which authority one consults. Those in opposition say the comma is unnecessary, while supporters of the comma argue that it serves to clarify in instances whether two items are meant to belong together or not (as in "I'd like to thank my parents, Mother Theresa and the Pope.").

The controversy heated up, however, when a judge in Maine ruled that a dairy company owed its employees approximately $10 million in unpaid overtime expenses for an absent Oxford Comma which rendered a list of overtime exemptions slightly ambiguous. The ruling reversed the decision of a lower court. Though not an official stance, the lawyer representing the drivers said that in cases of ambiguous sentences, the best rule to live by is: "If there's any doubt, tear up what you have and start over."

Potential Preaching Angles: It is amazing what kind of confusion can be caused by one missing punctuation mark. By the grace of God, however, the Bible is abundantly clear when it comes to the inerrancy of Scripture, the Gospel, and the identity of Jesus Christ. We do not need to fear misunderstandings of either the Bible or the Person of Jesus because it has been revealed as unambiguously as possible: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The holidays may be the most wonderful time of the year—but if you're going to the airport, they may be one of the most stressful times of the year, as well. A couple of travelers through LAX discovered that their airport experience could become even worse than they'd imagined, as they were informed by the TSA and their airline that their giant teddy bear could not accompany them on their flight.

To make matters worse, the TSA posted an Instagram picture of the gigantic teddy sitting next to a trash can, where he had been "abandoned by his owners" when they learned he could not come with them (even though they had actually purchased a ticket for him). The caption read, "Why does this gigantic teddy bear look so sad? He was abandoned by his owners at LAX after the airline and TSA determined that he was just too big to be screened as a carry-on and taken on the plane," the caption read.

The post led to hundreds of comments, many of them outraged: "This is NOT OK TSA," "omg this makes me sad." A headline for Time magazine read: "The TSA Just Made This Giant Teddy Bear Homeless."

But now the TSA says that it was all a ruse. An updated TSA Instagram post read, "This was a stunt to see if he could get the giant bear on the plane. He even made up a backstory that the bear was a gift for his girlfriend. The bear did not belong to a child."

Potential Preaching Angles: Abandonment hurts more than just stuffed bears; it hurts real people. Fortunately, with Jesus Christ you'll always have a seat on the plane.