Beyond Cynicism: Real Hope in Today’s World

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Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His kingdom.

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0:00:22.5 Jim Lovelady: Hello beloved, welcome to another episode of Grace at the Fray. Can you remember a time where you were duped, where you got hustled? How did it make you feel? Embarrassed, vulnerable, angry, confused, exhausted? How difficult was it to trust after you were taken advantage of, after you were tricked? I will never forget a time in sixth grade where I was playing my first basketball game with the youth group kids. And I am not a large person. And this was exceptionally true in sixth grade when I found myself playing with all the seniors in the church youth group. So there’s this rule in basketball where if the other team has the ball, you can’t touch them on their side of the court. You have to wait until they cross over the half court line. Well, this one high school senior, I guess, was standing right behind the half court line, dribbling the ball right in front of me, and I was on my side of the half court line. And he said, “Go ahead, come on, come and get it.” And I stood there a little confused, and then I went for it. And of course, I knocked the ball out of his hand and everybody started yelling at me from both teams because they knew that I had broken some rule. People on my team were mad at me and people on the other team were laughing at me. And I’m confused because I didn’t know what rule I’d broken. All I knew is that everyone was yelling at me for something I did wrong because that little kid, well, big kid, he tricked me. That moment had a huge impact on me. I mean, I still remember it 34 years later. I remember the feeling of being duped. I got hustled and I hated it. I was a naive kid, kind of sheltered, not really aware of a lot of social cues. So I frequently got hustled by tricksters. And somewhere along the way, I decided that I would never be duped again, which is kind of a silly promise to make to yourself. But that established something deep in my psyche that made me constantly vigilant, always on the lookout for when someone would try to take advantage of me. It makes it really hard to trust when your one and only comfort in life and in death is the place of cynicism, where you can never build up, you can never take risks. You can only tear down, criticize and stay safe on the sidelines of life. So when I sat down to read Pastor Irwyn Ince’s new book, 𝘏𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘈𝘪𝘯’𝘵 𝘢 𝘏𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘭𝘦, he had me, almost immediately. Can we really face the brokenness of this life as people with hope? I’m releasing this episode on a significant day in American culture, it’s Election Day 2024, a day that is set to conclude with a lot of disappointed people. Half are going to feel duped and half are going to feel vindicated. In the incredible upheaval of our culture, I think what we need more than anything is a hope that transcends the cynicism, the despair, the uncertainty and the fear. So I’m really glad to share this conversation with you today. I think of Irwyn Ince as a wise and loving guide for a day like today and the days that follow. And my prayer is that wherever you find yourself, in whatever spiritual and physical state that you would find, that the promise of real, lasting hope won’t leave you feeling duped or disappointed, because as you’ll see in this conversation, hope ain’t a hustle.

0:04:06.4 Jim Lovelady: The Reverend Dr. Irwyn Ince, what’s up, my friend? It is so good to see you again.

0:04:12.4 Irwyn Ince: Yes, I’m glad to be back for a second round. [chuckle]

0:04:16.9 Jim Lovelady: Twice in one season.

0:04:18.8 Irwyn Ince: Twice in one season. What is that? [chuckle]

0:04:20.9 Jim Lovelady: It is unprecedented. Marc Davis, who’s on staff with Renewal here at Serge, he wins the most appearances on the episode, I think. And I was just talking to him. I said, “Hey, man, I’m going to go hang out with Irwyn right now.” And he goes, “Again?” And I was like, “I know, right? Twice in one season.” And I said, “Not even you have done twice in one season.”

[laughter]

0:04:49.0 Irwyn Ince: There you go. I’m privileged. I’m privileged.

0:04:52.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, man. Welcome to Grace at the Fray. When you were here last, this was the first… Our conversation last time was the first episode of season four about how to have conversations about race.

0:05:05.0 Irwyn Ince: Yes.

0:05:05.6 Jim Lovelady: And it was around your book, The Beautiful Community. And at the end of that… What I loved about that, just by the way, is how I went in wanting to have a conversation about race. And you were like, “Let’s have a conversation about the image of God.”

0:05:21.7 Irwyn Ince: Yeah. Amen.

0:05:22.0 Jim Lovelady: It was so good. I learned so much from you. And so since I have you, thank you so much. And so I’m looking forward to learning more today from this book, Hope Ain’t a Hustle. You gave me this little sticker.

0:05:38.1 Irwyn Ince: Yes. That’s right.

0:05:40.7 Jim Lovelady: Right. After I turned the recording off and I said, “Oh, man, that was really great. And I’d love to have you on again.” And you go, “Well, I got a new book coming out.”

0:05:50.4 Irwyn Ince: Right.

0:05:53.1 Jim Lovelady: And so when I picked up your book, you had me almost immediately. Hope Ain’t a Hustle. So you had me almost immediately because you’re like, “Look, if you feel cynical, if you’ve ever been duped, if you’re scared of like… People who have hope, kind of like stick their head out and go, “Hey, everything’s going to be okay.” Cynical people are like, “Don’t do that. You’re going to get your head chopped off or whatever.” I just… You had me at hello because I’m a recovering cynic. And, it doesn’t take much for me to fall off the bandwagon of hope and to just fall into despair. And my wife is like, “Come on, come on. Jesus is not dead.”

0:06:35.2 Irwyn Ince: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:36.5 Jim Lovelady: And yeah. So, how you take this book and you engage… In this book, you’re engaging with the book of Hebrews, bringing us to a place of hope. So use me as a test case, because I feel like I don’t know that there’s… I don’t know that there’s going to be a whole lot of people that are more cynical than me. It’s like all the cynical people listening are like challenge…

0:07:02.5 Irwyn Ince: Yeah, I bet…

[overlapping conversation]

0:07:03.6 Jim Lovelady: Challenge accepted.

0:07:05.3 Irwyn Ince: Exactly. Exactly. [laughter]

0:07:06.8 Jim Lovelady: But…

0:07:07.0 Irwyn Ince: My first thought was, “I’m not so sure about that.” [laughter]

0:07:12.0 Jim Lovelady: I feel quite cynical, and especially because I’m going to be releasing this episode on November 5th, on Election day, where it seems like the entire world, at least especially America, is just kind of like waiting, bated breath. Everybody just feels like, “If my candidate doesn’t win, it’s the end of the world.” Everyone just kind of feels that, you know, and everyone’s like, “Oh no, what’s going to happen?” And the cynics like me are like, “You know, yeah. It probably is the end of the world,” or whatever kind of cynical, lack of faith thing that leads to not being able to love, kind of thing. So use me as a test case. Drag me out of the pit of despair and serve me up some hope, because your book was really wonderful, but I get to talk with you. So.

[laughter]

0:08:04.5 Irwyn Ince: Yes. Well, that’s what I’ll say. Help me, Holy Spirit. [laughter], right? 

0:08:08.3 Jim Lovelady: Oh absolutely.

0:08:09.2 Irwyn Ince: Well, I think that it is really, really important for people to understand that cynicism or feeling like our hopes are dashed and under threat constantly, which can result in us becoming cynical about everything, that that’s actually normal. I’m not encouraging people to remain in their cynicism.

0:08:39.6 Jim Lovelady: Right, right.

0:08:42.7 Irwyn Ince: But to say the norm of life in a broken world with broken communities, broken bodies, broken relationships, where we see and experience the impact of injustice and sin, these things threaten our ability to actually hold on to a hopefulness about life, and about what is beautiful, and good, and true, and just, and right. And so the first thing I’d say to you and say to anyone is that don’t think yourself strange. Don’t think yourself out of the ordinary when you feel wearied by the weight of the world.

0:09:34.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:36.5 Irwyn Ince: That that weariness is part of what it means to live now before the renewal of all things [chuckle] in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, to understand that not just for yourself in terms of life in this world, but that’s actually what we see in the Scriptures. So we know it is not out of the ordinary or abnormal, so to speak, for even Christians, to have that level of weariness, to fight this kind of cynicism, to look for ways for relief, because we see it in the Scriptures in God’s people. Right? And so it’s important to say, well, what’s our cue from what God says in his world, in his Word, rather? How do we actually… If in fact it’s not out of the ordinary to be wearied by the world, what do we do with weariness? And so, as you know in this book, I lean on the letter to the Hebrews and it’s so… I think most days that’s, it’s my favorite book of the Bible.

0:11:06.0 Jim Lovelady: It’s like the Leviticus of the New Testament. It’s like…

0:11:08.6 Irwyn Ince: It is.

0:11:08.7 Jim Lovelady: It’s tough. That’s a tough one. It’s your favorite.

0:11:12.4 Irwyn Ince: It’s… You know, and I said most days now, I said, most days.

0:11:16.6 Jim Lovelady: Most days, that’s right. [laughter]

0:11:18.1 Irwyn Ince: Okay. All right. I want to hedge my bets here. All right? I can’t say it’s always…

0:11:21.0 Jim Lovelady: That’s right, that’s right.

0:11:23.6 Irwyn Ince: But most days, in fact, because yes. There’s such a clear declaration that everything pointed to Jesus. That He is the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power. That this community that is struggling, I think is struggling with hope, is how I would put it, they are being wearied by their faithfulness to Jesus. It is costing them.

0:12:07.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:12:10.0 Irwyn Ince: And they are… They’re wondering, “is it worth it?” [laughter] “Can we just tweak this mess? Can we just tweak this gospel thing?”

0:12:20.2 Jim Lovelady: Ease the pain just a bit.

0:12:20.3 Irwyn Ince: Ease the pain. Can we tweak it to get a little bit of relief, so it won’t be so hard. And so here’s… So yes, the threats to hope are the norm. And the pastor, their pastor is going to exhort them throughout to persevere, to… He will say to them in chapter 10, “You all have need of endurance… ” [laughter]

0:12:54.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:12:55.5 Irwyn Ince: “So that after you have done the will of God, you may receive what He’s promised.” But he starts the book out where we all need to start fixing their eyes on the glory and grandeur and majesty of Jesus.

0:13:12.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:13:13.1 Irwyn Ince: Like, the first response to dealing with the weariness, the wearying of life in this world, the cynicism that comes as a result of that… Because the cynicism is just a response, just a response to what’s going on… Is what he says. He says, “In these last days, God has spoken to us by His son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the universe. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact representation of His nature.” The first thing you’ve got to do is understand who Jesus is. Chapter 12 of Hebrews, where he says, “Listen, consider Him who endured such hostility against Himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”

0:14:29.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, look at Jesus. Just…

0:14:31.2 Irwyn Ince: Look at Him.

0:14:31.3 Jim Lovelady: Keep looking. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith, who is seated on the throne in power. I don’t know how many times he says “seated”.

0:14:41.2 Irwyn Ince: Over and over again, about six times. He is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high, seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Over and over again. He’s not dead, and He’s not up there doing nothing. He always lives to make intercession for His people.

0:15:01.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that because… Well, so the first thing you go, “Hey, you know, don’t be surprised that you’re so cynical. I mean, really, when you look around, it makes total sense.” Versus, you know, I think there can be so often a response where it’s like, “Hey, you’re a Christian. You’re a pastor. You can’t be cynical. You have to have hope. Stop being so cynical.” And it’s like…

0:15:25.5 Irwyn Ince: Stop it.

0:15:27.1 Jim Lovelady: Stop it. Just stop it. And it’s like, “Well, no, I’m not going to belittle this. I’m not going to belittle you. I’m going to take this seriously.” So yeah, when you look at all that stuff, you have to take that stuff seriously. And that’s why I appreciate a lot of the stories that you tell in the book, where it’s like, “Hey, here’s a really wonderful example of how, from history, of how we just messed things up. And here it is, you know.” And you can’t get out of the fact that, you know, it’s a mess. And so it’s not like, “Hey, stop looking at that stuff that makes you cynical”‘ It’s not just that. It’s like, “Okay, hey, it’s not surprising that you’re cynical. Now fix your eyes on Jesus.” Yeah, that’s good.

0:16:22.2 Irwyn Ince: Right. Because we do not have a high priest, chapter 4 of Hebrews, who’s unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who has been tempted in every respect as we have…

0:16:41.4 Jim Lovelady: Including cynicism.

0:16:43.3 Irwyn Ince: Including! To be cynical, right? Yet without sin. Therefore, let’s draw near to the throne of grace, right? With confidence! With confidence. So what do we do with our cynicism? What do we do with the weariness of this world? And this is not this kind of pie in the sky thinking, you know, just dream about Heaven and the day that everything is going to be better, and that’ll fix everything. No, it’s like, the understanding of this faith, of this hope, makes a difference for how we live in the world. You know, one of the stories I tell in the book is of Reverend James Lawson from the Civil Rights Movement, who certainly had been engaged in the Civil Rights Movement before Dr. King, who just this year, this summer, passed away. And who had developed the training for the nonviolent action that young African Americans and others took, and he called it his School of Love. This training was called the School of Love. And one of the pillars of it was a capacity to endure suffering, is what he wanted to engender in these participants. And this is just biblical. A capacity to endure suffering, right? Our faith and hope in the God of the universe who has redeemed us and who sustains us is that we can live in this world that is broken and know that there’s suffering, and we’re not crushed. We can speak for what is good and right and true and beautiful and know that there will be resistance to it. And yet, at the same time, that resistance… Let me say, that resistance, when we think about the Civil Rights Movement, we only think about external, systemic injustice…

0:19:12.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:19:13.9 Irwyn Ince: But conceptually, we think about the resistance to what is right, righteous, just, good, beautiful. It’s not just external, it’s internal, too. The resistance we face is… Our hearts want to resist it.

0:19:31.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah.

0:19:33.4 Irwyn Ince: Right? There are forces outside of us that want to resist it. Our hearts want to resist it, right? So we have to have this capacity for enduring. I love what the writer to the Hebrews says in chapter 6 when he gives them this warning, right? He’s warning them as he does multiple times.

0:19:50.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, a few times.

0:19:51.8 Irwyn Ince: Right? In the letter, this, you know, this warning. And then he says, like, “Listen, you know, but we’re sure… ” And he does this every time he gives them a warning, he says something like, “But in your case, loved ones, we’re sure of better things, things that belong to salvation.” And then he says, “Listen, here’s what we desire. We desire for each of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of your hope all the way to the end.”

0:20:28.7 Jim Lovelady: So, what is he saying there? 

0:20:30.5 Irwyn Ince: It is amazing. You read that and you think, “Oh, the full assurance of your faith. That makes sense.” Yeah, be assured of your faith all the way to the end.

0:20:38.6 Jim Lovelady: Right, right.

0:20:40.4 Irwyn Ince: But he says, of your hope. Right? The full assurance of your hope all the way… I say in the book, it’s like before Jesse Jackson came along… Jesse Jackson wasn’t the first to say, “Keep hope alive,” right? That he is saying, “Listen, it is imperative that you understand… ” Because before that, before he says that you have the full assurance of your hope, he reminds them, he says, “God is not so unjust, He’s not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you’ve shown for the saints.” He’s saying, “Look. Look back first. You are struggling right now, right? You’re struggling to hold on to the assurance of your hope in the Lord, right? His sustaining power, His ability to keep you from falling and falling away. Look back over where the Lord has brought you from already. Look back at how the Lord’s work in you was demonstrated by the love that you showed to your brothers and sisters in the faith.” Now, of course, Christian love, we’re called to love neighbor indiscriminately.

0:22:09.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:22:10.0 Irwyn Ince: But he’s giving a particular example of how their hope showed up in what they were willing to endure. So he’s talking about something specific. He’ll say it later in chapter 10, when he says, he reminds them, “Remember when you were first enlightened, when you first came to faith, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings,” right? “Because you had compassion on those who were in prison.”

0:22:43.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah. And that got them in trouble.

0:22:44.3 Irwyn Ince: That got them in trouble, right? That context was those were their brothers and sisters in Christ who had been imprisoned for their faith. And if you were imprisoned in that context, nobody’s bringing you three square meals, people have got to care for you from the outside.

0:23:06.4 Jim Lovelady: Right. Yeah, you’re kind of left for dead…

0:23:08.0 Irwyn Ince: You’re kind of left.

0:23:08.1 Jim Lovelady: Unless somebody risks their life to go help you out.

0:23:12.6 Irwyn Ince: Exactly. Exactly. And by doing that, he said, “You remember, you aligned yourself with… You are now outed as one of them. You’re one of them.” And he said, “With joy, you accepted the plundering of your property, knowing that you had a better and more lasting possession.”

0:23:36.0 Jim Lovelady: That is one of the most provocative passages in the book of Hebrews. Maybe, I don’t know… Especially… You talk about that in your book, and I’m like, “I don’t want to read this anymore.” Because like, both… Okay, November 5th, Election Day, both, all the candidates are basically saying like, “If you vote for the other person, you’re going to lose all your stuff. They’re going to take away all your stuff.”

0:24:05.1 Irwyn Ince: They’re going to take…

0:24:05.5 Jim Lovelady: I mean, it’s like… And then this verse like sneaks up on the average American Christian and goes, “What are you going to do about this?” This is in the Bible. They joyfully accepted because it’s like, “Well, this cool, you took away my skateboard. I have… All of my hope is resting in something way bigger. And that’s motivating my ability to… ” Well, so it’s like, that hope has some sort of relationship with faith. Talk about how hope affects faith.

0:24:48.0 Jim Lovelady: For sure. So we know from the Scriptures that faith is a gift from God. That by faith, you’ve been saved… “By grace, you’ve been saved through faith. It’s not of yourselves. But it’s a gift of God, not of works,” right? This salvage. So hope, hope is in many respects a decision that works out of my faith that I make kind of on a daily basis.

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0:25:30.8 Jim Lovelady: I want to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we at the headquarters here in Philadelphia are praying for each week. We meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray, and this week we’re praying for our teams in South Asia. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would bless these folks, give them joy in their work in your Kingdom and the pleasure of your joy as they follow you. Give them wisdom and let your grace abound in their relationships with one another, with family members and children, and with the people they serve. Heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness, and restore to them the joy of your salvation, and let your kingdom come and your will be done in these places just as it is in Heaven. We pray in your name, amen. Now back to the conversation.

0:26:29.3 Irwyn Ince: Because of our faith in the Lord, hope is not wishful thinking. Because of our faith in Christ, the hope of Christ, the hope of the gospel is not wishful thinking. Over and over again in the letter to the Hebrews talks about God’s promises. He will do what He’s promised. That we hold on to that hope and it’s just it’s not a wish. The two are married. My faith and my hope are married. They’re relatively inseparable. And so as I live out this faith, I live out this faith because my hope is in the Lord right. And so when, as believers, when I wake up today and I recognize whether or not my candidate is, my favorite candidate is leading in the polls, trailing in the polls, going to win, going to lose, what happens when I am kind of just devastated by the results.

0:27:53.7 Jim Lovelady: Right right.

0:27:58.2 Irwyn Ince: What happens… Because here’s the deal, okay? Let’s just… People are not going to like me saying this, but you’ve got faithful strong believers in each party who are a member of each of the major political parties. Sorry, it’s just that. [chuckle]

0:28:17.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:28:22.5 Irwyn Ince: And so that means a good number of Christians will respond to the election and say, “This country is going to hell in a handbasket. This is close to the end.”

0:28:39.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah that’s right.

0:28:44.5 Irwyn Ince: So how do you live like that? How do you live if that’s your… Two things. One, it is a display of a… An unwillingness… That perspective is a display of an unwillingness to really rest your hopes in the Lord of glory, because the promise was never that the United States of America would continue indefinitely as a Democratic Republic, right? 

0:29:22.1 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

0:29:28.0 Irwyn Ince: As my former pastor used to say “the Kingdom of God is not coming in on Air Force One 1”.

0:29:33.4 Jim Lovelady: I underlined that in your book.

[laughter]

0:29:35.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s right. This is a kingdom that does not endure. We need to have a hope in a Kingdom that does endure.

0:29:48.0 Irwyn Ince: That’s exactly right. And that, again, so if our hope is in that Kingdom it impacts how we live in this one.

0:29:58.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:30:00.1 Irwyn Ince: Right? If our hope is in that Kingdom, we’re citizens of that Kingdom now. And so we can still be present in a very powerful way of demonstrating a love of God through love of others and serving others for their good no matter what is happening in the civic and political arena. Yeah, so things might be somewhat made easier or more challenging depending on the policies that come from our elected officials but they do not change the call one iota. They do not change the call one iota.

0:30:38.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. I found myself sitting there kind of in the most anxious moments of all of this. And historically, my cynicism has been like you know what this isn’t even worth my energy, politics, isn’t even worth my energy. That’s how cynical I am. But this time, you know, my kids are older and I’m more anxious. I see my anxiety, I don’t know if I’m more anxious. I say this… I’ve said this before, like, I feel like I’m more fearful, but I also feel like the world is a more fearful place than it used to be. So is it because I’m getting old or because the world is just more fearful, I don’t know. But I sit there in my most anxious moments and I go, “Okay, well, if… At least, where can I find hope? Well, if this candidate wins, well, hopefully, blah, blah, blah… Well, okay, now I gotta work out the scenario in the other way. If this candidate wins, well, hopefully, blah, blah, blah… You know, and what you’re talking about is like, no, there’s this overarching hope that regardless of who wins you still get hope. That’s why Christianity is the best religion you know.

0:31:49.6 Irwyn Ince: That’s right. That’s right. You know, I mentioned earlier to you before we started recording that I was privileged to attend the Lausanne Congress on Global Mission and Evangelism. And, you know, you engage with Christian leaders from all over the world, 200-plus countries, and you have these conversations with people. Some people are living and serving in what we would call closed countries, right? There were people whose lanyards were white and who had a little sticker on their name tag that said, “Essentially, don’t take my picture without my permission, and certainly don’t post it onto… ” So you knew, by identifying that they were here, it could cost them.

0:32:45.5 Jim Lovelady: Right. Right.

0:32:48.0 Irwyn Ince: There was a brother at the beginning of the week who is from a place that is dealing with persecution, and he said, “Yep, you know, we just had five brothers arrested the other day before I came here.” And he said, “I want to communicate to us this week, I want us to learn this week for the church not to fear persecution.” He said, “Don’t be afraid of persecution. Yes, we’re dealing with persecution where I am, and there’s suffering, but the gospel is going forward, the church is growing,” you know? And so, when you talk about an embodied hope, when you say, Well, what do you do when the government is an oppressive regime? Do you stop trying to love God and love neighbor? Do you stop trying to serve him? Or do you say, “Oh, no, no, no, it’s going to cost me too much.” I think from a… Again, we have many, many in the United States, many, many privileges and freedoms and rights that I’m grateful for. And at the same time, our hope as God’s people doesn’t rest in the maintenance of those things.

0:34:27.0 Jim Lovelady: Right. And that’s a hard thing to balance, you know. In our Sonship, in Serge’s Sonship curriculum, one of the questions that we get, we ask in one of the lessons is, If you lost everything, but all you had was Jesus, would that be enough for you? And it’s really fascinating the different responses to that. It’s a homework question, you know, it’s really fascinating the different responses and how, like, I’ve just realized that in the American context, that is a question that provokes some good conviction and some good thought. It’s never brought to like a real answer, you know, but like when you go to the Lausanne conference, you could have asked that question to some of those folks and they would say, “I actually did lose everything. And I actually did discover that all I had was Jesus. And I actually did discover that that was more than enough.” And someone like me, who’s like, “Man, I have a nice sweater. It’s warm in here. It’s comfortable. I have a full belly,” something for me where I’m like… It almost just does not compute, that kind of question. And so to have those brothers and sisters who can go, “Hey, you don’t… Look, take it from me. You don’t have to be afraid.” And the average American is like, “I’m still afraid.”

[laughter]

0:35:58.6 Irwyn Ince: That’s right. Because we have so much. And what invariably those brothers and sisters say is, “I have God’s people. I have the church. I have the community of faith. So, even in the losing of possessions and things like that, I found that Jesus’ words were true. Whoever loses, you know, houses and lands and sisters and brothers will receive… “

0:36:35.2 Jim Lovelady: “For my sake.”

0:36:36.5 Irwyn Ince: “For my sake. Will receive more”, right? Because that doesn’t compute. Well, oh, yes. Oh, because we’re part of a new body of people who will not… So, we discover when Jesus says, and the pastor quotes it in Hebrews 13, “I will not leave you or forsake you,” part of that not leaving or forsaking is in the presence of His people that we’re among.

0:37:12.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s right.

0:37:12.4 Irwyn Ince: Yeah.

0:37:15.6 Jim Lovelady: I’m reminded, you know, in terms of hope, one of my favorite stories from the Bible is the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Talk about being duped. You know, talk about feeling hustled.

0:37:27.1 Irwyn Ince: Yeah.

0:37:28.1 Jim Lovelady: You know, “I spent the last three years of my life with this dude. I thought that we were going to overthrow Rome. I thought that we were going to bring about God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in Heaven. He even says to pray that way. And He died.” And, you know, we’re shuffling our feet as we go back. And then suddenly the Lord appears among them and they don’t recognize Him. “Hey, what are you guys talking about?” And they’re like, “Where have you been buddy? How do you not know?” And He starts unpacking for them. “Hey, let me help you think rightly about all your expectations and all your hopes.” He goes after their intellect. “Hey, let me tell you how to think rightly about your expectations and hopes.” He goes after their intellect, but it doesn’t click until they sit there in the breaking of bread. And when they’re taking communion, that’s when they recognize it’s Jesus. When… It’s the participation in the body of Christ. So now we’ve got, how many bodies of Christ are there? Well, there’s the body of Christ, there’s the body of Christ, and there’s the body of Christ. You know, and so they’re participating in the body of Christ and they recognized the body of Christ. But they’re the church, you know? And so like your whole point is, where are you going to find hope? Participating in the body of Christ. Yeah.

0:38:56.2 Irwyn Ince: That is a major implication, right? Of, I talk about that we do ourselves a disservice by, in our weariness and in our cynicism, by extricating ourselves, separating ourselves from the body, right? It’s so interesting that language and those two disciples on the road to Emmaus and the resurrected Christ meets them. And it’s a whole comical scene, right? 

0:39:30.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:39:32.7 Irwyn Ince: He says, “Hey, what are you all talking about?” And they say, “Are you the only one, only visitor to Jerusalem that doesn’t know what happened?” You know? 

0:39:42.2 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. That’s right.

0:39:43.8 Irwyn Ince: And they use this thing to say, “We had hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel.”

0:39:49.4 Jim Lovelady: That’s it. That’s it right there.

0:39:49.9 Irwyn Ince: Right? Yeah. And the Apostle Paul in Acts, at the end of Acts, he’s making his case before the Jewish leaders who come to see him as he’s in house arrest. And he said, “Brothers, it is because of the hope of Israel that I’m in these chains. It’s because of the hope of Israel that I’m in these chains.”

0:40:12.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah.

0:40:14.6 Irwyn Ince: Right? This link between the embodied hope, who is the… What is the hope of Israel? It is the Lord Jesus Christ.

0:40:22.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A consolation, yeah.

0:40:24.6 Irwyn Ince: A consolation, right? So this link between his, first, his suffering, his persecutions, and his hope, right? And they’re not disconnected, but it’s the beauty of that, is that, it says that last verse in Acts, he’s sharing about the Kingdom of God, right? Without hindrance.

0:40:52.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah.

0:40:53.9 Irwyn Ince: So again, the point here is it is of such importance for God’s people to realize our hope is embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ and in His body. It’s shown in His body, which is us. “Do not,” is what is says, in chapter 12 of Hebrews, “do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as is the habit of some.” Like, don’t respond to the difficulty by separating yourself from the community of faith, right? That’s a sure way to have diminished hope. [chuckle]

0:41:40.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, you talk about the metaphor of running a marathon and how you run together, you know? And I just… When I was reading that part, I had this image of, my fatigue, how hard it is to endure in faith and like having justice fatigue, tired of fighting for justice and just not… Having political fatigue, having race fatigue, having faith fatigue, having hope fatigue, having love fatigue, you know? And I just want to sit down, and just sit on the road, and just, “You know, you guys just keep running. I quit, you know, that kind of thing,” where it’s like, “No, no, no, buddy, come on. Hey, who’s going to help me carry this guy?” You know, it’s the body of Christ. We’re in this together. It’s the great cloud of witnesses that you… From Hebrews 12.

0:42:29.8 Irwyn Ince: That’s right. That’s exactly right. That is, we have this picture in multiple ways in the latter two years particularly, but that in Hebrews 12, right? “Let us run with endurance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame,” and here it is again, “and is seated at the right hand of the throne.”

0:43:00.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

0:43:03.8 Irwyn Ince: Right? And so that reality, that running the race, and it’s such a significant point because in our Western society world that is so overwhelmingly individualistic and individualized, everything is about my rights, my sense of information, my sense of self, all of my… Me, myself, and I, as the song goes, that we realize, we can think, “Oh, I’m running this Christian race.” And yes, there’s a sense of, but I’m running the race. I’m a Christian, right? But that’s, those are, “Let us run the race that is set before us.”

0:43:53.6 Jim Lovelady: Us. Yeah.

0:43:55.1 Irwyn Ince: The only singular in that whole passage is Jesus. All the other pronouns are plural, us. Let us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely. Let us run with endurance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. And so that reminder that this race is not… I’m not beating anyone else over the finish line. It’s not a race where like, “Hey man, Jim, let me get past. Let me get ahead of you. Oh, you catching up? No, brother, you ain’t going to beat me.” [laughter] It’s like, no. Right? 

0:44:35.9 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

0:44:36.0 Irwyn Ince: So, we don’t run it like a competition, right? We’re trying for all of us. We’re crossing this thing, right? 

0:44:45.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. I love it. And the great cloud of witnesses. You know, when you’re running a marathon, you got the people on the side with the weird noise making things.

0:44:53.1 Irwyn Ince: Yeah, the noise making. They got orange slices for you they got arranged. [laughter]

0:44:55.7 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. Yeah. Thomas Aquinas is like, “Hey, here some oranges.”

[laughter]

0:45:03.3 Jim Lovelady: So I’ve got a loss of hope, and it’s like fix your eyes on Jesus and you will have a hope in a future that is more glorious. And then I go, “But I’m… I have a weary faith.” And you’re like, “Well, the community of believers, we’re in this together And we will have an endurance in faith if we keep going.” And that… So it pushes me. When I was reading your book, it was like, oh, it’s all heading toward Hebrews 13:13. So because of this hope, because of this endurance in faith… You know, in 12 it says, “Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the city gate… “

0:45:46.0 Irwyn Ince: Yes…

[overlapping conversation]

0:45:46.6 Jim Lovelady: “In order to sanctify the people by His blood. Let us then go to Him outside the camp and bear the abuse He endured.” And so it’s this movement toward since Jesus has given you a hope, since Jesus is the author and perfecter of your faith, now you can love with a sacrificial love, which means your candidate can lose and it’s not a big deal. It means you can have all your stuff taken away and it’s okay. When everything is taken away what is left for you is to love. And I can love sacrificially because He loves us. So I just… It landed there for me when I read your book.

0:46:26.8 Irwyn Ince: That is so, so good. And that’s such an amazing, amazing passage of Scripture, yes, of Hebrews, but of Scripture. Again, He’s talking to suffering people. He said, “We have a table From which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.” He’s talking about they’re being tempted to go back under the sacrificial system, back into the tabernacle, back into… You know…

0:47:00.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Yeah.

0:47:01.8 Irwyn Ince: Right? He said, “No, no, no, we have a tabernacle. We got a table, too. But those who serve the tent, the tabernacle, the temple. Those who are still under the old covenant and holding on to it, they don’t have a right to eat from this table. They can. They can have a right if they confess faith in Christ. He says, “So but here’s one thing you got to understand about this table.” He said, “You know, there was a sacrifice, but He suffered outside the camp on that hill called calvary. It was not in the clean place.” So what does it look like for us? We go to Him there. We bear the abuse and reproach He bore. So we love even though it means we might have to bear some reproach. We might have to bear some abuse. We might have to be resisted…

0:48:11.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

0:48:11.5 Irwyn Ince: But that doesn’t prevent us because again, bookends the book, the letter, right? Chapter one. He’s the radiance of the glory of God, the exact representation of His nature. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

0:48:31.8 Jim Lovelady: Seated once again in power and authority.

0:48:34.8 Irwyn Ince: Right? At the end, it might you… I mean, Jesus throughout… Maybe that’s maybe why it’s my favorite, right? Now just the threat of… At the end of the book. Jesus suffered outside the camp, we go to Him there. You have this… In the middle, chapter five, he says, He learned obedience through what He suffered. There’s this mix. There’s suffering and glory, suffering and glory, suffering and glory. This is the reality of your savior who lives to make intercession for you because your path, your end, is glory.

0:49:16.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s where we’re going. This is your destiny.

0:49:16.9 Irwyn Ince: So you might have to deal with now, but you’re headed to glory. And so that informs how you love right now and today, no matter what happens to your candidate. [chuckle]

0:49:33.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, no matter what happens to you, no matter what comes your way in the moment by moment of even today… Because it’s not just the political fatigue, it’s all the other stuff that life is just hard, you know, and whatever your hard might be, the author and perfecter of your faith has freed us to love in these really mysterious ways. Like, “Hey, you can go out to the camp… You can go fellowship in the sufferings of Christ. Hey, you can go endure a lot of pain.” And you know, like kind of the definition of love is that you’re giving of yourself for the sake of the other. You know, “Hey, you can go give of yourself for the sake of the other. You don’t have to be concerned about yourself, your hope is anchored in Christ. Your faith is going to endure you to the end. So, go love, you know.”

0:50:28.7 Irwyn Ince: So, go love. So, go love.

0:50:31.8 Jim Lovelady: So, okay, shut this down with this. I asked you to serve me up some hope. So I want to know what your prayerful hope is for folks who pick up your book and read, you know, not just on election day, in whatever the… In the days following. But so what is your prayerful hope for folks as they engage with this? 

0:50:54.1 Irwyn Ince: It’s multiple things. One, it is what I shared with you at the very beginning, to understand that the life of faith is not one that means we will not face threats to our ability to hope. It’s not one that means we won’t be wearied by the difficulties of life in this current world. So it’s to to disavow us of the notion that faith means no struggle, no struggle to hold on to hope. Secondly, to grasp the truth that our hope is embodied in a person, the resurrected and ascended and seated Lord Jesus Christ, so that when we talk about hope as Christians, we’re not talking about wishes and wishful thinking or like, what would life be like if I could be in control of things? Right? 

0:52:01.3 Jim Lovelady: Right.

0:52:01.8 Irwyn Ince: No, no, no. We are fixed on Jesus as the person and source of our hope. And then the third thing flows from it, which we’ve already said, is that means as God’s people as a part of God’s body, we can love indiscriminately without fear, because we know in whom we have set our hope…

0:52:29.4 Jim Lovelady: That’s so good. It makes sense after reading The Beautiful Community. I know that these aren’t necessarily sequels, I think you told me that…

0:52:38.0 Irwyn Ince: Yeah.

0:52:38.5 Jim Lovelady: But just listening to your heart and how you’re engaging with Jesus, it makes sense that you would go, “Oh, I want to… I feel like the Spirit is guiding me to have a conversation about hope,” and so I love… It makes sense to me now why Hebrews is your… On any given day.

0:52:55.9 Irwyn Ince: On any given day. [laughter]

0:52:58.1 Jim Lovelady: Your favorite book. It’s so good. Thank you for unpacking this for me. It’s been a pleasure to get to read this knowing that I get to talk with you about it. That’s an honor that… I don’t know, I feel really… I feel really special that I get to have that honor, so thank you for letting me do that.

0:53:20.3 Irwyn Ince: Yeah. Thank you, brother, thank you for saying that. I enjoy our conversations, so maybe I’ll write another book so we could have another conversation. [laughter]

0:53:29.2 Jim Lovelady: Come on, part three. Right on, man. Well, blessings brother.

0:53:34.6 Irwyn Ince: Blessings to you as well my friend.

[music]

0:53:43.1 Jim Lovelady: Here’s my takeaway from reading Irwyn’s book. It’s as if he said to me, “Jim, you don’t have hope, and that’s made you weary in persevering by faith, and that has made it difficult for you to love other people.” So I want to remind you, there is a transcendent hope that gives an enduring faith that leads to a life of sacrificial love. In Acts 26, there is the account of Paul before King Agrippa. And verse 6 says, he’s standing trial on account of his hope in the promises made by God.” And Paul says this in verse 8, “why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?” That word “incredible,” it only shows up one other time in the New Testament, it’s when Jesus is talking to Thomas, doubting Thomas. And Jesus says, “Don’t be unbelieving, but believe. Why do you think it unbelievable that God raises the dead?” Unbelievable. Hope means believing what seems to be unbelievable. And when you do that, it empowers you to radical indiscriminate love. We’re not ignoring the reality of this world, we’re seeing it clearly and still maintaining a hope. And we’re participating and getting beat up, and we have the scars of love displayed in the marks of suffering on behalf of others, and we give ourselves away in love. We have a faith in something unbelievable, seemingly, and it gives us a hope that transcends the drama of this world and actually enables us to enter into the drama, just like just like Jesus entered into our drama, into practice loving others, indiscriminately. Hope leads to love. We can love indiscriminately because our hope is in Christ. Faith, hope, love. The greatest of these is love. May you learn to love today. Now, and every time I chat with Irwyn, he encourages me to look up. Look up just a little higher at what the Lord is doing. For example, before this interview, he and I talked about his trip to the recent Lausanne missions conference. And if you don’t know what that is, I’ll leave a link in the show notes for you to check that out, and I’m also going to leave a YouTube link featuring that short conversation that we had about his experience at the conference. It will cause you to look up, look and see what the Lord is doing. And if you live in the United States, you should definitely do that today. Look up and see that the Lord is doing amazing things all over the world. And then go to serge.org to explore ways that you can participate in God’s global mission. And while you’re there at serge.org, go sign up for our Discipleship Lab course, it’s a cohort-style curriculum where you join with folks from all over the world as we learn to disciple. And again, links in the show notes, please leave a comment about this episode, give a thumbs up and share the episode with someone who needs to know that hope does not disappoint. And as you go, go hopeful that the Lord is king. Let the Heavens ring, “God reigns, Let the earth be glad.” And may the Lord bless you and keep you, and make his face to smile down on you, may the Lord be gracious to you and turn his bright eyes to you and give you his peace. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. One God. Life everlasting. Amen.

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