In Touch, the Teaching Ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.

Next on In Touch, when all hope is gone.

The word hope is a very, very important word.

It's a word of optimism, a word of cheerfulness, expectation. All of us need hope about many different things in life.

And when you have hope you do anticipate, you expect, you look forward to something.

When you have no hope, there's a sense of dread.

You find yourself in the muck and mire of something that you can't put your finger on.

Where is my hope?

In the words, what am I living for? And there are multitudes of people today who do not have any hope. They

don't have any hope about their marriage. They have no hope about their children. they have no hope about their health, about

their finances, about their future, about their job, their profession. They have no

hope about the life itself and they have no hope about life after death.

They have no hope about eternity. They're living in the muck and mire of this sense of existence but going nowhere.

They're just there. That's never the intent of Almighty God.

Intends for us to have goals in our life, they have a sense of confidence and assurance,

and many people don't have it. And what I want to talk about in this message

is a beautiful example of a person who absolutely was hopeless. There was nothing about their life that gave them hope and I

trust that you will identify with it because it has a wonderful ending but a very bad beginning. So if you will turn, if you will, in your Bible to

John Chapter 4, and let's read a few verses of this chapter. Let's start with this first first to give you

little background, all right?

Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John,

although Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were.

...