Hope
A note for leaders: This sermon touches on suffering, loss, and seasons of feeling far from God. Some people in your group may be in a storm right now. Create space for honesty before you push toward application. The goal is not to fix people but to help them find and name their stones and to let the community hold them.
Icebreaker: Stone, Storm, or Shore.
Go around the group and finish this sentence in one or two sentences:
“Right now I feel like I'm… setting a stone (I can see what God has been doing), in the middle of a storm (I'm in it and can't see much), or on the shore (I just made it through something hard)."
Keep it light. Nobody has to go deep here yet. The point is just to name where you're starting from tonight.
Scripture Reflection
Read Joshua 4:1–7 together
"In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."
The command is to pick up stones from the riverbed and carry them out as a memorial.
Why do you think God wanted the stones taken from the middle of the river, specifically, rather than just built somewhere nearby?
God says: when your children ask, not if they ask. There's an assumption that hard times are coming and the next generation will need a reason to trust.
What does it feel like to think about your own stones as something that might anchor someone else's faith and not just your own?
Read 1 Samuel 7:12
"Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, 'Thus far the Lord has helped us.'"
Thus far. Not "everything will be fine." Not "God has solved everything." Just: look how far he has already brought us.
How does that phrase land for you tonight? Is it enough? Does it feel like too small a thing to build hope on?
Read 1 Peter 1:3
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."
Peter calls it a living hope. Not a historical memory. Not a doctrinal statement. Something alive.
What do you think the difference is between a hope that is living and one that is just intellectually held?
Sermon Discussion:
The sermon said hope is “transmissible” — someone else’s Ebenezer can become your anchor when your own memory fails.
Has that ever been true for you?
When has another person’s story of God’s faithfulness held you up?
This is what the church is for. Think about who in this room — or in your life — carries hope for you when you can’t carry it yourself.
The Church — A Community of Stones
Wes ended the sermon a practical idea: you don't have to sustain your own hope alone. When you can't remember your own stones, someone else in the community holds theirs out to you.
Have you ever experienced someone else's story of God's faithfulness holding you up when your own felt out of reach?
What did that feel like? What made it possible?
The sermon said: "The church is not a place where everything is fine. It is a place where we are honest that it is not and where we hold each other in the storm until we reach the other side and set another stone together."
How close is your experience of church community to that description
What would need to be different?
Application
The invitation from the sermon was two movements. The point of our apprenticeship is to try to take our next step by trying these.
Movement One: Look Back: This week, take 15 minutes alone — with a journal, a cup of coffee, whatever helps you think — and ask yourself these three questions:
Where did I cross a river I thought would drown me?
Where did I come through something that should have broken me and didn't?
Where, looking back, can I see a hand I couldn't see at the time?
Write something down. Even one sentence. That is your Ebenezer. That is your standing stone.
Movement Two: Live Forward: Do one thing this week that only makes sense if the new creation has already begun. Some options:
Write the letter or send the message you've been putting off — because reconciliation is part of what God is building.
Have a meal with someone who needs to hear a story of hope — yours, or someone else's.
Start something you've been afraid to start — because your work is not wasted.
Name your stone out loud to one person: not as a performance, but as an act of witness.
Close in Prayer
For Further Reading:
Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (HarperOne, 2008) — The book Wes drew on throughout the sermon. Accessible, thorough, and genuinely surprising. Start with chapters 2–4 if you want the heart of his argument.
The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer — A classic on God's presence in history and the foundations of hope.
Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff — A short, profound meditation on grief and hope that takes both seriously. Especially for anyone in a hard season.
