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: Let's play: 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: Two Kinds of Hope
Wes opened by distinguishing between cultural hope (optimistic wishing) and biblical hope: an anchor that holds in the storm. He also named a second distortion: the idea that Evangelical hope is essentially an escape plan —> endure this world, get out to heaven.
Which of those two distortions (hope as wishful feeling, or hope as escape plan) have you bumped into most in your own faith background?
How did it shape how you related to God in hard times?
Wes said the anchor is made of memory, not feeling, not optimism, but the specific record of what God has already done.
Does that reframe hope in a useful way for you, or does it raise questions?
Standing Stones — Memory as the Foundation of Hope
Wes introduced the concept of anamnesis: not mere recollection but a living remembering. Making the past present as a theological act. The community says together: the God who was faithful then is the God we are trusting now.
Can you think of a personal "Jordan crossing?” A moment when you were in over your head and God showed up in a way you didn't expect?
What would it mean to treat that moment as a standing stone, something you return to and name out loud when the next hard thing comes?
Wes made a pointed observation: "The danger is what made the faithfulness visible." You don't set a stone in calm weather.
Does that change how you think about a hard season you've been through, or are currently in?
The Church — A Community of Stones
Wes ended the sermon by naming what may be the most practically idea in the whole message: 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.
For the Group: Share Your Stones
Consider making space at your next gathering or right now if the group is ready for each person to share one stone. One moment of God's faithfulness they can point to. Not polished. Not perfect. Just honest.
This is not a small group exercise. This is the community functioning as an anchor for each other. Someone's stone in this room may be exactly what someone else needs to hear tonight.
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.
Close in Prayer
Invite someone in the group to close by naming one stone, one moment of God's faithfulness, and offering it to the group as the basis of the prayer. Then pray together:
Lord, we are a community of people who have been to rivers. Some of us are in one right now. We bring what we have: our stones, our storms, our questions and we lay them here together. Be the anchor when we cannot hold our own. Teach us to remember well, to tell our stories honestly, and to live forward as people who believe the tomb is empty and the new creation has begun. Thus far you have helped us. And you are not finished yet. Amen.
Key Scriptures: Hebrews 6:19 | Joshua 4:6–7 | 1 Samuel 7:12 | 1 Peter 1:3 | Romans 5:3–5 | Romans 8:18–25 | Revelation 21:1–5
Major Resource: N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (HarperOne, 2008)
