Put your faith in that which is unreliable, can't be trusted, or even in yourself, and you can't expect that what you hope for has any certainty.

Indeed hope becomes little more than wishful thinking.

So as the "you do you" culture offers little hope for fullness of life, God becomes the only assurance of things hoped for.

If you have lived for any period of time and not learnt the value of hope then life is just not educating you.

Tragically a life without hope can never be full and to have a certain hope requires faith in something bigger than one's self.

I have watched my mother slowly killed off by cancer, the dementia decline of my father's journey into death and my daughter's meningococcal meningitis shackle her to ICU medical technology.

To these I could add the aftermath of sinful behaviour in one of my closest friends taking his own life. And in this last fortnight we have all seen the outcomes of a crazed gunman cut down our fellow human beings by his lunacy.

Our prayers go up to God for all affected by this tragedy that hope for better days would again be the air we can all breathe.

My story is not unique but this stuff has an impact on making you who you are and revealing the weakness of a "you do you" story.

I remember my cancer ridden mother at Calvary Hospital saying to me, "I am not good enough for heaven".

It is worth remembering that this is the same mother who sent me to Sunday School to learn to be good.

You might be thinking "She should have gone to spec savers...oops... I mean, Sunday School." Mum did go to church before she died and while she struggled with not being good enough for heaven she learnt about faith in Jesus Christ and the hope he offers for forgiveness.

She learnt to trust in God's promise of resurrection and her prayers of faith are a treasure neatly folded in what was once her bedside Bible.

I think my father's belt in some sense catches his story. When it came off at my conception it was for pleasure, when it came off during my life it meant pain, when he forgot to put it on in the nursing home his pants fell down but he knew where the belt failed, the death of Jesus Christ would cover his shame.

I have to tell you that there is no filler of life like hope when your daughter lies in ICU in need of a miracle.

She like me was conceived in pleasure, birthed in pain and lived a life somewhere in between.

She's a survivor but I admit to a moment when I was preparing her eulogy.

Before she was sick her God was a distant consideration but now she lives by faith in Jesus Christ, fully alive and full of hope that this will never change.

At her wedding she told everyone that when things were going badly with her or her friends and life was empty, that her mother would always say, "Rachel, you all need Jesus." Now there's some good advice for people in need of hope.

Why? Because when your faith is rightly placed hope is given.

I admit that there are moments in life that can have you questioning Jesus words, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full".

Of course, questioning Jesus' words proves to be no remedy to emptiness.

When it comes to faith in Jesus Christ, there is hope for forgiveness after sin, healing for the sick, death given life in resurrection and our inability to be good doesn't damage the truth that hope springs eternal in the love of God.

That love is for everyday but it's the topic for next week.