Changing Worldviews

Guest (Male): Exposing the changing worldviews behind the issues that are fundamentally changing our nation and world. The Sharon Hughes show starts now.

Guest (Male): Hope is a powerful word. The Latins have a word for hope; it means breath, to give oxygen to someone. Hope is a reality. Hope is something that is real. Hope is what keeps us going.

Sharon Hughes: Well, Happy New Year, friends. Thank you for taking time out of your busy life to spend with me a little bit here as we look at the new year that is ahead. I want to encourage all of us up front that we walk fearlessly, that we step fearlessly into the year ahead.

You want to join me? Instead of making resolutions, which there is nothing wrong with, but if you are like me, they only last about two or three weeks. But how about we just step into the new and let our hope for the change that we are hoping for actually become faith. The definition of faith is being sure of the things that we hope for.

I just want to throw this thought out here. God is positive about the plans that he has for us. It says in the Bible, in the book of Jeremiah 29:11, that his plans for us are for a future and a hope. He says, "I know the plans that I have for you; they are not for harm but to prosper you for a future and a hope."

As a matter of fact, Jesus told us that he came to bring us abundant life. It's the devil that comes to steal and kill and destroy. He is always on the lookout for his useful minions to do his evil will, which ends up causing all that is wrong in the world, not the God of the Bible. Right? Didn't we just celebrate Christmas?

Everybody knows John 3:16: God so loves the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. He is positive, and he has great plans. I don't need to tell you there's so much heartache in the world. There's so much evil in the world.

While man is responsible for that and the devil, in spite of all of that, God is doing great things. He's done wonderful things this past year, and I believe he's going to do wonderful things in the year ahead. I don't want to miss it. I don't want any of us to miss it.

So like Isaiah said, can you perceive it? I want to have eyes to see what God is doing, not just what is happening in our world. Of course, that's what we do here, right? We talk about the news. We talk about what's going on politically and culturally and religiously, all those things that affect our everyday life. We're not going to ever stop doing that.

We are committed more than ever to bringing you content that is truth-centered and faith-filled. So if I really mean that, then that means we have to start out at the beginning of this new year to encourage our faith, to build hope, to be able to see with fresh eyes the possibilities before us.

No, I'm not a Pollyanna. If you're a regular listener to our show, you know that we are not afraid to talk about the issues. We're not afraid to report the truth and or uproot the lies because God tells us in his word to have nothing to do with the evil works of darkness but rather expose them. That's what our show's all about.

At the same time, if all we do is expose what is wrong, then we're doing a disservice to you. We're doing a disservice to the truth because the truth is there are a lot of wonderful, good things happening in the midst of our very troubled world. So I hope that you will join me.

Yes, I have made some resolutions. I want to get that garage organized as never before. I want to go through my office and get rid of the tons of stacks of papers and boxes. I want to get in shape. I want to take better care of my health. Of course, I want that for my husband, too.

If you listened to my last show, then you know that Dwayne suffered a heart attack in October and had triple bypass surgery with complications. We had several close calls, and we're just so grateful that he is still with us and he's doing better every day.

So yes, we enter this year optimistically, but not just because of that, but because of the promises of God. So stay with me for what I hope will be an uplifting, encouraging time together. It's time to step into the new that is before us. As one of my favorite singers, Danny Gokey, says in his song...

Guest (Male): You're listening to Changing Worldviews with Sharon Hughes. Stay with us; we'll be right back.

Guest (Male): There is war, disease, and poverty. Our calling at Samaritan's Purse is to move towards it, and to touch it, and to minister to people that are in their greatest time of need. We're providing the things that are most important to these people: shelter, water, hygiene, sanitation. It's imperative.

Guest (Male): We go to the slums of the world, the poorest areas of the world, where kids have never had a gift in their life. We're so desperately short of supplies, we're so desperately short of people; everything is overloaded. That's why Samaritan's Purse is coming.

Guest (Male): The Gospel is the power of God. Samaritan's Purse was here the day after the storm. Now we're here rebuilding. Preach it, proclaim it, shout it. We're actually rebuilding hope and love. I don't believe we ever back up. We don't surrender.

Guest (Male): The first time you see a heart stop and the first time you see a heart start again is just an amazing process. Jesus wants to take your life and use it for his glory.

Guest (Female): This month's special offer is the book *How to Overcome the Most Frightening Issues You Will Face This Century*. This book has 20 experts in fields of science, politics, warfare, finance, ethics, theology, and much more who offer experienced advice.

You can order online at our website changingworldviews.com. Just go to the store donate page, and you'll be able to order it there. We'll get it right out to you.

Sharon Hughes: There are a lot of things to talk about in the new year, including all of Donald Trump's promises of what he's going to deliver. We certainly will be talking about that in the weeks to come. But we're not going to talk about that on today's show. We're going to talk about hope fulfilled.

While I don't know exactly what your personal hopes are for this new year, I want to talk about being hopeful on a larger scale. Just step back and look at what are the safe places to place our hope. We may not always give this a lot of thought, but the benefits of evaluating what we are hoping for is great.

Hope is big. Hope is a powerful word. But it's more than a word; hope itself is powerful. It directs our lives more than we often realize. What we place our hope in has the power to determine the path or paths that we take.

It's interesting to think of hope like an investment. What we place our hope in determines the return that we will get. In other words, like in finances, we invest in a proven commodity or we take a gamble on an unproven deal. The result of our hope is obvious in either of those choices in retrospect, right?

Well, that's why it's always good to evaluate carefully where we invest our dollars, but also where we invest our hope. It's also interesting to think about what the Bible tells us about hope. For instance, in Hebrews 11:1, faith is described. It says, "Faith is the substance of, or being sure of, what we hope for."

Faith is being sure of what we hope for. So here, the Bible is telling us that hope precedes faith and that actually, I think that means that we can't have faith without hope. So again, hope is powerful. Hope is also resilient.

We've gone through a lot as a nation, as a world, and as individuals over the past few years. It's real to us because we've lived it. But actually, that is what the condition has been from the beginning of time and is what it was like when Jesus Christ was born: crisis, loss, corruption, wars, on and on.

That's why the Christmas message of hope has resounded throughout the ages and continues to resound today. We just celebrated the birth of Christ. But let's turn now and look to this idea of being a year of us entering into the land of God's promises.

You know, when I was so impressed that 2024 would be the year of the open door, and I checked with my colleagues, I checked with my rabbi friends for the biblical Hebrew meaning of the year 2024, and more often than not, there was this idea that 2024 would be the year of the open door.

For me, I understood that to mean that there would be open doors before all of us and before our nation and before other nations, but open doors before us. I was struck with the reality of what is talked about in the Old Testament where Moses and the Israelites had made it through the wilderness.

They were at the brink of the Promised Land, the land that God promised to Abraham, and they were right at the door of the Promised Land. So Moses sent in ten spies to see what was the condition of the land. The bottom line is it was a land full of milk and honey.

But those ten spies said, "But there's also giants in the land." They were afraid to enter in. But Joshua and Caleb, who by the way were in their eighties, said, "We are well able to take the land." They were unafraid to enter into the Promised Land, even though there were giants there.

They had courage that God would be with them in whatever they encountered in this new Promised Land. That was what I was struck with, that 2024 was going to be the year of the open door, but we would have to open the doors of our hearts in order to let God fill us with courage and deal with fear.

He would heal us of whatever has gone on in the past so that we could have confidence that we are well able to take the land regardless of the giants in the land. So that's what I believed 2025 was all about.

For 2026, I believe that the encouragement is that this is going to be a year of increase in the land of God's promises. Yes, there are giants there still that need to come down. But we've seen many giants come down in our nation and even around the world in 2025.

More are going to come down in 2026, including in our own lives, meaning the giants of fear, the giants of discouragement, the giants of lack are going to be coming down in 2026. Like I said at the beginning of the show, I believe what we need to do is we need to courageously, fearlessly step into the new year.

We step into this year of increase and not just make resolutions about the things that need to be done or things that need to be corrected in our lives. Those are good things. But actually, by faith, step into the new that we are hoping for. So that's where I'm at, and I hope that this is encouraging to you as well.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Changing Worldviews with Sharon Hughes. For even more content, go to changingworldviews.com. Sharon will be right back after this.

Guest (Male): Is there really modern-day slavery in our country? Yes, and it's called human trafficking. Men, women, and children across America are being lured into this sad reality. Victims are promised jobs, wealth, and opportunities for themselves and their families.

But instead, they endure isolation from the rest of the world and are often mentally, physically, or sexually abused. It is important to learn about the harsh reality of human trafficking so we can help end this form of modern-day slavery. A message from the Christian Medical Association.

Guest (Female): This month's special offer is the book *How to Overcome the Most Frightening Issues You Will Face This Century*. This book has 20 experts in fields of science, politics, warfare, finance, ethics, theology, and much more who offer experienced advice.

You can order online at our website changingworldviews.com. Just go to the store donate page, and you'll be able to order it there. We'll get it right out to you.

Sharon Hughes: There will be those who will be afraid to go through the door into the land of God's promises because there are giants there. But for those who are unafraid because they know their God is with them, they will enter into the land of God's promises, and that's huge.

Do you realize that there are 7,000 promises in the Bible? Also, are you aware that God himself said that all of his promises are "yes" and "amen" in Jesus? That means God has already said yes to all of his promises in Jesus.

So those of us who are in Jesus, those of us that look to Jesus in faith, God's already said yes to those promises. Jesus himself said that "Whatever you ask, believing you receive, you shall have." The key is believing.

That takes us back to Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is being sure of what you hope for." It's not just a head thing of something you believe in. We're not just believing in some words in a book, in this case, the Bible. We're not just believing in the words, as important as they are; we're actually believing who said those words, and that of course is God himself.

Well, that takes me to the next part of this understanding or this idea of hope. I'm not one to just make claims without backing up what I'm saying; otherwise, it's just my opinion. But as regards to backing up the birth of Jesus, for instance, we just celebrated Christmas.

It's not a fairy tale; it's not a fable; it's not just a Bible story. It is, in fact, proven history as recorded by historians of his day, such as Flavius Josephus or Tacitus. But not only that, and this is really important, Old Testament prophets foretold and wrote down in what we now know as the Old Testament of the Bible.

They foretold of a coming Messiah in great detail. As a matter of fact, there were over 330 prophecies, of which Jesus Christ fulfilled all of them except for the ones foretelling of his second coming, which is of course yet to happen.

Now mathematicians and theological scholars have determined that the odds of one person's fulfilling even sixty specific prophecies out of the 330 plus, the odds of one person being able to do that are one in one plus 157 zeros. In other words, one, comma, and then 157 zeros following that.

That's only sixty of the 330 plus prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. Of course, that means the odds are much greater of Jesus fulfilling all that he did. The prophet Isaiah, recording hundreds of years before Jesus was born, wrote this: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel, which translated means 'God with us.'"

That's just one of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, and I encourage you to check it out for yourself. It's a pretty fascinating study. Well, the whole purpose of today's show, different than our regular show where normally we talk about the cultural and the political issues, the things that are going on in the world.

I wanted this show to be encouragement to you. Along those lines, I'd like to leave us with some inspirational quotes by some who are much wiser than I am: the late Charles Stanley, the late Billy Graham, and others, addressing the issue of what really steals hope from us since that's our theme.

Anxiety, worry, fear. Like I said at the beginning of the show, if we are in the land of God's promises and there are giants in the land, then we're going to need faith and we're going to need courage. So let's take a listen to the wisdom of how we will be able to enter this year confident that we can possess all that God has for us with joy, with peace.

Charles Stanley: Anxiety is a thief. It steals your thoughts, it steals your peace, it steals your confidence, it steals your joy. What good has worry ever done for you? All of that anxiety, how's that working out? Is it productive? It's not productive at all.

Worry is like a rocking chair; it makes a lot of movement but you don't go anywhere. If you don't live with an anchor of faith, you're going to drift in a sea of anxiety. For a child of God to be always anxious and always worried is, in effect, saying, "I don't trust you, God."

You said some pretty cool things that make me feel good for a little while when I read them, but then I go out and live my real life and I don't expect that you're really going to make good on any of these things. So to be consumed with worry and anxiety betrays a lack of trust in God caring for you.

Billy Graham: You know, worry in this country is at an all-time high. A doctor at the Mayo Clinic said a few weeks ago, quote, "Worry affects the circulation, the heart, and the glands, and the whole nervous system, and profoundly affects the health."

Jesus is promising all the time to replace the worry with joy, his joy. He said that your joy may be full. You remember when the hurricane Belle was pounding its way up the Atlantic? The national weather map, if you remember, showed a 25-mile swathe of complete calm precisely in the center of that hurricane.

That's exactly what Jesus said. He said in the midst of the hurricane of life, in the midst of the storms of life, I can give you peace. He said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation, but I've spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace." In the center of the hurricane is a place of calm, and that's what Christ brings in the middle of your life. He doesn't remove the hurricane, but he gives peace in the middle of it.

Guest (Male): Be strong and courageous. Fear not, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. If you started every day of your life with that verse, things would change. Your attitude would change, your disposition would change, your actions would change.

People live in utter defeat as they face their daily work and life because they won't believe what God said. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage; fear not, neither be thou dismayed. The Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Let me ask you this: What more do you need than the promise "The Lord your God is with you wherever you go"? What more do you need than that?

Guest (Male): The world needs hope. Hope is a powerful word. The Latins have a word for hope; it means breath, to give oxygen to someone. Hope is a reality. Hope is something that is real. Hope is what keeps us going.

Guest (Male): It is only God who can bring hope and new life out of dead situations. God himself is the one that provides for us the hope that we need in times like these. Hope has the power to fill our lives with happiness.

Guest (Male): We learn to cultivate hope the same way we learn to walk: one step at a time. There may be times when we must make a courageous decision to hope even when everything around us contradicts this hope. Like father Abraham, we will against hope believe in hope.

Or as one writer expressed, "In the midst of winter, we find within us an invincible summer." Hope sustains us through despair. If only we could glimpse for a moment what the Lord has in store for us, not only in the next life but in this one as well.

Billy Graham: There is hope for us that there's going to be a culmination to history as we know it. There's more to Christmas than the birth and the death of Christ; there's also the ultimate triumph of God's kingdom.

You know, chiseled into the cornerstone of the United Nations building is a quotation from the Bible that has never yet been fulfilled. It reads like this: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

That's a thrilling hope at this moment of history. It has often been repeated by men who long for peace. However, this quotation must not be taken out of context. The passage speaks of a time when the Messiah will reign over the whole earth. This is the era of which Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord's Prayer: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."

This is the time when he who came as a baby at Bethlehem shall come as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Guest (Male): And hope is not, well, you know, I just hope something happens. Hope is an expectation that something good is going to happen. And see, you can do that on purpose. You don't have to wait to feel something. You can say, "Tonight, I am going to change my attitude from a hopeless attitude to a hopeful attitude, and I am going to keep believing that something good is going to happen to me until I see it take place."

Guest (Male): And boy, the devil loves it when we get hopeless, when we begin to think that we've just made too many mistakes to ever recover. But let me tell you something: Nobody can out-sin God's goodness. Did you hear me? There is no pit so deep that he can't reach down in it and get you out.

There is no pit so deep that he can't reach down in it and get you out. God loves you and he wants a close, intimate, personal relationship with you. Jesus didn't die so we could all just have some brand of religion; he wants to have a relationship, a personal, in your life every day relationship with you. And God is a God of restoration, and there's nothing in your life that he cannot restore. Amen?

So how about if we have a new attitude? Today is the first day of the rest of my wonderful life that God has planned for me, and I'm going to let go of what lies behind and I'm going to press on to the good things that are ahead.

Sharon Hughes: And I say amen to that, and I hope you do as well. To close out with a song, and this one is so powerful, puts an exclamation point on what we just heard, and hopefully all of this is an encouragement to you. Maybe your situation is such that it's going to take listening to this a couple times for you to get it down in your heart where you actually feel hope again.

For those that are already there, that are already hopeful, this will just catapult you even further in hope which, you know, is kind of like the middle child: faith, hope, and love. We all want faith, we all want love, but we don't pay that much attention to hope. It was my heart today to showcase hope. To that end, Danny Gokey, *A New Day*. It is indeed a new day for you, a new day for me, a new day for our nation, and a new day for all of us.

Sharon Hughes: So until next time, this is Sharon Hughes, saying it like it is and encouraging you to never give up hope. Hope is powerful.

Guest (Male): Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Changing Worldviews. You can follow Sharon on social media or listen to her on many online platforms. Just go to our website changingworldviews.com for all the links. Until next time, stay informed, stay alert, because we are indeed living in a changing world.