Step two. "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." One word sometimes used to summarize this step is the word hope.

We are going to look at today's texts as they relate to believing God restores us as we turn our lives over to that Power greater than ourselves. In the Old Testament reading, Isaiah sings a song of deliverance. The words might sound like a call for personal deliverance, but it is really a song for the deliverance of the nation and a call for a reunited world.

The nation of Israel had suffered terrible disasters at the hands of the Assyrian army, suffering that Israel understood to be the judgment of God. This is a God whose anger is justified. There is, nevertheless, a future in which there is still hope.

That is because God's ange…