Opening Prayer: O
God, anchor our souls in the hope that your promises are all true. Helps us to find peace and comfort in the
faithfulness of your character, in spite of our circumstances. Hold us fast when the storms of life are
blowing us around so much that we are afraid that at any moment we might crash
upon the rocks of life. Be our strength
and our shield, O God, our shelter from the storm. Through Jesus we pray. Amen.
Scripture: Hebrews
6:13-20
Journal: What
is state of your soul these days? How
are you being tossed about? What is
anchoring your soul?
Reflection:
Anchor – a
person or thing that can be relied on for support, stability, or security; a mainstay. The Greek word is agkyra, which is used four times in the entire New
Testament; once here in Hebrew 6:19, and the other three times in Acts 27. The three instances in the book of Acts all
refer to a literal anchor on a ship; that which provides safety, stability, and
security. The anchor is the thing that
keeps you from crashing into the rocks, or keeps you from getting tossed about
by the sea, or keeps you docked securely in the harbor. It doesn’t offer to change the circumstances,
but offers to help you in the midst of them.
Here in Hebrews
the word is used metaphorically to describe the effect God desires for hope to
have on our souls. Hope (in God’s
promises) is meant to be an anchor for our souls, to keep them safe
and secure in the midst of the storms and chaos of life. The promise is not that the seas will be
smooth, or that the storms will stop, or even that everything will turn out
alright. The promise is that even if the
circumstances never improve, his promises will be an anchor for our souls. The only thing about an anchor is that in
order for it to work, it has to be used.
An anchor does no good sitting inside the ship, it must be tossed into
the sea. Nor does hope in God’s promises
do us any good if they are never tossed into the raging sea of our fear and
doubt and anxiety. Once we rely on, and
trust in, his promises—which remind us of his heart and his character—as our
soul’s anchor, then, and only then, will we find that “the rope holds.”
Prayer
Closing Prayer: Disturb us, Lord, when we
are too pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we
dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the
shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance
of things we possess we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having
fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our
efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to
dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to
venture on wilder seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight
of land, we shall find the stars. We ask
you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push back the future in
strength, courage, hope, and love. This
we ask in the name of our Captain, who is Jesus Christ. ~Sir Francis Drake
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