Anchor For The Soul

[00:00:00] Hey, Christchurch. [00:00:02] So happy you're all here tonight. It's an awesome night. It's so good. We're talking about one of my most favorite ideas in the whole world, which I'll tell you in a minute after I pray. [00:00:13] Dear Father, we love you so much. I'm thankful that you are a God we can count on. I'm thankful that you are a God who is faithful and good. I pray that you would direct our hearts towards you tonight. I pray where we are struggling, you would show us a better way. I pray where we have been overcome by worry and struggle and pain and loss and addiction. Father, you would shine a light in the darkness and give us a new source of hope in you. I pray this all in Jesus name. Amen. [00:00:43] So some years ago, I read a book by Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest and he was really moved by the spiritual connection of Bill Wilson's 12 step program. [00:00:54] And so he wrote this book called Breathing Underwater. And it's an awesome read. And he talked about this idea that we all suffer from unhealthy dependencies. We're constantly turning to these things in hopes that we'll feel better, that there's something that's going to make my life better. But what happens is again and again and again, we're looking for something to feel better, and we don't feel better. Turns out we're terrible at predicting what's going to make us happy. And he says we're all spiritually powerless. [00:01:25] However, not just those who are physically addicted to a substance, which is why I address this book to everyone. He said alcoholics simply have their powerlessness visible for all to see. [00:01:35] The rest of us disguise it in different ways. We overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking. And so he weaves the 12 steps into this path towards, like, health and growth and faith and how we do life. And it's so interesting if you know the 12 steps. If you don't, it's such a really, really good read. But what he talks about, this idea is none of us likes to admit we're powerless, right? Like, I've got this. Just give me one more thing to try, one more thing to do, one more book to read, or one more thing that's going to make me feel better because the next one will surely do it. None of us like to give up control. [00:02:18] None of us like to admit that there's something we're facing that's beyond us. That somehow the situation we're in isn't working. [00:02:29] And so we keep trying to do more and more of the same thing, somehow expecting that this is going to be the time that it works out differently. He says letting go isn't in anybody's program for happiness. And yet all mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning what the ego hates more than anything else in the world is to change even when the present situation isn't working or horrible. Instead, we do more and more of what doesn't work. [00:02:59] The reason we do anything one more time is because the last time didn't really satisfy us deeply. Is there anything more discouraging than that? [00:03:08] Like, this is going to be the thing that makes it better, and there's something we're trying to satisfy, something, something we're trying to fix, something we're trying to change or something we're trying to make better. [00:03:20] And nothing works. [00:03:22] And typically in this cycle, we get more and more discouraged. And when we get more and more discouraged, despair, fear, anxiety, insecurity, they take the front driver's seat and they're like, let's go, I got this. [00:03:39] And we lose things like joy and faith and confidence and hope. [00:03:45] And the most discouraging thing is we think nothing's ever going to change. Tomorrow's just going to be more of the same. Nothing's going to get better. [00:03:54] And some of us have faced this with our own problems, our own struggles, our own addictions. We are facing circumstances that feel like they're just never going to get better. [00:04:04] Some of this. Some of us have felt this over someone we love. [00:04:08] Is there anything harder than watching somebody you love struggle and you want to fix it for them? And if they would just do what you tell them to do, it would be so good. [00:04:19] But they simply won't listen. They simply won't listen to how smart you are. And so you watch them struggle, and you want it to be better, but you can't fix it for them. [00:04:30] I love the first three steps of the 12 step program. [00:04:33] Anne Lamott kind of summarized it this way. She said, I can't. [00:04:37] God can. [00:04:39] I think I'll let God. [00:04:41] And I think that is a statement that so many of us need in our life. [00:04:46] Because in the face of discouragement, the thing we need most is hope. [00:04:52] And what we most need in our lives, in our homes and our struggles, in our community, in our world, in this church, and is hope. [00:05:00] Because there's something so precious and beautiful about hope in the face of Pain, struggle, hurting, loss, discouragement, weariness, exhaustion, fear, anxiety, depression, overwhelming sense of loss. [00:05:17] We all need hope. [00:05:19] We need the kind of hope that says, even in this, God is still at work. [00:05:26] We need the kind of hope that says, even here, God can do something good. [00:05:33] We have a lot of different heres. And a lot of the heres we stand in are not heres we wanted to be. [00:05:38] They're not heres that we dreamed of one day as a kid. Like, I can't wait to be here. [00:05:43] Most of us are like, I will do anything not to be there. [00:05:47] Yet still here we are. And a lot of us find ourselves standing in these life situations and. And it's not where we want to be. But hope says, even in this, God isn't done yet. [00:06:01] So I want to remind us tonight why we have this awesome hope that's found in Jesus Christ. We're like this really cool little verse tucked away in this book in the New Testament called the Book of Hebrews. And if you've never read this before, it's a really great little book. It's built on this idea about, let me tell you why Jesus is greater than everything else. There's this group of people who have become Christians and life has gotten ridiculously hard. [00:06:25] People are dying, lives are on the line. Violence, brutality, every terrible thing. You're like, ooh, this feels scary. Maybe not for me. And so they're struggling with, what do we do? Do we go back to what we used to know because it's easier and our lives won't literally be on the line, or do we hold and stay with Christ? And so the author of Hebrews says, let me remind you, you know all of these things, you know traditions, you know religious stuff, you know all of these life things, but Christ is still greater than all of that. Instead of turning away from him, let me remind you why you stick with him. [00:07:00] And he says this in Hebrews, chapter 6, verse 18 and 19. [00:07:05] So God has given both his promise and his oath. Those two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. [00:07:21] This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God's inner sanctuary. [00:07:29] So in this chapter, specifically, the author's reminding everybody reading this letter that God's made promises like, you can read the Bible and you can read these promises that God made to a people and then to a nation and the Promise of what was going to come and what he was going to do. And he's saying, let me remind you why we can believe in those promises. So, because, let's be honest, people have made promises to us before and they broke them. Anyone? Right? Like you were counting on somebody to do something and you're like, they've got this, no problem. And then they didn't. And you're like, oh, yeah, that sucks. I was counting on you. And we have a history of disappointment in people not keeping their promises. That's normal human life. But the author says God is different because the promises God makes, God keeps, God doesn't lie. [00:08:17] If he speaks a word, it will come to pass because he's faithful and he's good and he's trustworthy. He doesn't trick us. He's not trying to like, lure us in, like, oh, this is gonna be great. And then bam, everything gets hard, right? He doesn't say, oh, let's do this, and then pull out the rug from underneath us and we end up flat on our back. [00:08:37] He's not trying to deceive us or fool us or trick us into to anything. He's not even up in heaven waiting to catch us messing up. Sometimes we just have these images of God that we've picked up over the years and we can't even like, trace back to why. But like, a lot of us have this image of a mean, grouchy God who's mad at you all of the time and just wants to catch you being bad. So we can like zap you with lightning or send you to hell or be like, I caught you. You're terrible. [00:09:06] I knew it. Okay, that's not who God is. [00:09:10] That is a misconception of how wonderful and good our God is. Our very foundational understanding of the character of who God is is his faithfulness, his trustworthiness, his goodness. People lie. God doesn't. [00:09:29] People will disappoint us. God never will. [00:09:34] We've been hurt by people in the past. We've been burned. And we're like, I'm never doing that again. I'm not trusting them again. [00:09:39] But God never, ever leaves us or forsakes us. [00:09:45] He's faithful. He's faithful, he's trustworthy and he's dependable. [00:09:51] And where life feels discouraging, where life feels confusing, where we just feel weighed down with disappointments, of this wasn't how it was supposed to be, it's not how it feels with God. [00:10:07] God never leaves us disappointed. [00:10:09] God never leaves us on our own in the overwhelmingness of life. [00:10:15] So many times we have, I don't know about you, but you have this picture about, like, how life is gonna be. And if you're a kid, you're like, when I'm a grown up, I'm never gonna do what my parents did. I'm gonna do this instead. Right? [00:10:27] Even when you had great parents, you're like, I'm still not doing what they did. I can do this better. [00:10:32] Turns out none of us can. [00:10:34] Amen anyone. [00:10:36] And we have these pictures of how life is going to be when we grow up and what we're going to do and who we're going to end up with in this beautiful picture. And then we think, if God really loved me, this would happen. [00:10:49] And if God really loved me, this would never happen. [00:10:53] And so our understanding of God gets attached to these pictures that we have for life. [00:11:01] And then something happens and the picture that we have gets shattered. And the life we thought we were going to live doesn't work out the way we thought it would. Or the person we thought we could count on isn't dependable, or the family we thought we were building isn't working the way that we thought it would be. Or we hit some hardship or pain or loss or struggle and it's killing us, and we struggle with God, why did you let this happen? [00:11:29] There's not a person here who hasn't thought at one time or another, God, why didn't you stop this? [00:11:37] God, why didn't you intervene here? If you're really powerful, why did you let this happen? [00:11:43] If you really love me, why did you let me go through this? [00:11:48] Or we go into the negotiation phase with God, God, I'm a good person. [00:11:52] I'm doing the things you told me to do. I'm following the rules. [00:11:57] I'm holding up my end of the bargain. You need to hold up yours. And we think we can negotiate our wish list with God, like he's a magic genie or Santa, and if we just do the right things when he's watching, everything will turn out. [00:12:11] And then we get disappointed in God because life is messy. Has anybody found that? [00:12:16] You can be going along and it feels like everything's good, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, you're smacked in the face with something, and then you learn how to deal with that something and you think you're through it on the other side, and then something else that you never even knew you had to be prepared for shows up. It's like, where is this coming from? And we struggle with the messiness of life and our relationship to God in the process. [00:12:43] But I wonder if I could reset something for you tonight. [00:12:47] What if the place where we feel like we're struggling the most, maybe where we feel fractured on the inside or sad or hurting or lost or discouraged or frustrated or disappointed, maybe that's not evidence that God doesn't love me. [00:13:04] Maybe that's not evidence that God isn't powerful enough to do something, or God isn't working. Maybe that's the exact place God wants to meet us most and show us something new about himself. [00:13:16] Maybe that's the place God wants to make something new in Me. [00:13:21] And while none of us would choose it, none of us would say, sign me up, please. [00:13:27] Here we are. [00:13:29] And instead of saying, God, make this go away. God, take this away from me. What if instead we say, God, I'm here. [00:13:37] What are you trying to teach me? [00:13:39] God, I'm here. What are you trying to show me? [00:13:43] God, you got me here. [00:13:45] What can I learn? [00:13:47] Because maybe it's not evidence God is against us, but maybe that place where we're most ready to quit, where God wants to breathe a little bit of life back into our hearts and souls, maybe the place where we're like, God, change. [00:14:05] God's like, I want you to change. [00:14:09] I want to do something in you that's going to prepare you for a future that you never could have expected or understood. [00:14:17] See, we only see this right now. Little Snapchat moment, right? [00:14:22] I think I know everything. [00:14:23] I know I'm not the only one in this room who thinks they know everything. [00:14:29] Thank you. [00:14:31] But it turns out God knows a whole lot more. [00:14:34] And my trust in God isn't contingent on me knowing everything. It's trusting in a God who does. [00:14:41] It's trusting in a God whose vision for my life and yours, for this world and all of history and eternity is greater than what I can capture in this one small moment of my life. [00:14:54] What if this moment, this hurt, this struggle, this addiction, this pain, this life, this loss, this fear, this broken heart, what if this is the place God wants to do something new in each one of us before we quit, before we give up, before we throw in the towel and be like, I tried. I'm done. Never again. [00:15:25] What if we just looked to Christ differently? Because when you look at the life of Christ, you see something very different than you see in any other religion that you'll study. You see something very different than any of the heroes or the saints or the great champions in the world, right? You see something different in Jesus Christ. [00:15:45] Jesus Christ won through losing. [00:15:49] His road to glory was marked with pain and suffering and in violence and brutality. [00:15:58] We read about stories of innocent people convicted of wrongdoing that they never did. [00:16:03] Christ stood a convicted man, innocent of every charge that his life was caused, forfeit for. [00:16:15] And if this is who Christ is, when we look to him, what do we see? [00:16:21] We see one who never quit. [00:16:23] I look at what Christ did when I read the Gospels about His road to the cross, and I think, man, if there was ever a time that I'd be like, God, I am out. I am done. [00:16:33] Cash me out, let's go. That would be the time. [00:16:37] But Christ never quits. [00:16:40] He takes it all on himself. [00:16:43] He never turns his back, not for a minute. [00:16:47] He says, God, your will be done, not my own. [00:16:52] And I don't know how many struggles I faced that I've just broken down and said, God, your will be done, not mine. There's been a lot of times I've pleaded with God, God, this isn't what we agreed to. [00:17:04] There's been a lot of times I've wept and said, God, you need to do something here, and this is what I want you to do. [00:17:11] But how many times have I humbly just said, God, your will be done in this? [00:17:17] I trust you that you are at work. [00:17:22] See, when we see that image of Christ, the love that he has for us, the strength that he showed in the face of pain that he took on himself, we recognize that there is one who is greater than us. That when we put our hope in him, everything changes. [00:17:46] There is one who can restore us, redeem us, love us through it all. [00:17:52] What feels defeating to me has never defeated Jesus Christ. [00:17:57] What feels exhausting to me, Christ says, let's go one more round. We can do this. [00:18:03] What feels too hard and too much, Christ says, I have a better plan. Let me show you how to get free of this. [00:18:12] In the darkest nights we face, is there anything more miserable than struggling at like 3 o' clock in the morning? [00:18:18] Oh, it's the worst. Because I'm convinced the world is coming to an end. I'm stressed, I'm panicked, and there's literally nothing I can do except whirl around in my head and sweat a little bit. [00:18:34] But we all do it. We all face these dark, dark nights of the soul and we think, this is it. Nothing's gonna get better, nothing's gonna change. But in the darkest night we face, Christ shows up and shines a light and he whispers to our Souls, God isn't done yet. [00:18:58] And I don't know what your life looks like. I don't know what you're facing, what you're going through, what struggle it is. [00:19:05] I've stopped saying, this is as bad as it gets. Because you know what? [00:19:09] It could always get worse. [00:19:11] I've literally stopped thinking, well, it can't get worse than this. Because I'm like, well, you're dumb. Because it turns out there's a whole lot of new surprises. But listen, the author of Hebrews says we have to remember why we have hope. Because there is a God who keeps his promises, and when we trust in him, we will never be disappointed. And then he gives us this incredible image, and he says, we find this hope as an anchor for our souls. That might be one of my favorite lines. [00:19:45] So there's this idea, if you've seen an anchor before and what it does for a boat. I love the imagery of this because it holds a boat in place, right? Because the water moves and the storms come and the winds blow, and you don't want the boat to be dragged off course. So the anchor holds it steady, but the anchor doesn't hold it back. You can pull that anchor up and it goes with you. [00:20:07] Think about how powerful that is for a second. If Christ is our anchor, he holds steadfast in every storm we face in life. He holds us, and we will not drift away. He does not lose his grip on us, not at any point in our life. [00:20:26] But it matters what you put your anchor in. [00:20:29] Because we've tried attaching our anchors to things that we thought, this is gonna be it, guys. This is it. [00:20:35] And turns out it's not strong enough to hold our boat. [00:20:38] We've put our anchor in things that we're like, this is the best. And it turns out they cut it loose and they're like, I'm out of here. And it's not the best. [00:20:46] We've put our anchor to the wrong things, that we're never gonna be strong enough to hold our life, to hold our faith, to hold our future. [00:20:53] But Christ as an anchor for our soul is the kind of hope that that is strong enough to weather every single storm we face. What have you anchored your life to? [00:21:04] What have you been saying? This is going to hold me steady. This is going to make me happy. This is going to fix my problems. Because if it's not Christ, you are going to get struggled and you're going to get swept up in the storm, and you're going to get pushed, and it's going to get upside down and backwards and twisted and forward because life is messy, and it comes at you when you just aren't ready or expecting it. One day you're going along and you're fine. [00:21:32] A month ago, I was like, ma, I gotta finish these classes because school is ending. Two weeks ago, I was sitting in the front row weeping, with a heart filled with stress and fear and anxiety. And all I could do was plead to God for help. Two weeks later, here I am talking about hope, right? You don't know what life is gonna throw at you. [00:21:53] But do you know what didn't change in any of those moments? Christ is an anchor for my soul, and I felt every one of them. [00:22:01] But Christ held steady, and my life didn't go upside down. It got tossed around, but Christ held steady. [00:22:14] So my question is, what are you anchoring your life to? [00:22:18] Because when you anchor your life to Jesus Christ, you have a hope that is strong enough to see you through every single day of your life, through every pain, every loss, every hardship, and every struggle. [00:22:31] I love Charles Swindoll. He's a preacher, pastor, commentator, and he says suffering is a universal language. [00:22:38] Everybody understands the language of suffering. If you can introduce me to one person who's not faced loss or pain, See, we always look at other people and like, well, they have it better than than me. They haven't gone through what I've gone through. They don't know what this is like. And, yeah, maybe they haven't gone through what you've gone through. But no life is untouched by pain. [00:22:57] No life is untouched by struggle. [00:23:00] No life is untouched by hurt and loss. He says when life hurts and our dreams fade, we may express our anguish in different ways, but each one of us knows the sting of pain and heartache, disease and disaster, trials and suffering. [00:23:16] He said hope isn't merely a nice option that helps us temporarily clear a hurdle. It is essential to our survival. The only way we get out is through. [00:23:28] That's life. The only way out is through. [00:23:31] And even when we feel overwhelmed, hurting, suffering, struggle, pain, we need the hope of Jesus Christ to guide us, lead us, and direct us in the way that we should go. [00:23:42] In the hardest moments we face, when Christ is the anchor for our soul, he stands with us, we do not face it alone. He is a trustworthy anchor that will never let us go or drift away. [00:23:56] We can't, but God can. [00:24:00] And maybe for many of us, it's time to let him try. [00:24:06] Maybe the hope we most need right now is letting God try. [00:24:10] And do what he is so, so good at doing. [00:24:14] So my first challenge is, what are you anchoring your life to? Maybe it's time to see Christ different. But then I wanna challenge you about how to put hope into your life. And I'm a girl who likes tactile. Give me, like, something to do tomorrow. So I'm gonna give you something that you can write down, you can take with you, you can practice, you can put into your life. And it comes from Angela Duckworth. [00:24:34] Great speaker, great author. She has all of this research on the idea of grit, like what makes people successful. It's more than how. [00:24:42] More than how creative you are or the start or you didn't get or you got in life. She said it all comes down to grit. How willing are you to stick with something for a really long time, year after year after year, and not give up? But she said grit depends on a different kind of hope. The expectation that our efforts can improve the future, that something tomorrow could be better, something tomorrow could happen. [00:25:09] And she said there's a couple of things that hope needs. So if you're writing this down, I'm gonna give you three things. Number one, hope needs agency. Agency is this idea that I can be part of making a difference. See, I love how much how God works. God is God, and he can do whatever he wants. And yet in his awesome, fun greatness, he invites us to the party. [00:25:30] He gives us free will and choice and agency that every single day I can make choices that affect my life and my future and where I'm going. It's real hard to have agency when you're exhausted. Right? [00:25:46] We need a little margin sometimes to build that in. But agency is, I can do something today, right now, that will make tomorrow better. And if you're feeling overwhelmed like that is impossible, how do you eat something one bite at a time? What's one bite out of something that you can take right now that that chooses something better for your future to be the kind of person that you want to be. [00:26:11] You can choose life. [00:26:13] You can choose a future that doesn't look the same as today. [00:26:18] You can choose who you want to be and take a small bite out of it and just see what God might do. [00:26:25] She says hope needs encouragement. [00:26:27] Some of us are drowning in a lot of negative voices. [00:26:31] There's a lot of people with a lot of opinions in our life, and they're just, frankly, not helpful. [00:26:36] Sometimes they're mean, sometimes they're cruel, sometimes they're harsh. And if you are anywhere on the world, the World Wide Web, that new confangled thing they call the Internet. [00:26:48] I'm joking. I know what it's called. [00:26:52] People are mean. And they're even more mean because they're behind a screen and they can say what they want or they can cloak it in, like, you know, sarcasm, joking. [00:27:03] It's mean. And you need some encouragement in your life. Who's encouraging you? Who's standing in your corner saying, you can do this? Who's giving you the pep talk, like, come on, we got this. Let's go, right? Who's hyping you up on the days you feel down? [00:27:19] You need people in your corner that you're doing life with who are going to be a source of joy and hope. Not discouragement, fear, meanness, and insecurity. [00:27:31] Who's encouraging you? If you're looking for people, guys, you are in the right place in the right night at the right time. We have so many groups and so many people. [00:27:45] There's so many places for you to connect that one person is going to back you up. And you don't need a lot of people, but you need one or two good people that have got your back and they're here to remind you. God isn't done yet. Neither are we. [00:27:58] Who's encouraging you and who are you encouraging? [00:28:02] Maybe the greatest gift you can give somebody else is the gift of hope. [00:28:06] If God could do this in my life, right, maybe he could do something good in yours. Share your story, share your hope, share encouragement with somebody else. And then here's the last thing she says. [00:28:18] Hope needs mentors. [00:28:20] We need people who are smarter than us, who know things that we don't know, who can teach us about something that's gonna help us do better. [00:28:28] There are a lot of smart people who exist in this world, and God is so fun. [00:28:33] There's always a resource, there's always a tool. There's always a place to go where somebody's figured it out, somebody has survived what feels like it's gonna kill you right now, and they're gonna show you how to get out of this hole. [00:28:47] Somebody's been where you are, and they got to the other side. [00:28:51] And your stories might not be exactly the same, but, man, they're going to throw you the rope. You need to just get back to even so you can start again. [00:28:59] You need mentors in your life who are smart, who are kind, who are willing to share their wisdom with you. [00:29:07] That might be the greatest place you find hope is. Oh, this is possible. [00:29:11] If somebody else could do it, why couldn't I? [00:29:14] And it's a night of hope, my friends. We've got all of these groups outside, and you know what they're here for. [00:29:21] To show you some resources to give you a resource, to help, to say, you don't have to do this alone. The person you love who's struggling, they don't have to do it alone. Let us give you some tools. Here's a number, here's an option, here's a resource. Connect. Because God isn't done yet. [00:29:40] What if we started living with hope? [00:29:43] My kids got this for me, and it's a little necklace that just says hope. [00:29:49] And I'm a little bit obnoxious because things like this I can't stop touching and fiddling with. But it's a reminder for me of why I have hope. Because until God's done, I'm not done. [00:29:59] Until God says, this is it, I don't say this is it. Because our God is at work. [00:30:06] And if there is breath in my lungs and sun in the sky, then there's something God can do in my life and in yours. And God has given you this life as a gift. And maybe this moment doesn't feel like a gift, but I promise, our world needs you. [00:30:23] You specifically, you. Your gifts. Your talent, your perspective, your story, your potential. [00:30:31] You are not an accident, and you are not here by chance. God is at work and he is with you. He is on your side and he loves you. And when you choose to live with hope, friends, anything is possible. [00:30:46] Anything can be. [00:30:48] Dear Father, I pray that you would help us, encourage our hearts, encourage our minds, strengthen our souls for the days ahead. I pray, Father, that you would lead us in the right direction, that we should go where we are struggling in discouragement. I pray that you would give us hope where life feels too much. Father, I pray that you would put us on a new path to a new life and a new hope in you. I pray, Father, that all these incredible people who are here tonight to help and show us the resources that you would connect the right people in the right way to get the right tools they need to live a new life with a new sense of purpose and help. I pray that you would do what only you can do, which is to comfort our hearts, to restore our souls and save what feels lost and broken. Help us. I pray. In Jesus name, Amen.