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Hope for Everyone: Jesus is the anchor of our life
by Peter Elks - 16 November 2020
One of our favourite places to take visitors in this watery part of the world is the Maritime Museum in Liverpool. If you’ve been there, you’ll know that outside there’s a huge anchor. It came from the naval training ship HMS Conway, which sank in the Menai Straits in 1953 while being towed back to Birkenhead for a refit.
It’s a massive anchor, weighing around 5 tons, one of a pair forged for the former 92-gun frigate ‘HMS Nile’ when she was commissioned. They were needed to secure the huge ‘wooden wall’ and to hold her fast in a storm.
The Bible talks about an anchor that keeps us secure and at peace in the fiercest storms of life, like the one going on in our country right now:
""We have run to God for safety. Now his promises should greatly encourage us to take hold of the hope that is right in front of us. This hope is like a firm and steady anchor for our souls." Hebrews 6:18-19 (CEV)
God tells that we run to him for safety by handing our life over to Jesus Christ: if we do that, we will be kept safe for ever by his power and promises.
"God cannot tell lies! And so his promises and vows are two things that can never be changed." Hebrews 6:18 CEV
Jesus’s love for us is so great that it drew him from heaven to die on the cross for the wrongdoing of all humanity. He not only died for all, but he died for you, instead of you, for the wrongdoing that you have ever done or will ever do. His love for you is great, tender and full of compassion!
Three days after a totally unjust, twisted trial, first being treated like a common criminal and then dying like one, God showed that he accepted Jesus’s offering for our wrongdoing by raising Him from death. Forty days after that God raised Him up to the highest place in heaven, where He is right now.
If you put your trust in Him, Jesus Himself will come to you and wash away all your offences against God, join you inseparably to Himself by the Spirit of God and take care of you forever. This is his promise!
God never changes, and never tells lies, so we can fully rely on His promises. He isn’t like some politicians who tell you one thing and then do another. He means exactly what he says.
This connection with Jesus is the anchor of our life; it not only keeps us safe but gives us day by day a personal, close union with Him so that we can share with Him all our heart’s concerns. We receive His peace and ability to cope with life’s crises as well as the ordinary pressures of day to day living.
Would you like to have that kind of relationship with Jesus? If the answer is yes, I’d like to use the picture of the anchor to describe how that’s possible:
- An anchor drops into the heart of the sea: trusting yourself to Jesus without reserve and whatever the consequences is just like that.
- It hits the bottom, and rests there: that’s where we find that God is real, when we hit rock bottom and despair of finding the answer to life’s problems either in ourselves or someone else. Jesus invites us to receive his rest, which is real peace of heart and mind: "If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to Me and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28 CEV
- An anchor digs deep into the sand and is gripped there: that’s what happens when you give your life to Jesus, for then "your life is hidden deep with Christ in God" as the Bible puts it, and nothing can ever snatch us away from that place of total security, peace and lasting happiness. This is what God promises to do for everyone who comes to Him.
If you trust your life to Jesus Christ today, you will never, ever regret it. To give yourself to Him, you can use your own words or click here for a simple prayer that you can pray.
