My Anchor
Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast…
Oh good, sweet promises! The sound at their sight baptizes us in relief and in that moment, the world is just beneath us, the struggle is just a light pull and the waves lose their scare.
Oh, wonderful belief! Faith in the promises but no patience to endure, to wait… For waiting often seems like forever.
Pressing and squeezing out the joy of the promises to come, making us believers of the ugliness of reality as the light of yesterday’s goodness fades out.
What do we do?
In the dark nights of the soul…
In difficult times…
While we wrestle with pain on our own…
When trust takes to betrayal…
When the shapes on the horizon are out of sight…
When rescue takes eternity…
When our conversations are rattled…
When the foundation of our faith is shaken…
What’s left to do?
Author Brian Jones writes about such a crisis in his book Second Guessing God:
The year before I graduated from seminary, I lost my faith in God. That’s not a smart thing to do, I’ll admit. There’s not a big job market out there for pastors who are atheists. But I couldn’t help it. Life was becoming too painful. Truth had become too open to interpretation… My doubts seemed to climb on top of one another, clamoring for attention. Before I knew what had happened, the new car smell of my faith had worn off, and I found myself fighting to hang on.
Brian Jones reached a panic attack after he read every book he could find on the existence of God and enduring months of sleepless nights. Depression rushed at him, even the thoughts of suicide. He made a call for help on a night when he was totally on the verge. He called a former professor who had been a mentor to him.
In the last six months, doubt has begun to paralyze me, It’s like when the water goes back out to the ocean. Doubt is washing away the sand underneath me, and my feet keep sinking lower and lower and lower. If this continues, there won’t be anything left to stand on.
Contrary to expectation, rather than react with a sermon on the necessity of faith, the Professor acknowledged Brian’s struggle, even sharing his own battle against unbelief. His final words were: “Brian, listen to me when I say this: When the last grain of sand is fully gone, you’re going to discover that you are standing on a rock.”
“That one sentence saved me, It helped me hold on long enough to rediscover hope,” Brian wrote.
We are not to walk out on the certainty that storms will rage, the rain will descend heavily, a lot will be shaken but if we stand on the rock, if we build on the rock though the pillars be shaken, though the foundations be washed away, we will yet be found standing on the rock.
You Are Never Alone
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Has the WORD (JESUS CHRIST IN WRITTEN FORM) promised? He watches over His word to perform it for His word is settled in heaven. Just hold on!