There are moments in our Christian journey when we find ourselves facing trials, a crucible, in which we find ourselves questioning the goodness and love of God. It’s in those moments that we need be reminded that the anchor holds.

ACF Institute 2017: Never Alone

<p>There are moments in our Christian journey when we find ourselves facing trials, a crucible, in which we find ourselves questioning the goodness and love of God. It’s in those moments that we need be reminded that the anchor holds.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Christian Fellowship (ACF)

Thando Amankwah

The Anchor Holds

Our gracious Father in heaven, we thank you for the privilege of this time that we have to study your word.

Father, we ask that you would speak to us.

We ask that you would open our hearts and our minds to hear your word.

The Christ be seen, be heard, be lifted up, that we would draw encouragement from your word this evening.

I ask that you speak through me, that your spirit be present here, And that when all is said and done, we leave having a deeper, closer walk with Christ.

We pray this and we ask in Jesus' name, Amen.

Unfortunately my last sort of evening with you today, I have to head back home to a 1 year old and a tired husband tomorrow.

Bless his heart for holding the fort while I've been here.

I feel very blessed to have married somebody who can do that.

The tidbit of advice that in making that choice, choose wisely, how I know it says, choose wisely.

I picked up a GLOW tract a couple weeks ago.

The title of the tract is called Life After Victory, and I read it, it really struck me and I want to share part of that story of how the author writes that tract with you and sort of use it as a launching pad for our message this evening.

So the author of the tract writes about his experience dealing with sickle cell disease And he writes about growing up and the struggle that he had constantly in and out of hospital, dealing with this burden of sickle cell, until a chance encounter in a hospital with a clinician who told him about a transplant that might hold the possibility of changing his life forever.

He ended up having and getting a transplant from his brother, his younger brother, that actually changed his blood type and in changing his blood type completely removed the sickle cell disease from him.

So when he was healed, in celebration of this sort of end to his long, long, tiring journey and ordeal with sickle cell, he did something that he had always wanted to do but could never do because of how easily tired he would get when he was ill.

He decided to run 22 kilometers nonstop and have a friend sort of record the run for him.

And he writes about the exhilaration, the joy, that runner's high.

How many of you are runners in this room?

So I love to run and you know, the runner's high is actually real.

You get to a point where you're emotionally just, you're in a different place and you could keep running forever if there's nothing to actually stop you.

So he writes about getting to that place and feeling that sweet victory of that 22 kilometer run.

And then he concludes the tract with this very poignant powerful question and he says but when the run was over When I came home and I put my shoes away, I returned to a life in which violence, destruction, uncertainty, poverty, and distress pressed in on every side.

Just 6 months before my run, a young man entered an elementary school and took the lives of 20 innocent children.

3 months after my run, 2 individuals detonated bombs at the Boston Marathon.

2 months later, Typhoon Haein descended on the Philippines, claiming the lives of over 6, 000 people.

And what he's trying to say is that when the run was over and he came home and put his shoes away, after that run as high is over, you go back to life.

And life as it is, is not rosy and pleasant and happy all the time.

Life is peppered with moments of victory.

And I think for a lot of us, you know, those moments of victory could look like, you know, it could be that run that you've been training for for so long.

It could be a game that you've won, a home that you've purchased, a graduation for those of you who just graduated.

Now, I remember when I started running about 7 years ago now, 2010, just after I graduated college, I had never run in my life before, and so I did this program called Couch to 5K.

How many of you have heard of Couch to 5K?

The goal of the program is supposed to get you from being a couch buddy to actually being able to run at 5K.

You start off running just 30 seconds and walking for 3 minutes and then running another 30 seconds.

And then eventually, it gradually increases the amount of time that you run.

So I remember when I first started, after running just a minute, I would be totally breathless and exhausted.

But at the end of that 10-week program, And I actually got to run my 5K.

And so life is filled with those moments of victory.

And it looks different for each and every 1 of us.

Whether it's a baby born or it's a wedding, these are the moments that we live for, the moments that we cherish.

And then the question that this glow tract was asking is, but when the home is purchased, the run is over, the breakthrough is complete, and you go back home, what then?

We talked last night about the disciple John and we looked at his experience of sanctification as an illustration of the work of cleansing that God wants to do in our lives and God is able to do in our lives.

You know, towards the end of his ministry, after all of the victories that God had given him, John finds himself exiled on the isle of Patmos.

And so he writes in Revelation 1 verse 9 that I, John, who also am your brother, your companion in tribulation, in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

He finds himself exiled alone in a barren rocky island.

Towards the end of his ministry, he's suddenly thrust into this intense trial, finding himself alone in Patmos.

And if you look at all the lives of the disciples, This is true in all the lives of the disciples.

It's true for the reformers, true for the founders of our church, true for all of us that there are moments in our Christian journey where we find ourselves facing circumstances, intense trials, crucibles of faith, where our hearts are burdened, grieved, crushed, where sometimes we question the goodness and the love of God toward us.

And the question I'm leaving you with this evening, you know, what do you do after the victory is over?

How do you cope with those moments of anguish?

What do you do in those crucibles of faith?

How do you stand and how do you carry on the work?

How do you carry on in your Christian journey when your heart is rithing with anguish and with pain?

In Hebrews chapter 6, I want to pull out 5 things just as reminders, but as pointers for us as part of how we can learn by the grace of God to stand no matter what our circumstances may actually be.

The book of Hebrews, I talked yesterday about how each book of the Bible tends to have a theme and I love the book of Hebrews for the way in which it magnifies Christ and expounds upon his high priestly ministry.

It's eloquent in the way it describes the hope and the joy that we find in Christ.

But 1 of the themes that runs through the book of Hebrews is this idea of holding steadfast unto the end.

So I put again a couple of examples of the verses drawn from the book of Hebrews that bring out this idea, this theme of holding unto the end.

So in Hebrews 3 verse 6, the author writes, But Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.

For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.

You know when he says the beginning of our confidence, there is something about beginnings that is incredibly special and memorable.

You know, when you think about the first time that, well, you know, you eventually get married, I think about the first time that, when my husband and I got married, I think about the first time when a date or when we subversed that according.

I think about our wedding, our honeymoon.

I think about the first year of marriage.

There's just something magical about that beginning of that friendship and that relationship.

And if you and I think back to the beginning of our confidence in Jesus.

Do you remember the very first time you accepted Christ as your personal Savior?

Do you remember that peace and that joy and that burning in your heart when you realized what Christ could do for you?

Do you remember the beginning of your confidence in Jesus?

And then the author says, what if we could hold the beginning of that confidence, that heartburn, that joy, that peace in Christ, holding that beginning unto the end.

Because too often we find the beginning is incredibly amazing and then somewhere along the journey our confidence in Christ is terribly shaken.

Hebrews 6, 11, we desire that every 1 of you to show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end.

Hebrews 10.23, let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering.

The exhortation, 1 of the exhortations in this book of Hebrews is to hold steadfast until the end.

So I'm pulling out 5 things from Hebrews chapter 6 that speak to how we can hold unto the end.

Point number 1 is to recognize that God remembers.

The Bible says, But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation, though with us speak.

For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward his name, in that you have ministered to the saints and you do minister.

The author of Hebrews here is speaking to the fact that God is not unrighteous to forget.

To give you a little bit of context, the Hebrew Christians, the people to whom the letter to the Hebrews was written, were Christians of a Jewish origin.

They had been steeped in Jewish tradition, in belief, and in the bringing and the offering of sacrifice.

The entire Jewish system, that is where they came from.

But when they accepted the faith, They accepted the faith with so much fervor and enthusiasm and they threw themselves wholeheartedly, completely into the work of Christ.

And then along their Christian journey, they faced an intense flight of affliction, intense trials, intense tests that rocked their faith.

And this epistle was written to them as an exhortation to hold the faith no matter what they were going through.

And the author says to them, look, you have stood steadfast for a while.

In other words, God is too righteous to forget your work and labor of love.

The things that you have done for God, the service you have rendered, the things you have done that nobody else has recognized, the tears you may have shed for the cause of God, your tiredness, your fatigue, every single ounce of energy you have poured into the work of God, God remembers your work and labor of love.

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The Anchor Holds

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