Speaker: Bonnie Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain. Hebrews 6:19 ESV

“We are terrible hopers in this day and age,” says pastor and writer, Francis Chan. “We expect the worst because we’ve been let down too much. If something even halfway decent happens in a day we consider that a good day.”[1] Does this describe you? The Bible says that “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12 ESV). Part of the human condition on this planet is loss, pain and disappointment.  Perhaps you feel heartsick more often than not.  Are you trying your hardest but still feel that there isn’t much hope on your journey through this life?

The truth is, the here and now, this life, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, anything that we can touch, see and feel, even the people around us that we love most, were never meant to give us hope. They were never designed to lead to what the Bible calls the “hope that does not disappoint” (Romans 5:5 NASB). God and what He has done for us was always meant to be our source of hope for this life.  The Apostle Paul laid it out straight for us: “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2 ESV). The problem is, Francis Chan says, “Hope in the glory of God doesn’t anchor our souls!”[2]

Hope in God’s glory won’t do us any good if God’s glory is little more than a nice-sounding religious sentiment. What, then, is God’s glory?  What does it mean to us?  The glory of God is in the Gospel: God’s story of Jesus’ death for us, resurrection and our redemption and restoration back into right relationship with Him. “When the story is told and the gospel is preached, what shines out from it, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4, is ‘the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.’”[3]

Have you experienced the glory of God in your life?  Or, is your heart sick? Has your journey been marked by potholes of disappointment? Maybe we’ve all lost sight of His glory because we’ve lost sight of our need for the Gospel. Maybe we’ve lost sight of His glory because listening to Him and reading His love story has been relegated to the left-over time in our lives.

Our experience of God’s glory is in direct proportion to our sense of need and the amount of time we spend with Him, taking in the story He wrote for us, called the Bible.  John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  Some Bible versions use “made his home among us” for the word, “dwell.”  How at home is Jesus in your life?  To know Jesus is to know God’s glory. The question is, will we make the time to actually know Jesus, to soak in God’s glory by spending enough time around it that it changes the way we think?  Changes in our thinking, in what the Bible calls the renewing of our minds, leads to hope.  That’s when God’s glory illuminates what He is doing in our lives.   That’s how we go from hopeless to hopeful.

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure,” declares Hebrews 6:19. Can you say that your soul is anchored in the glory of God?  Let our prayer be that God would help us get our eyes off of ourselves, off of only the here and now.  May He open the eyes of our hearts to see our hope, the glory of the Gospel!

Resource Reading:  Hebrews 6:16-20

 

[1] Francis Chan, Address at Finishing the Task Conference, Lake Forest, CA, December 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] John Piper, “Let Us Exult in the Glory of the Lord,” Desiring God. October 24, 1999. http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/let-us-exult-in-the-hope-of-the-glory-of-god, accessed December 13, 2016.