Anchored to the Word

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: According to Shannon Popkin, nothing phases God.

Shannon Popkin: Those storms in our lives, He isn’t affected by the chaos. None of it affects Him. He is above the storm. He is standing, and He wants us to see that in the middle of our storm. He’s our anchor.

Dannah Gresh: You’re listening to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for October 31, 2023. Our host is the author of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy: Do you ever feel like you’re barely keeping your head above water, like wave after wave keeps hitting you, and you feel like you’re going to drown? I’ve often said that you’re either in a storm right now, or you just came out of one, or you’re about to head into one. That’s life in our fallen world. It’s life this side of heaven. That’s why, when we face choppy waters, we need to learn to stay anchored so we’re not driven along by the winds and the currents.

In Hebrews chapter 6, we read about a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. Do you know what the author is referring to? It’s the promises of God and the hope we have because of what Jesus has done for us.

On this day in 1517, the Protestant Reformation was born. In many ways the Reformation was a way of throwing out an anchor for a ship that had drifted off course.

What Martin Luther and many other reformers did was to say, “We’re going to anchor our lives and our churches to Christ and to the Word of God. The Scriptures, the written Word of God, and Jesus, the Word made flesh, they are our only authority and hope. Not the traditions of the Church, not human opinions. We’re going to go with what the Bible says over everything else, and we’re willing to risk our lives to do it.” And they did risk their lives so that today we could have the Word of God.

And on this day when believers celebrate a return to affirming salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, on the authority of the Word of God alone, to the glory of God alone; we wanted to spend some time meditating on where or to what we’re anchoring our souls.

We have a wonderful group of friends here to help us to do that, and I’ll be introducing them as we go.

Yesterday on Revive Our Hearts, we heard from Asheritah Ciuciu. She described the time she first experienced a panic attack. Here’s Asheritah.

Asheritah Ciuciu: My thought was, The anchor holds. We’d be going back to that moment two weeks into the pandemic when I felt like my world was falling apart, and I can’t do this anymore, God met me in such a special and personal way that He is my refuge, and He is my strength. And no matter what a life brings, when we rest on the Rock that is Jesus Christ, we are safe and secure. The waves might crash. The storms might come. In all this unknown . . . you can’t anticipate the diagnosis, the job loss, the loved one walking away. We don’t know what will come, but God knows. He invites us to build our life on the solid Rock because He will never be shaken. So when we rest in Him, we will not be shaken.

Nancy: Asheritah Ciuciu wasn’t the only one who felt the need to anchor her soul to the Lord in moments of anxiety. Here’s Glenna Marshall. She’s a sweet friend who has struggled with chronic pain for many years as a result of two different kinds of severe arthritis.

Glenna Marshall: During some of the earlier days of my disease before I actually knew what was wrong with me, I had a night of pain that is still etched in my memory. The pain was so severe that I had a panic attack. I remember clearly just walking the floor in my living room just praying and crying out to the Lord. I was reminded of the story in Matthew where Jesus asked Peter to come out of the boat and walk on the water with Him.

I just pictured Peter jumping over the side of the boat like people jump out of a convertible, just legs over, swinging himself out, so impulsive and excited to walk on the water with Jesus. He walks out, and he’s on top of the water, and it’s a raging tempest. He suddenly looks around him, and he starts to sink. Then he cries out, “Lord, save me!” And Jesus rebukes his weak faith while also saving him. Then Jesus walks him back to the boat, and that’s when he calms the storm. Peter has to walk back to the boat in the storm.

I remembered that story in the middle of the night that night. I just cried out with Peter, “Lord, save me! I don’t know what else to say except that my faith is struggling in this fear and this pain.”

And while He did not heal me that night, He helped me survive the night. My heart calmed. I was able to eventually go back to sleep. I remember the next morning just dwelling on that story and going back to the Scriptures to read it. Peter’s faith was really, really small in that moment, but the object of his faith was really, really big, and it was Jesus.

And He is the assurance that He is the anchor as we know from Hebrews 6. Our faith might feel really, really weak at times. He is the One that’s strong. And so if we’re just continually turning back to the One who is strong, we can be reminded that He is holding fast to us. I mean, He holds us fast.

I think that is what’s encouraging when we’re unsure, when we’re afraid. We don’t necessarily have to depend on our own strength. We just lean really hard on His, and He doesn’t disappoint.

Song by Keith & Kristyn Getty:

He will hold me fast.
He will hold me fast. 
For my Savior loves me so,
He will hold me fast.

Nancy: Such a sweet reminder there from Keith and Kristyn Getty, and just before that we heard from Glenna Marshall.

Now, here’s Kristyn Getty telling about a time in the summer of 2022 when she especially needed to look to Jesus to be her anchor.

Kristyn: It was a lot for us going on this year: the international travel, the Sing! conference, the album, and we also moved twice this year. There was j ust a lot of different things that went on, and I think it was a bit of an accumulative effect of a lot of stress points and feeling just a bit lost with the burden of all of that and the girls starting to school.

I think what I felt was I was so busy doing all these very good things, but felt a bit vulnerable in my tiredness and vulnerable in being a little cut off because I didn’t have as much time to invest in relationships that spoke into me. And so I just found myself feeling a little hollowed out, that there were so much going out and not enough coming in. I started to feel at a loss.

A couple weeks ago, I think, just at the end of the Sing! conference, I just felt this phew. I was able to pick back up again in the last couple of weeks with a morning Bible study that I have with a couple of friends, another Bible study in my church, and actually reading Dane Ortlund’s devotional book of the Psalms. (I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that.)

I was reading again in Psalm 4. It was a psalm he talked about that is a quiet trust in God during troubling times. I just worked my way through it and pull out some of the thoughts. I tried to rephrase it, and instead of an old Scottish setting of a hymn, to try and get it stuck in my brain. It was just like lots of glasses of water [to my soul]. The whole thing was just incredible. I read through those notes again today as preparation for being part of today, and it just amazing.

So I think that in times of acute busyness, when you’re pouring out so much, you can be at your most vulnerable. And that’s a reminder. It doesn’t matter how old or how long you’ve been a believer, to be constantly finding ways to fill up again. So this last week has been all about that.

Song: Keith & Kristyn Getty:

When I fear my faith will fail,
Christ will hold me fast.
When the tempter would prevail,
He will hold me fast.
I could never give my hope
Through life’s fearful past.
For my love is often cold,
He must hold me fast.

He will hold me fast.
He will hold me fast.
For my Savior loves me so,
He will hold me fast.

Nancy: For Juli Slattery, metaphor changes from nautical to aeronautical.

Juli Slattery: I think the vision that God has really given me over the years with this is the idea of being an instrument-rated pilot. Which, if you know aviation, it means that you can trust the instrument panels, and you’re not going to be thrown off by what you see out the windows. 

I think in our day and age, there are so many women who are looking out the windows. They are looking inward at what they feel, what people are saying, what culture is doing, and they don’t trust the instrument of God's Word.

 

And so for me, it’s that God never changes. His Word never changes. He’s never surprised. As much as we might be bumping around in turbulence, we can trust Him. We can trust by His Spirit as He teaches us, and He draws us to Himself.

Nancy: I love that! Thank you, Juli Slattery.

Now, back to the anchor theme. This is Amanda Kassian. She says the concept of our anchor holding to Christ reminds her of one of her children, and she, too, points us to the biblical account of Peter walking on the water.

Amanda Kassian: I named my youngest daughter Josephine Hope. And the name Josephine means “God increases.” She’s a COVID baby, so at the time, I was really struggling with hope and where our security lies because the world was changing so fast and people were turning on each other. I wanted a reminder of God’s Word and who He is. So her name is Josephine Hope, which means “God increases hope.”

And as I age, as my years come to an end—and it could come to an end tomorrow—God is further increasing my hope as I come to know Him more. That hope is an anchor for me. It is a hope that I don’t have to worry about tomorrow.

When I think of Peter stepping out of the boat, when he fixed his eyes on Christ, his anchor, he could walk on water. But when he looked to the right or to the left, that’s when he sank.

So for me, I want to fix my eyes on Christ who is the anchor of my soul so that I do not sink. He keeps me afloat.

Nancy: Shannon Popkin explains that same passage in greater detail.

Shannon Popkin: There is this night when the disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee. Jesus has told them to cross. They’re following His instructions. And they find themselves in the middle of a storm, like, it’s a bad storm. They’re afraid that they’re going to lose their lives. They have been out there battling. It says the wind and the waves were against them, and they are feeling completely undone. They’re afraid they’re going to die. And between four and six in the morning—the third watch of the night—Mark tells us that Jesus came walking on the water, and He meant to pass by them.

Now, I thought that was interesting because when I’m in the dark night of the soul, the chaos of a storm, I don’t want Jesus to pass by me. I want Him to come to me. I want Him to stop the storm. I want Him to be with me in the storm. And yet, Jesus meant to pass by them. What was He thinking?

This was the big reveal in Matthew’s telling of the story. At the end of the story, the disciples say, “Surely He is the Son of God.”

They’re knowing for the first time that, yes, everything is insecure in our lives. And yet, we shouldn’t picture Jesus, like, slogging through the storm, trying to get to them. Because if He’s not affected by gravity, truly He’s not affected by the storm.

This is what Jesus was revealing: He is not affected by the storms in our lives. He isn’t affected by the chaos. None of it affects Him. He is above the storms. He is standing, and He wants us to see that in the middle of our storms. He’s our anchor. He’s the anchor that we can look to in the middle of our storms. He’s the one that will not be defeated. He will rise above anything that we are facing.

 

And so, in our distress, in our frustration, Jesus wants us to see . . . We might be out of control, our whole world may be out of control, but Jesus is not out of control. Jesus is in control. And so, since He is in control, that means I don’t have to be.

Nancy: We’re hearing from some of the speakers who shared at our most recent True Woman conference. We asked them, “What comes to mind when they think about Jesus and the Scriptures being our anchor?”

Here’s Kelly Needham.

Kelly Needham: Seeing the anchor hold in my life in my own heart’s transformation, which always feels like the hardest transformation sometimes . . . To take seasons of change, to take hurts and conflict and problems that feel too big to solve in my own heart, to take those to the Lord and see my own heart transform from a place of turmoil to peace, that is so affirming to me that God is real. He can change me. He can change my disposition. He can produce peace in my heart amidst a lot of moving things that are unstable and uncertain.

Also, starting to see Him answer prayers that I’m praying for. Not all of the things that have been laid before His feet these past twelve months are answered, but there are some that have been. There’s slow transformation in some areas and relationships and things that I’ve been praying for that I see. And seeing those little expressions of God at work is just a reminder that He is real. He is changing me, first of all, but I see Him transforming others around me.

It’s not always the circumstances that I want changed that get changed. It’s usually heart postures that are getting changed and contentment growing rather than circumstances changing. But again, to me that is more freeing because now my hope is tied not to circumstances changing but to a Person who can actually interject into a difficult circumstance and provide the things that we need despite the circumstance changing. It’s really liberating.

Nancy: For Erin Davis there’s not one anchor but two. I’ll let her explain.

Erin Davis: I’m going to take you back to a coffee shop a few years ago. I was counseling a college-age friend of mine who was struggling with daily anxieties. She was struggling with going to class. She wasn’t taking good care of herself. Another friend of mine had just talked at her for several minutes, and it wasn’t getting through to her at all. And finally I said to her, “Hey, do you believe that God is good?”

And she said, “I do.”

And I said, “Do you believe that God is in control?”

And she said, “Not really.”

And that was just the root of everything she was feeling. Can you imagine, if you believe there’s a God in heaven? You believe He has all this power. You believe He created all things, but somehow it’s all out of His control right now.

So that began this journey for me of seeing God’s goodness and God’s sovereignty as two anchors. And to try and help better serve her, I googled one day, “When does a boat need two anchors?” It’s a strange thing to google. I just had a hunch. And the answer is: in a storm, because if you just have one anchor in a storm, your boat is going to spin and spin and spin. Where, if you have two anchors, those anchors are going to counterbalance each other and hold the boat steady.

That’s what I saw in my friend’s life. She knew one thing about God, that He was good. But she didn’t believe the other thing about God, which is that He is in control. And if you only believe one or the other of those, your boat is going to spin and spin and spin.

So for me, the anchors—plural—are: God is good. Scripture says He is good; He does good. He withholds no good thing. It’s who He is. So that anchor’s in the ground for me. And He’s sovereign. He’s in control. Nothing gets past Him. Nobody can manipulate Him. There can never be a coup in heaven where He loses His authority.

And those things I’ve lived in my life, especially this past year or so. They hold, even in a really intense storm. So when I hear, “our anchor holds,” I think, our anchors hold, and I’m so grateful they do.

Nancy Lindgren: I’m actually excited . . .

Nancy: This is Nancy Lindgren.

Nancy Lindgren: Because I think through hard times, through suffering, it takes us to our knees, and it makes us so dependent on God. It’s true in my own life. I’ve had to rely on Him. It’s not when it’s easy we don’t rely on Him. When it gets harder, we have to rely on Him. So, the hard times bring us closer to Him, and I’m all for that. I think it’s good that we’re drawn to Him and we’re needy. We desperately need Him. I think that’s a good thing.

I want to be in that place where my life isn’t just all easy and good. I want to be so dependent on God that He shows up, and I know it’s Him, and it’s nothing of me.

Nancy: Thank you, Nancy Lindgren.

Now, Blair Linne shares her thoughts on that phrase: our anchor holds.

Blair Linne: What comes to mind when I think our anchor holds is that I think that God is my anchor. Christ is our stabilizing anchor that keeps us. Christ is what brought us in relationship with our heavenly Father. It’s being filled with the Holy Spirit, being filled with all the fullness of God. So that’s what I think of when I think of an anchor.

Nancy: It reminds me of what we talk about a lot here at Revive Our Hearts—freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

If I could, I’d like to take a moment to just quickly share a passage that has served as an anchor for me in recent years. I’ve gone back to these two verses again and again and again. They’ve been an anchor for me, an anchor for my heart, an anchor for my runaway emotions, an anchor for my rogue thoughts and imaginations.

All the what-ifs, especially during those crazy days of 2020. You remember that, when the world was shut down with the pandemic? And also, when my sweet husband Robert was diagnosed with two different cancers, with months of surgeries, chemo treatments and more. These verses were a lifeline, an anchor to my heart then, and they continue to be now.

The last two verses of Psalm 29, and here’s what it says: 

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
The LORD sits enthroned, king forever.
The LORD gives his people strength;
The LORD blesses His people with peace.” (vv. 10–11)

Whew! It helps my heart just reading that now. I won’t take the time to unpack each phrase today. I’ve done that elsewhere. In fact, you can listen to a two-day series I recorded back then called “Coronavirus, Cancer, and Christ.” You’ll find a link to it in the transcript of this program at ReviveOurHearts.com.

But maybe you need to hear this today: “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.” I don’t know what your flood is, I don’t know what’s threatening to overwhelm you, but I can tell you this: on the authority of God’s Word, God is still in control.

I received just a few weeks ago an email from a friend who’s in the midst of a massive storm right now. Wave upon wave, chaos going on in her life related to an adult child. She wrote me, and she ended the email this way: She said, 

I’m relearning that our lives belong to Him. He has never left us nor forsaken us. Yes, we see the goodness of God in each day. And we name that goodness out loud to each other. Exhausted? Yes. Weary? Yes. Peace? Joy? Well, to be honest, they both come and go, but staying in His Word to receive His thoughts about how to live our lives. Staying close to Him gives us strength for each new day.

Heaven rules. “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.” Maybe you need to remind yourself of that promise today. Anchor your soul to that truth.

Well, it’s been so encouraging to hear different perspectives, one after the other, on that one concept that the Word of God is our anchor. It’s so good.

We have one more to share today. Dr. Kathryn Butler had the opportunity to help a friend remember and anchor his soul to the promises of God.

Dr. Kathryn Butler: I picked the one that leaps to mind, my friend David, whom I write a lot about in my book, Glimmers of Grace. He was just a wonderful brother in Christ. He was a dear friend of mine who, even though I have over a decade of experience in clinical medicine, he probably taught me more than anyone else about what it means to face illness with faith. He had emphysema, and he had HIV as well. I walked with him and had the privilege of being alongside him during his last few months of life.

He’s someone who had already seen God work abundantly in his own life. He struggled for a period where he was homeless on the streets of New York City for a decade. It was a good Samaritan (he used the term) who found him when he was about to take his life on the streets of New York, told him the gospel, and then walked him to Belleview Hospital for him to get help.

It was the first time David really understood the gospel and understood Jesus’ love for him. Because this stranger saw him as “an image bearer of God, packed with potential,” were his words, and escorted him to help. He dedicated his life to Jesus thereafter.

He was in and out of the hospital frequently because of his medical issues, but he would evangelize to the staff. He would bring a stack of Spanish-translation Bibles to give to the staff that was helping him on a daily basis. He would send emails to our church proclaiming God’s goodness, even while he was struggling.

So it was very jarring for me to see in his last few months he got sicker and sicker and was in this pattern of bouncing back and forth between the hospital and rehab and never getting home. Or he’d get home for a day, and then we’d find him unconscious because his breathing was so terrible, and his carbon dioxide levels kept rising too high. It started to wear on him. It started to crush his spirit.

I remember my heart breaking for him one day, because this man who was so stalwart in the faith and had so much assurance of God’s goodness, was crippled by just the weariness and the pain of being sick and being bound in the hospital for months. He started to doubt God’s love for him and if he were saved.

I remember sitting with him in the hospital. My kids were on the bed next to me coloring in coloring books, and he said, “I just hope I get to go to heaven.”

And I said, “David, don’t you know that you’re one in Jesus. God’s adopted you as His son. You know what Jesus has done for you, right?”

He was just despondent. I started to worry and pray fervently for him because I thought, What a toll has this taken on him, and what a toll illness takes on us when it screens us from our vision of God’s love. You might know it. He knew it, deep down. So I really started to worry and wonder and just prayed fervently.

Then he had one after another week of being very confused and delirious in his last few weeks of life. But he had one day of clarity, and in that day of clarity he called me. He sounded like a new man. He said to me, “I know it’s going to be okay.”

Then he said, “I was waking up this morning, and I remembered Isaiah (I think it was chapter 6) when Isaiah comes into the temple and he witnesses God there on the throne, and just the hem of His robe fills the temple. It’s one of those scenes where Isaiah was terrified in the presence of this mighty God, and he says, “Woe is me because I’m unclean.”

But David remembered that scene, and he felt that God had given him that scene in that moment. He said, “I know that God is close, and He’s so much closer than any of us realizes.”

He was able to say that and draw comfort from that passage because he knew that in Jesus he was clean, and he would be in the presence of this holy God when he left this earth. And he said, “Katy, you and your family have been a light of grace to my life, and I just thank you. I know that whatever happens, I’m scared because I don’t want to be in pain. I don’t want to go through it. But I’m not scared of where I’m going, and I know that I’ll be with Jesus.”

It was one of those moments where it had been six months of this poor man suffering and in turmoil. But God broke through and just showed that He had David in the palm of His hand the whole time, even with all the back and forth to the hospital and his despair, He never let go of him.

And then David declined the next day and was admitted to hospice care. His one fear about dying had been that he didn’t want to die alone. So his pastor and his friends, including us, we stayed beside him the next forty-eight hours, singing hymns and praying over him. And then he passed into Jesus’ arms.

So, it was an agonizing process to watch, but it was just such a comfort to know that God had him, and God was faithful to him in the end.

Song:

He will hold me fast.
He will hold me fast.
For my Savior loves me so,
He will hold me fast.

He will hold me fast.
He will hold me fast.
For my Savior loves me so,
He will hold me fast.¹

Dannah Gresh: Wow! What a wonderful reminder of the solid rock we have in Jesus and in His Word. Ultimately, we’re not the ones holding fast to Christ. He’s the one holding fast to us.

It’s worth asking, though: if your soul were a boat, and you answered with complete transparent honesty, where is the boat of your heart anchored—to what or to whom?

If we’re holding onto anything other than Jesus and the Word for our ultimate security, then our boat’s in danger of drifting into dangerous waters. I hope you’ll pray and ask God to show you ways you can return to the safety and solidity of a soul anchored to Him.

Can you believe today’s the last day of October? I mean, it seems like it was just yesterday that we started seeing pumpkin spice, everything in the stores. And that was, what, back in mid-August? Well, tomorrow starts November, and just thirty days later it will be December 1. I’m getting excited already!

Have you thought about how you’ll decorate? I mean, most of us have some decorating ruts we get into every year, like “This is where the manger scene goes, and this is where we put the tree.”

Would you like to add some wonderful inspirational cards to your Christmas decorations this year? I would love to send you a set of thirty-one tabletop Advent cards from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. She wrote a devotional book called, Born a Child and Yet a King, and these cards have inspirational quotes from that book along with a Bible verse. The cards are dated, one for each day in December, so it’s like a decoration in your home, but a decoration with meaning, with significance. It comes with a nice little stand to hold them up.

Here’s how I can get them to you. They’re our thank-you gift for your donation of any amount to support the outreaches of Revive Our Hearts. To give, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Be sure to ask about the Advent tabletop cards when you do.

How would you say your heart is doing when it comes to contentment? If you’re like me, your heart could probably use some work in that department. Tomorrow Melissa Kruger will be here to show us that even though we live in a covetous world, it is possible to cultivate a heart of contentment. She’ll show us how starting tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to anchor your soul to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

Mansion Bluegrass Players." The Solid Rock." Hymns, an Instrumental Bluegrass Collection ℗ 2015 Mansion Entertainment.

¹Keith and Kristyn Getty. "He Will Hold Me Fast." Facing a Task Unfinished (Deluxe Edition) ℗ 2016 Getty Music Label, LLC.

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