Anchor Of Hope Christian Reformed Church

Paul is praying that we would begin to know, comprehend, and understand something that "surpasses knowledge:" the love of God fully displayed in Jesus Christ. Such a love as this will drive out of our hearts, minds, mouths, and actions our sins, doubts, and fears. To know the love of Christ means we are freed and enabled to love God and those around us. God can do this in your life if you have faith in Jesus Christ! God can do more than what you can ask or imagine! God gets all the Glory! Amen.

Do you ever feel physically, mentally, spirituality or emotionally weak? Do you want to be strong? If you will believe, confess, and trust Jesus Christ as your savior, friend, and Lord then he will give you the strength of new life, freedom from sin, peace with God, love for God and love for others.... Jesus gives you this strength through the Holy Spirit to all the Father has given to Jesus. A person with such Jesus granted, Holy Spirit enabled, Father directed strength is able to declare, "I love you God!" no matter the emotional, physical or mental suffering, pain or weakness. Let us learn from Job and live by faith with Jesus living in our hearts! Amen!

We can only boast in God! The riches of Jesus Christ are unsearchable! Jesus is higher, greater, more wonderful, above all, with everything that was created, created by, for, and through Jesus Christ! How can we come into the presence of a holy almighty God with boldness and confidence? Only by, in, and through Jesus Christ. Let Jesus be your everything because He is you all in all! Amen!

To be a servant of Jesus Christ means a willingness to obey Jesus your Master, Savior, and Lord in all things and at all times. Paul suffered much so that we who are gentiles could hear the Gospel and have the mystery explained of how we can be united to Jesus Christ through faith and by God's grace. Christ is our everything! Let us also be willing to pick up our cross and follow our Master Jesus! Amen!

We are one in the Spirit and one in the Lord! Our salvation is a trinitarian salvation. God the Father has chosen from eternity past who will be made alive to trust and believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. God the Son, Jesus Christ, pays the full wages of our sin on the cross so that we can be saved and forgiven, and God the Holy Spirit makes and gives us the gift of faith so that we can believe and be saved! God does this because He is gracious and loving. Just as there is one God, there is only one people of God. In Christ there is no longer Jew or Gentile, but one body, one family, one dwelling place for God- the church. Praise the Lord!

Jesus Christ has made forgiveness, reconciliation, and an eternal life of peace with God possible for everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself. God is calling people from every tribe, language, and people group from all over the world to be one family in Jesus Christ. This is why we can go to every person on the earth and tell them the gospel - that they need a savior; and Jesus Christ is the only savior. If you believe in Jesus Christ as your savior and lord then you become God's child, made alive through the Holy Spirit. The hostility is removed! Amen!

If Jesus is not your God, your Lord and your Savior then you are hopeless and helpless, dead in sin and destined for eternal death and destruction. To be separated from Jesus Christ is of more dire consequence than to be separated from food for more than one month, separated from water for more than five days, or separated from oxygen for more than six minutes. Let us hunger, thirst, and gasp for Jesus Christ all the more knowing that He is our everything! Amen!

The workmanship talked about in Eph. 2:10 is that of the finest craft and exquisite detail. God’s plan and will is perfect and we must trust Him completely in all things. We are saved by grace for good works that will give God all the praise, glory and honor. Being saved, reconciled, justified with God means we have been made alive to live for Him and freed from living only in enslavement to the fallen world, the devil, and our own sinful desires. Let us live to do good now that we have been made good in Jesus Christ! Amen!

Spiritually dead people can do nothing to bring about their salvation! This is a biblical fact. An unsaved person is not spiritually sick, or spiritually lacking something, or in need of something more than what they have to make them whole. A person who does not believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is dead, completely empty, and must be made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit in the new life of Jesus Christ according to the will and ways of God. This is why we boast in God and God alone. Amen!

Let us Praise God with honest lips and sincere hearts as we love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Though we have stumbled in sin God has made a way for our return to Him in His Son Jesus Christ! We say of Jesus what John proclaimed "behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!" As we enter into a new year let us be wise and discerning through the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us know Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life and the only way to the Father. Let us stumble no more in darkness, but walk in the Light of Christ! Amen!

I pray that you will hear the roar of the Lion of Judah this Christmas! The roar of God brings terror to those on the way of destruction; yet to those being saved the roar of God brings comfort that in Jesus Christ there is safety, love, protection, and peace. Jesus is torn so that we are healed. Jesus is killed so that we can have life. Jesus is condemned so that we can be forgiven. This is what Christmas is all about. God sends his son to be the savior of the world. Amen!

God is a loving father to Israel. God's just judgement against Israel's sin. A destroying lion tears. God's compassion grows warm and tender. A restoring lion roars.

Our rebellion against God and hatred toward His commands brings about our condemnation, death, punishment and enslavement to sin. We cannot and will not save ourselves! For us to be saved, God must save us. He does this in His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus buys us out of our slavery to sin and death by taking God's just judgement that we deserve on His perfect self! God is good! He is always faithful! Jesus is our king! Let us rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit! Amen!

A key aspect of God's grace to us is when he wakes us up from the slumber and death of the desires of our sinful flesh and makes us aware that without Him we have nothing. Though the world, the devil, and our sinful flesh makes endless promises of pleasure and fulfillment to us, they are nothing but empty and destructive lies. Let us pray that God will graciously remove all obstacles and road blocks between us and Him through His son Jesus Christ and the sanctification process of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray that God will build an impassable wall between our new self in Jesus Christ and the sinful desires of our old fallen and dead flesh. We are always better off with God! Amen!

As we enter into Advent 2017, let us consider what it means that God so loved, had so much mercy and compassion, on His elect, His vessels of mercy, that he sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ into human flesh. Hosea teaches us that we are sinners, unfaithful, law breakers, idol worshipers... who deserve God's wrathful judgment. Yet, God shows mercy on who He will show mercy and any of us who have received and believed in this mercy, grace and love of God can do nothing but give Him all the praise, glory, and honor. As we approach again this celebration of the coming of "God with us" let us boast in a God who is always faithful, even when we are unfaithful! Amen!

How gracious is God? How loving is God? How just is God? How holy is God? How merciful is God? Answer- "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" This is the life changing, pride removing, new life giving, reconciling, joyful, peaceful, glorifying truth of the cross of Jesus Christ. This is good news! Amen!

How great is the power of God for those who believe in Him? Immeasurable! How great is Jesus Christ? Immeasurable! If we repent and place all our hope and faith in Jesus Christ we die with Him and we will be raised with Him. We are absolutely secure in Jesus Christ! He is above all and the church is His body. Let us trust our all powerful, loving, gracious, holy God who is our all and all.

We need new hearts! The good news is that God gives new hearts to his children through Jesus Christ by the work for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes us alive to believe, gives us the gift of faith, and grows us in wisdom and understanding as we come to know God in all His glory, power, and love. Let us pray for an ever-greater knowledge of who God is, who we are in Jesus Christ and a hope fixed on the glorious work of Jesus Christ on the cross! Amen!

There are few things we can absolutely count on in this world. In Jesus Christ we can find everything that comes with an eternal guarantee. Eternal life, peace with God, forgiveness, love, all of God's promised blessings are in Jesus Christ and we long for he day he returns and we can enter fully into all that is in Him. Until then, the Holy Spirit dwelling within believers assures them of this guarantee. God is faithful, all the time and we can always count on Him!