What “anchors” you to God?

What “anchors” you to God? Maybe you’ve never thought about God in this way, considering his many attributes and the qualities of his character. But there is something in all of us in our valuing of God or our relationship with him that hopefully draws us back to him when we experience disappointment with him or sense distance from him. This may as well be the driving force in our times of praise and adoration.

There are times in our circumstances of life when there are situational shifts in what elevates our attraction to God. For example, we avoid harm in an accident and attribute that to God’s protecting hand. Our financial situation makes a turn upward and we acknowledge God’s provision. We lose a loved one to death and sense supernatural compassion and peace. We wrestle with a thorny issue and emerge confidently crediting wisdom from God. We attribute to God that he possesses all knowledge, that he is consistent and doesn’t change, that he is all powerful and ever present. We esteem God because he is holy and perfect. We embrace him because he is generous in mercy and grace. But what is it at your core that draws you back to him? What is it that no matter how good or especially how troubling life becomes, there is something “bedrock” about him that you bank on and depend on more than anything else? What is that one big thing, that constant, that “anchor?”

This one thing that we ultimately put our stock in is what saves us from total despair and collapse when life goes awry, when God doesn’t seem to show up or when God doesn’t work our circumstances in the way we dreamed or counted on him to do. This one thing exceeds all our other expectations and what we can fall upon in hard times and know that at the core it is true, despite present circumstances screaming that it is not. Job had it when in his extreme despair something compelled him to say “though he slay me, yet I will hope in him.” (Job 13:15)What was Job hoping in?

Where do you go when you are one tear away from spiritual death? When your belief in the sovereignty of God doesn’t soften your pain or quiet your heart . . . it simply doesn’t address the situation, much less solve it? When God’s power appears absent and his presence is questionable? When his peace isn’t felt? Would you agree that what “anchors” you to God must go beyond the elements of your present experience, that it must be more durable than any situation?

I know what the “anchor” is for me. More important is for you to determine what it is for you. What in your final gasp do you draw from to keep you from losing your grip and possibly your faith when like Paul in 2 Cor. 4 testifies that he was “hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed?” Go ahead. Think About It.