Have you ever been in the middle of a long trial in life where you seem to be losing everything? In times like these, often the only thing that can continue to lend the will to carry on is the anchor we call hope.
For most of my childhood, the home that I grew up in was an atmosphere of chaos and fear. Although hidden to the outside, the environment within was very painful and confusing. For that reason, anchors of hope became of critical importance to me. Without something to look forward to, I would find myself forced to confront the reality of life around me and the fact it felt that I would be trapped within it forever. In those times, I would often find myself spiraling into a hopeless, depressed state.
Fortunately, I learned to find things that I could cling to in hope. When things got bad, I could simply imagine and look forward to what was coming ahead! A birthday, the new game system I had been saving up for, Christmas, getting my blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do – all anchors which would hold me steady. By holding on to these anchors, I could withstand whatever new horror the day might bring and ignore the fear of what tomorrow may hold. Looking back, I now understand that it wasn’t so much the things or the events themselves that I was clinging to, but rather it was the hope of reaching the milestone in the future that helped to keep me going.
I once heard a story by a man who had grown up in very violent home. He told of how one day, his teacher went around the class asking each young student what his or her dream was. When their turn came, each shared the common childhood dreams of becoming a doctor or a firefighter, maybe even being a princess in her own castle. When the teacher came to this young man, his face went red. He looked at the floor, speaking quietly but truthfully. “I want to live to be 21,” he said.
All of his fellow students laughed. What a small and uninspired dream! But none of them knew that he was actually setting a high bar. He wasn’t particularly confident that he would see that dream come true.
Whatever your situation may have been growing up, the reality is that most everyone will come to places in their lives where they’re walking through an immense, terrible struggle. A man with a perfect childhood and a happy home may find himself later wrestling with a crippling addiction which has cost him everything. A woman with a storybook romance and a beautiful marriage may wake up one day to find a note from her husband saying that he’s fallen in love with another woman and he’s leaving her and the children.
The sad reality of following Christ is that not only are difficult times a possibility, but they in fact become a certainty. Jesus tells us that because we are His and we choose to follow Him, we will endure much suffering, though we also are given the promise of hope which helps us through.
The truth is, we have a real enemy. The same demonic forces which banded together to make Jesus’s own people abuse, revile, and eventually kill Him are also at work against all who truly follow Him. And yet, while this may sound discouraging, we find another very unusual promise for those who follow Him. It promises that the very things which the enemy will use to try to kill you are what God uses to produce power and freedom in your life.
James reminds us:
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing”
James 1:2–4
Rise & Fall
When I look back, I see many moments in my life where my anchor seems to have disappeared. This is in stark contrast to earlier life where my anchors were easier to see. Although life was incredibly difficult when I was younger, the Father allowed me to see my anchors of hope. When a day was awful, I could lay in bed at night and dream of the martial arts tournament that was coming up next month. I would mentally practice my forms and breaking boards, dreaming of the excitement of meeting new people, performing well, and getting the trophy. In those days, my anchors were sure and trustworthy. Rarely did I look forward to something only to be disappointed later.
As life progressed and I faced new type of trials and struggles, the water became deeper and more murky. Over and over, I found my hopes being disappointed, and it even seemed as though I lost my anchors. God would lead me into a business or career opportunity which had great success. I would begin to dream that I was finally going to be set free and living the dream of destiny. I couldn’t wait to begin living out my dream and accomplishing the things I know He’d put in me from long ago. Unfortunately, however, while everything would be blessed and going exactly how I expected it to go, time after time something went terribly awry. Most often, it would be in a single moment, where I would wake up to find that something had changed over night, and my dream had become a nightmare again.
Not so long ago was a great example of this.
An idea came to me while I was on a long fast. In a matter of a few months, I’d built the idea into a business, with almost no outside help or money. It grew to produce incredible profits in mere months, and had over ten million members with a faithful following who loved it. It was astounding to see and obvious that God’s hand was on it from the start. We never advertised once, yet we had millions of members and thousands of people with a near religious zeal for evangelizing the business! I received many letters of gratitude and affection which surprised me. I’d never asked anyone to do it, yet some kids even went around their college campuses passing out fliers. Everyone wanted to be a part of the movement, even though the business was honestly quite trivial and silly in its essence!
During that time, I developed a small bit of fame. My family and friends were all proud to know me, and I had a lot of friends. Things were going so well that I decided to rent a nice house in Florida and invited a few friends come join me. The plan was to work together to build the business and enjoy our lives. Unfortunately, just a day or so after moving in, the tide began to turn. The company who we used for advertising decided that they would only pay us half of what they were paying. They would not allow us to contact them to dispute or find out why. Suddenly, I couldn’t afford the new house.
I did all I could to find angel investors and try to weather the storm, but we were now living in a house that we couldn’t even furnish. My friends resented me and decided that they didn’t want to get a job to help out during the hard times. One even told me that the plan was for me to make them rich without them having to work.
Several weeks later, another crippling blow came. Someone began spreading the word about our free product, telling people that they had to sign up for a scam “survey” in order to get it. They created a virus to spread it, and I later learned that the scammers netted more money in three days than we made the entire year. (Scams pay well, but we refused to hurt our users that way and relied on normal advertising.)
Unfortunately, because of how fast the virus spread, the media jumped on this. I woke up one day to calls from major news outlets all over the world. In a single hour, my business was labeled as a scam and fake. Around that time, my friends despised me and decided to leave. They left me in the house by myself without a car. This meant that even if I could manage to afford it, I wasn’t able to go to the store to get groceries. I was out in the country, years before the days of ride-share apps. To make matters worse, I was also more than 700 miles from where any other friends lived. By the Grace of God, I still had one friend who drove 13 hours straight to come get me and bring me back to Michigan.
In spite of this, the business continued to grow and gain positive media coverage. I fought hard, even briefly gaining four times more revenue than before. Shortly after, however, more problems arose, and we were scammed by a new advertiser who decided to pay nothing on the near $40,000 that they owed us. This lead to my losing another apartment.
As more happened, I eventually had to close the doors. What started in fame and praise, ended in slanderous allegations and scorn. My friends walked away and even my partner and investor left out of fear of the string of unfortunate events affecting him personally. All of this, the rise and the fall, happened in fewer than 18 months.
When times like this happen, it can be easy to think that you were betrayed or that you lost your anchor. Although it may not look like it, I can tell you with full confidence that the idea and the success was from God. At the height of its success, I was absolutely confident that it was finally time for me to be able to live out the destiny that I had in my heart. I began to imagine that place and what it would look like. I started making plans – how long I would stay in the rented house and of saving to buy a new one. I planned out how I’d grow and scale the company, who I would hire, and what my role would be in the future. I could tell you the next five years and how it would play out. Yet somehow, in a series of major unexpected blows, it was all taken away and my plans came to nothing.
I’m sure that many of you have had similar types of experiences in your own lives. This is just a single example of many like it in my own. Over the years, I spent a lot of time looking back on these events and wondered why my anchors were not holding. There are countless places where I lacked wisdom and where I made wrong decisions, which I can identify as adding to my problems. Yet, the truth is the most major events were beyond my control or ability to prevent. As strange and unexplained as the successful growth times, the times of tearing down were in the same force.
Hidden Hope
Today, I’ve been inspired to write this because of the events in this latest season of life. The last four years have been the most difficult battle of my life to date. I’ve faced dire issues in both physical and mental health, as I deal with the combination of chronic illness and trauma. This combination has prevented me from being able to work and build a life, which has made me feel very powerless and low. I’d hoped to see these things recede at least enough to push forward, yet instead, I’ve watched years go by. I’ve been saddened by the thought that even if I do make it out, I may be too far past my prime to have and enjoy the kind of relationship and marriage that I may want one day.
In the midst of all of this, several years ago I had a vision of hope for a possible relationship in the future. No matter how hard things became, this possibility gave me some solace and helped me to continue on. Just yesterday, however, that possibility expired, as I learned that the woman I thought may be “the one” is now getting married.
This is a very personal and even embarrassing thing for me to share, but the reason that I decided to is because I know that many of you have experienced similar moments in life. What surprised me about this one is that it was different. This time, I began to see the tangible positive effect of the years of pain and struggle.
Like those times before it, I’d invested a bit of my time into imagining what could be. Just as I’d learned to do as a child, some imagination of a better circumstance in the future provided solace which helped to get me through when my body was screaming with pain and my mind tormented with a never ending assault, featuring a playlist of times I’d failed or embarrassed myself publicly. (Sharing this will most likely be added to that list)
Up to this point in life, an event like this would generally make me feel depressed. It was another hope disappointed, an anchor lost. To my surprise, however, this time was different. I found myself able to feel joy for the future that the couple had together. Although it may not be my story, it made me happy to see someone else having that happiness. It may not have been what I thought, but this time I knew that the true anchor of hope wasn’t in the person or the image from my imagination. I’d come to realize a powerful truth about Hope .
In deep waters, Hope is often hidden.
Deep Waters
When I was a child, it was necessary for me to see the anchor that I’d cast out in the water. Seeing it rest on the bottom during those days taught me how an anchor works and helped me learn to trust in it. If you’ve ever been to the Caribbeans, one of the most amazing and beautiful parts of the trip is the water. Even if you go out where the water is deeper than you are tall, you can still see the bottom. If you take a boat out and throw out an anchor, you can trace the chain all the way to the bottom where it rests. As you continue to sail out further, however, the situation changes.
When you’re out in the middle of the ocean, what was once clear, beautiful water is now murky. On a stormy day, it looks jet black with white froth foaming up like the jowls of a rabid dog as the waves angrily crash against the ship’s metal hull. You cast the anchors out, and it seems like it goes down forever before finding a place to rest. Gone are the days of peering over the edge to see it resting just meters below you.
In this place, you may look over the edge and try to imagine where it rests. You imagine that the extra dark spot in the water must be the reflection of your anchor, resting somewhere beneath, cleaving on to the edges of a massive rock. The reality is, however, in this place, your anchor is so deep that it is hidden from view.
It’s in this place that you learn to rely on the anchor itself rather than your view of it. You may not see it, but the fact that your ship remains steadfast is all the evidence that you need.
Proverbs puts it this way:
Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
Proverbs 19:21
I’ve shared a few things today which were quite personal to me. You may have read it and felt sad or even confused. Some of you may have felt a bit angry, as you remember the injustices you’ve felt in your own lives or those which your loved ones have experienced. Maybe you’re even thinking that this is just another example of how God leads us into something just to let us down. I can tell you that I’ve felt this way over and over, as I’ve had this same cycle of hope built and taken away repeat in my life.
However, as I continue through this recent place of struggle and pain, some days even spent on the edge of losing my life from physical health issues, I’ve come to discover the strange mystery in the verse from John which was shared in the beginning of this writing. I’ve begun to learn what it means to to count it all joy, not in that I enjoy the suffering as some strange, masochistic religious mindset, but instead I’ve learned to be genuinely grateful for the result that lies on the other side of the storm.
To be honest, in the past when extreme trials and struggles came my way, and when my anchors seemed to disappear, I would often find myself buckling under the pressure and giving in to bouts of depression and sorrow. I’d find that bitterness and anger would come out, and the strength I thought I had would fail. Sometimes, I’d become so hopeless and bitter that I’d give in to temptation and try to find comfort in losing myself to things which only hurt me further.
What I can tell you now, in looking back on it all, is that there is no way that I would have been able to endure the pressure that goes with the destiny ahead of me unless I’d first learned to hold my hidden anchors and to let go of the junk within me. As long as those fleshly things still lived in me, I wasn’t ready for the greater destiny, because the waters of destiny are deep and can be rough.
The Refining Process
Although I questioned it at the time, I can now tell you with full confidence that God absolutely lead me into each moment where I’ve risen to a place of success and honour. I can also say that He lead me out of them into the low places, where I had nearly no one left to stand beside me. Each event was part of a refining process which is meant to produce a specific work in me to help me to gain understanding and lose those hidden things within myself which are not good. And I’m not special in this. He does the same thing in every one who loves and follows Him.
The reality is, no matter who we are, there is selfishness, pride, and foolishness bound up within us. Often times, the more pain we’ve experience in life, the more our wounds have lead us to adopt mentalities and habits in order to protect ourselves that really only serve to hurt us more, and moreover, they cause us to hurt others. When I look back on my life, I don’t see a victim. Instead, I see both the harm done to me and the harm I’ve done to others. And so long as there is potential in me to unfairly cause harm to others, even though I don’t ever want to, I am ready and willing to walk through the difficult place until I’ve been humbled enough to have those selfish places removed.
I give myself some grace and mercy in this process, because I’ve learned that deep wounds can cause deep rooted problems. I’ve learned to have patience with myself, but I also know that this means I need to be willing to work as hard as I can in order to overcome. Because the destiny that lies ahead of all of us who believe requires a healthy love and a spiritual and emotional wholeness that can only come from the Divine Healer, who is God in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
It is for this reason that we are able to count it all joy when the dream of our imagination is ripped to shreds. When we’re abandoned by everyone. When the people who were proud to know you are now ashamed to call you family. When you fail to live up to your own expectations. When you fall into an old habit you believed you’d overcome. When you cause harm or hurt to others even though you know your heart doesn’t want to. In the midst of all these things when people fail us and we fail others, He is working to help remove the selfish points and heal us. In the Words of John, it is during our trials that He is ‘making [us] perfect and complete.’
The Purpose in Pain
I give you this as encouragement, today, to press on through the storm in your life. Don’t let yourself be fooled by the false teachers of today who tell you that God’s purpose for you is to make you wealthy and prevent any problems from happening to you. While their messages may seem hopeful, the reality is, they cause you harm when the storm hits, because they are not anchored in Truth. They make you believe that your own Faith builds you up and the devil tears you down when you don’t have enough faith. They present God as a powerless bystander who hopes you have enough faith to withstand the enemy but can’t help you if you don’t. Others will say that if you give enough money, then you’ll be protected.
The reality is, God’s work in our lives is often complicated, but its final end is for healing. Even Jesus had to die in order to be raised up. He did this so that we all could be raised up with Him. In the same way, He tells us that those who follow Him die to themselves so that He can live in us. This process allows us to share that Life with those who are around us by being an example of wholeness in spite of all that happened. This makes His Power evident and leads others to salvation.
Let me share with you a verse that you likely haven’t heard on your weekly “Encouragement Hour” program.
“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.”
Hosea 6:1-2
Pastors today are afraid to share this verse and those like it, because they believe that these are unflattering toward the God that they’re trying to market. The truth is, however, this is because they fail to see the Truth in His Words.
When a person is dying of a cancerous tumor, the doctor has to first cut them open in order to cut the tumor out of them. Though we may not know it yet, we all have many tumors of the selfish nature bound up within us, and these are killing us. It is for that reason that we’re called to go under the knife. This is the process of dying to what is killing us and to our own natures so that we can live. The hope is found in the life without this deadly cancer. We were sick before, but in Christ we are made whole, and only in that wholeness, can we operate the fullness of the final destiny and power (the resurrection) that He has for you.
Hold Your Anchor
Cast your anchor into the deep, and keep your hope in the promise. Don’t be dismayed when you think you see the anchor but it turns out to be a mirage. The promise remains, but our plans and our image of its fulfillment are often not the correct or the full picture. However, the final promise always better than what you imagine.
When I told you about the relationship I’d hoped may be mine in the future, I can tell you that part of the reason that I’m not bothered that I was wrong is because I can look back on many similar times that I was wrong, when I was younger. Years later, I now see those people who I was sure were ‘the one’. Seeing who they became and where they ended up, I thank God that it did not work out. Put simply, we are such different people now, if we had ended up together, we both would have been miserable. It absolutely would have been the wrong fit. There’s even a song about that called, “Thank God for Unanswered Prayers”!
So even as I sit here aging, waiting, and dealing with trials beyond anything I’ve felt before, I know that my anchor is solid. Even if it’s hidden, it’s hidden in Him. So I wait with eager anticipation, not just for the fulfillment of destiny, but I even look forward to the process, knowing that with each day, I learn more, and I lose more of my old nature as I give it over to Him in my suffering. With each step, though there may be pain, it leads me closer to the place of resurrection.
And my anchor is set in the knowledge that the struggle does not last for a lifetime, but the reward for it does. This is why we count it all joy.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Romans 5:1-5
God bless you, and stay strong, encouraging one another at every opportunity.