Soul Anchor

Hope is a powerful thing.
The tiniest thread of hope is enough to keep us holding on against the craziest odds. If you are hoping a guy likes you...well, let's just say that it doesn't take much hope to start the wedding plans in your mind, does it? Toss us a crumb, and we'll hold on to the hope that our mother will love us the way mother's should, or our dad will step up and protect us like father's ought to. Here's hoping that the boyfriend who dumped you will come back,  or that, this time, I really am pregnant, or that, this time, things will be different.
A tiny drop of this hope stuff is like super glue.

When I started this chapter on weakness, I knew that I wanted to include something about our High Priest understanding our weaknesses, but I never expected to be camping out in Hebrews so much. It seemed that when I tried to pull that one strand out, I couldn't separate it from the rest of the book.

So I'm back in Hebrews again, this one last time, I think.

Jesus is a priest according to the Melchizedekan order.
Do you know what that means?
It means he is a priest forever, and it means that his priesthood came with an oath, an oath God swore by himself, because no one is greater than Him.
"The Lord has sworn
and will not change His mind
Thou art a priest forever."
You may think, "that's nice", "not quite sure why that is important to me"?

It's like this, life has a way of tossing you about like a beach ball on the ocean. You need an anchor, something to hold you steady and sure, to stop you from being bounced about.
This Melchizedekan priesthood comes with a hope, the size and weight of an anchor, not at all like this tiny, thin, fragile hope, that keeps us holding on to something or someone, that isn't even good for us.
This one comes with a high priest that lives forever.
Forever: ever lasting, has no end, won't run out, never stops, never quits, goes on forever, (which is longer than our finite brains are capable of imagining).
This one comes with a promise, an oath, from God that He will never leave you, never give up on you, and God doesn't lie or change his mind.

Read and decide for yourself.
"In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, in order that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement, we who have fled for refuge in laying hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." Hebrews 6:17-20
"and has become such not on the basis of a law of physical requirement, but according to the power of an indestructible life." 7:16
What's more, previous priests were always being replaced because they died, but Jesus, "because He abides forever, holds His priesthood permanently. Hence also He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them." 7:24-25

Jesus Christ, My High Priest, gives me free and confident access right to the presence of God, access He bought for me with His own blood, through the sacrifice of His own body. And with Him, where He has gone right up to heaven, I have a hope so sure, so trustworthy, it is like an anchor for my soul. What a beautiful, beautiful thing it is for a soul, caught in a raging storm, to find itself secured to an anchor that will not budge!  What soul, blinded and confused by changing circumstances, insecurities  unreliable relationships, disappointments, sicknesses, lost jobs, doesn't long for such a hope!

Because He lives forever, He saves forever.
Because He lives, He intercede for me, forever and always.
His life is indestructible, therefore my hope is indestructible!

The Lord designs trials for us to reveal our weaknesses, to break us, which in turn, build our endurance.  That cross on your back is going to make you wobbly, it's going to make you weak, it's going to feel like suffering, it's going to humble you. That is what you can expect to experience when learning to crosswalk. If you haven't already started to, you will, and when you do, you are going to want an anchor.
That hope of eternal life in Christ is your soul anchor.

They say,
"Our bones are dried up, and our hope is perished."
The Lord says,
"Can these bones live?"
And right before Ezekiel's eyes, he saw a valley covered in dry, white bones come to life; he heard the thundering noise of all those bones clacking against each other as they joined together. Eventually, standing before him, was a huge army, each one put together with 206 bones!
You know what all those rattling bones say to me?
They say "Hope is alive!"
Ezekiel 37