Anchored

December 30

In spite of the confidence believers have that God’s promises are ‘yea and amen,’ why then does it sometimes appear that Christians suffer defeat? Why does every believer not always triumph over every foe? Why are the faithful sometimes overcome by things as temporal as failing to attain financial security or undone by matters as weighty as succumbing to disease and death?

Hebrews, Chapter 11, often referred to as ‘The Hall of Faith,’ begins with a glimpse of the explanation. In the first verse it says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This makes it very clear that true faith holds to the Lord, even when the fruit of faith remains unrealized.

There follows a comprehensive list of the people of God who did not receive the thing for which they prayed. Hebrews 11:39-40 says, “They did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better...” What is that “something better”? After all, what can be better than seeing miracles in response to our prayers?

Jesus doesn’t want us to walk with Him for the loaves and fishes (see Matthew 13:14 and Mark 6:30). When He sojourned among us, there were indeed scores of people who followed everywhere He went. They were captivated by the miraculous things they saw Him do…but they were left untouched by the evidence these signs and wonders affirmed of who He was!

Our Lord does not want believers to pursue after Him for the benefits of being His children. He doesn’t want us to hover near because of what He can do for us—He wants us to follow Him because of what He has done for us! Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin. If He did nothing else in our behalf, that would still be the great, “unspeakable gift” of II Corinthians 9:15, the gift of eternal life, which all those in ‘The Hall of Faith’ received by faith, trusting in the Messiah who was to come.

That “something better” of Hebrews 11:39, 40 is not a gift whose value is recognized fully in the realm of time but whose complete worth can be realized only in eternity! If people of faith sometimes seem to be disadvantaged on earth it is only because the great benefits of our salvation cannot be discovered until we realize them at His eternal throne!

Our confidence, therefore is not in the fleeting treasure of time, not in the meager trappings of temporal power, but in the eternal riches of Heaven and in Heaven’s power which “holds the keys to death and hell and the grave,” Revelation 1:18. Though we may not escape all earthly trials, we are assured we shall never be scathed by the pangs of death and hell!

Because Jesus has conquered death and holds the keys that release us to life eternal, we are, “more than conquerors,” Romans 8:37, in spite of all the things we may face in this life! In that promise, our confidence is surely anchored for time and forever!