Hi, I'm Leanne Friesman, and this is Restoring Word.
Have you just given up on God? Are you just done with church? You're done with the Bible?
Believers have broken your heart.
I think I have a word today for you that will help you and strengthen you.
Before I kind of get right to that word, I need to set the stage a little bit.
I am in Acts 27,
and I'm
using
illustrations right now from a sweet little sailboat. It's a Catalina 25. It's
1987, and I'm using these illustrations
from this sweet boat to
encourage the body of Christ, and I recently heard the most
amazing message about the four anchors, and it's from the book of Acts.
Let me set the stage. I don't really want to read all of this. I mean, I
have a lot of notes today,
but I think more than anything, I just want to share from my heart instead of trying to read a bunch of stuff to you.
Let me set up where I'm going.
Okay, so Paul is on his way to Rome.
He's on a ship. It's got
267 men or 97 men, something like that.
Big sails.
They're going after the Day of Atonement, so it's late in the season. The storms are crazy, and
yet they've got to get there quickly before the winter sets in.
They've loaded up a lot of grain, a lot of men.
The owner of the ship is there.
There's other authorities there, and these people all come together to try to make a decision in the natural,
just from logic, as to what they should do and should they go forward. Paul, the Apostle, though,
he gets a warning. He gets a prophetic warning, and it starts off here in verse 10.
Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to the ship and to the cargo and to
our own lives also.
But the centurion,
instead of listening to Paul, said they followed the advice of the pilot and
the owner of the ship.
Okay?
And so they decided to go anyway.
You know,
I can't tell you how many times we as believers and non-believers, we miss it.
We have someone who gives us a prophetic word or prophetic direction, and we just think
we know better.
So we're going to do it our way, and
when you do it your way without listening to that prophetic warning,
you're going to get in trouble. You know, a prophetic warning really is exhortation. A lot of people are like,
oh, that's not a positive word. You're not speaking life into me.
Let me tell you, when God tells you that if you don't do something, you're going to not do what he wants or
ultimately what his plan is. You're going to get yourself in trouble, and you could get yourself killed, and
you don't listen. That's really the love and the mercy of God in operation. That's another whole message, trust me.
Because why? When God speaks something into your heart, you can stand on that promise.
You can know that God's going to see you through. Okay?
So they continue to go anyway, and
it's looking bad, and they have to divert their path a little bit. They have to sail to the lee.
It's interesting now, after studying sailing, how many
things in the Bible have sailing
terminology in it. Why? Because this gospel is going to be preached to the whole world,
right? And then the end shall come. One of those Bible promises we stand on. Well here, Paul is taking the gospel to Rome,
and he knows it's going to be dangerous,
and
they're running into storms, but he's got this word
that no matter what happens,
he's going to make it. And
later on, I'm going to jump down here to verse 23 in chapter 27.
Last night an angel of the God to whom I believe
and whom I serve stood beside me. And he said, don't go, do not be afraid, Paul. You
must stand trial before Caesar. So even if you're going to do something negative
or painful, but you know he's in it, he's gonna carry you. God has
graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you. So keep your courage,
men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as it was told me. So Paul
knows they're gonna make it. It doesn't matter what it looks like.
Anyway, they continue to sail here, and in verse 29, fearing that they would be
dashed against the rocks, they dropped four anchors. Now I heard a message
recently that just lit me up, and it had to do with the four anchors. And you know
there are things that we can ground ourselves to. There are things that will
keep us stable and safe and strong. There are things in our lives that will
enable us to endure the wind and the storm that are coming. You know
in Oklahoma, we know how to brace ourselves for storms, right? It's tornado
season. Everybody in Oklahoma knows what to do. But here in Scripture, they've got
storms that are coming. They're not listening, so they drop four, not just one,
but four anchors. So the message I heard that was just really beautiful was the
four anchors. Okay, what's the first anchor? It's the immutability of God's
Word. You know, no matter what goes on in this world, the Word of God is gonna
stand. It stood the test of time. The Word of God stood through World War II,
through the Vietnam War, through the founding of America. I mean, if you think
historically about everything that has happened over the course of several
thousand years, for sure, the Word of God has always stood. We don't get to decide
what we like or what we don't like. It's immutable. It stands forever. So we can
stand on it, too, and we can trust it. Number two, the second anchor is His
mercy. Aren't you thankful for His mercy? Some of you might not even know what
mercy is. Mercy is unwarranted or unmerited favor. You deserved something
bad to happen, but something good happened instead. Mercy is when God
sees your humble state. You know, when you humble yourself before God, and you cry
out to Him, and you ask Him to come into your life, and you tell Him that you've
screwed it all up, I'm telling you He will be merciful, and He'll turn it
around for good. He is a merciful, loving God. You can trust in His mercy. Third
anchor is His presence. No matter what we face, no matter where we go, no matter how
difficult a situation we might get ourselves into, if you have the presence
of God round about you, you're gonna be okay. That presence will give you peace
in the storm. It will carry you through unimaginable difficulty. Isn't that
good? You know, He's always there. Maybe we don't think He's always there, but
He's always there. The fourth anchor is His sovereignty. God is sovereign. Do
things happen that we don't understand? Yes. Do bad things happen to good people?
Unfortunately, yes. We live in a fallen world. We live in a world where people
who are evil do evil things, and God doesn't have anything to do with it, and
you can't blame Him for it. There are things that are happening that you
just don't understand. There's things happening right now in our nation that
just look kind of wonky and crazy. But you know, I believe with all of my heart
God's got a plan.
Maybe things are being exposed for a reason, and that's always a good thing.
Okay, so I'm listening to this message on these four anchors. I'm like, Lord, I want
to share this message. This is so good, but I just don't want to copy somebody
else's message. I want this message to be uniquely mine. Well, you know, when you
ask God into something, He'll do it. So last weekend, the kids and I go up to
Genova, and Sean and I would go up to Skytook Marina, and we're going down on
beautiful Little Rayo, and we want to go out on the water to watch the
fireworks. I thought, this will be easy. We'll just go out, drop our
an anchor, watch the fireworks, pull the anchor back up, go back in, put the boat
in her slot, and we'll just have a beautiful evening, and there was live
music, and it was wonderful out, and everything looked amazing. Only when we
got out on the water, I went to let the anchor out, and it just dropped in the
lake. I'm looking at Jen. Jen's looking at me. I said, I don't know what to do. We
got to go back. We got to go back. Okay, so Sean turned the boat around. We came
back in, pulled the boat in. We get the boat in, and all of a sudden, we can't
figure out. We can't actually put the boat in the slip. It won't go forward. We
can't figure out why. We can't tie it up to the cleats to keep the boat safe. What
is wrong with this boat? Well, Geneva, she says, Mom, something just doesn't feel right.
She took this big flashlight spotlight that we have, and she shined it down
underneath the boat, and you know what had happened? The anchor had actually gone
in between two, the fork in the anchor had gone between a steel beam in the
frame, and now the anchor that we thought was still out in the lake, the anchor we
thought we lost with the rope that was amazing because it could measure depth,
we thought we had lost all of that only to find out, you know what happened?
Somehow or another, the rope got wrapped around the front buoy on the front of
that sailboat, and then the rope somehow, don't ask me how because it's really,
really long, it got tangled around the winged keel. I am not making this up.
There is no way this should have or could have ever happened. I thought this
was the strangest thing ever, and I, in the dark, I'm laughing. I'm frustrated. I'm
overwhelmed. We're all kind of sweating it out going, what do we do? And I go,
there's got to be a message in here somewhere, and I thought about it for
quite a while. Next day we went to Arkansas, and my grandson was dedicated,
and I'm sitting talking to Jen and, I'm sorry, Gabrielle and Josiah, and it
just rolls out of me. What about the people who have abandoned their anchors?
Are you one of those people? Are you one of those people that used to trust God's
word, used to trust His mercy? You knew His presence. Maybe you were even a
worship leader. Maybe you were in ministry. Maybe there was a time in your
life where you loved God, you served God, and you trusted Him, but you don't trust
Him anymore, and you've turned your back on Him. It's looking kind of dark, and you
know what? Things just aren't working right in your life. Just like us trying
to pull that boat in, and it's not working. Why is it not working? Why is
this so hard? Why can't we tie this boat down? My kids, we're just, we're just
shaking our head. I'm like, guys, we're just gonna do the best we can. We'll
figure it out. I'll come back out. So I come out, I don't know, a day or two later,
and I jump in the marina, and I get on my mask, and I snorkel down there, and I'm
looking at that goofy little anchor thinking, ah, I'll just pull it out. It'll
be okay, and I'll un-jar it, and I couldn't move the dumb thing. I could not
move that anchor. It's lodged underneath that sailboat, and I could see the rope,
and I figured out how the rope, I had to look at it for a while too, the rope
somehow, how did it wrap itself around that boat? And here's what the Holy
Spirit said in my heart. You might have abandoned God. You might have had your
heart broken by people. You might have had your heart broken by people in the
ministry. Been there. You might have had your heart broken by, by God. You're, and
you're wondering, where is His presence? What happened? Like, I thought everything
was good, and now it's a mess. Do you know that anchor is like the Holy Spirit? That
anchor underneath my sailboat is like God the Father. No matter where you've
gone.
No matter what you've done, no matter how hurt you may be, no matter how broken you
may be, discouraged you may be, you may no longer want to have anything to do with
God, with the church, with ministry, with Christianity. I'm telling you He has not
let go of you, and He loves you, and He has a plan for your life, and He's gonna
use you in ways you can't even imagine when you don't even know it, because He's
a loving, merciful God. And even when it looks like He's not doing anything, He's
doing something. Why? Because He's sovereign.
It's heartbreaking, I know, for many to hear something like this, because maybe something's
happened that you just can't explain or express, but I can tell you from experience,
when you get your heart broken, step back, try not to get too emotional, and ask the
Lord to give you insight. Ask Him to show you what you don't understand. And I can
promise you, if you will humble yourself, His mercy will be poured out in your life,
and you'll see Him, His presence will come flooding back, and you can once again have
a beautiful relationship with Him. You can trust Him. He's faithful. Thank you for listening.
Like, subscribe, and share. I'd like to get some feedback from the message today, so if
you could leave some comments there for me, I would appreciate it. Thank you for listening.