Anchor of Hope Reformed Church

In our unsaved sinful condition we are poor, helpless, hopeless, in shame, and in reproach, under condemnation, children of wrath, dead and heading for eternal punishment.  We needed a savior! Jesus washed away the sin and filth of our rebellion against God in His atoning blood poured out for the elect on the cross.  For those so saved, our lives are then marked by gratitude, praise and honor for...

O Lord, please humble us so that we will look to you for our life, peace, hope and not in our self or in any other created thing.  Humble us so that we will trust in Your will, Your ways, Your timing.  Humble us so that we will seek you, believe in the the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, and live for your glory and not for our own.  Please humble us through the power of your Holy Spirit! ...

There is only one God!  This one God -- God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is the source of all life, light, truth, peace, hope, love, goodness, holiness... Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the life -- not a way, a truth, or a means of life.  Jesus -- his sacrificial life, death, and resurrection is the only way to eternal life with God. God is so gracious and merciful and lov...

We must be refined!  We must have our sin burned away by the refining fire of God's holy love and justice. We need to be made righteous and we cannot do this ourselves.  This is why God made Jesus to be sin though he knew no sin so that we could be made righteous with His righteousness.  God is both just and justifier!  Praise God for the good news of Jesus Christ!   He is our only hope!

We need a savior!  We need to be delivered from our guilt. We need to be washed and cleansed from our sins.  There is one way for us to be made new, made clean; and for God to be pleased with and delight in us.  The Way, Truth and Life for us to be forgiven by God and to have our sins paid for is the life, death, resurrection, ascension and future return of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.  God h...

God commands obedience! He is God; and His ways are true, just, perfect, life giving. To disobey God is to do what is false, unjust, imperfect, deadly and destructive.  It does not work to try to deceive God, others, or ourselves with a surface level religion, devotion, or lip service toward faith and belief in God.  God is always able to look under the surface and fully expose the heart with His...

It is an amazing truth that God is the absolute sovereign creator and redeemer.  God makes everything. He makes each and every one of us. God makes for Himself a people.  He starts them from an elderly couple and a barren womb. God then frees them from enslavement in Egypt and gives them a land, defeats their enemies, teaches them, guides them, yet most of them rebel and turn away from God living...

I am excited and hopeful as we begin our sermon series in the book of Isaiah.  King Uzziah is a great example of the overall problems with much of Judah and Israel. When Uzziah feared God and sought the Lord, God made him prosper. Yet, when Uzziah was strong, and rather than remembering it was God who made him strong, he grew prideful and forgot his need for God.  This brought about his destructio...

The Church is the Body of Christ with Christ as its head.  The Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ and The Father work through the church to encourage the hearts of believers.  God fills us with His peace and our love is to be rooted and founded in faith in Jesus Christ.  It is the love God has for us in Jesus Christ and the love we grow into as children of God that is love incorruptible.   The love we h...

The best way to stay alert and persevere is to be in a constant communion and fellowship with God in prayer. It is in times of forgetting about, ignoring, and not taking God into consideration that we most find ourselves wounded and stumbling in sin and fear. The Spirit prays for us and groans on our behalf when we do not even know what to pray. The Spirit also empowers us and our continual prayer...

God's Word makes us alive! It is living and active and the Holy Spirit uses the word of God, the gospel, as it makes alive God's elect. Faith comes through hearing, understanding, believing in, trusting, and living out the word of God. God's word not only makes us alive to repent and believe in the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, it also enable us to grow up into the like...

Much of the battle we face in standing in the faith is waged within our thoughts. We must have transformed minds through the power of the Holy Spirit that enable us to continue to have our hope fixed in Christ no matter how difficult the circumstances. It is by holding fast to our hope in God's promises to us His children that we will have a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul enabling us s...

Our three enemies: the devil, the fallen world systems, and our fallen flesh want us to doubt and call into question the goodness, holiness, justice, love, and truth of God. This is why we must stand with the shield of faith always before us; for it is only with a sure hope and conviction that we will be able to continue to stand against such a continual attack. In the midst of the fiery trials we...

It is the knowing, believing, trusting, and having faith in the Good News of Salvation in Jesus Christ by God's grace that enables us to stand and walk into and through any circumstance and situation. It is knowing that God is for us and not against us because the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf on the Cross that enables us to understand Romans 8:31b-33 ...If God is for us, who can be agai...

Within our constant battle against sin, the fallen world and the Devil we must protect our hearts and emotions. This is only done through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is through walking in righteousness, by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, that our hearts and emotions are protected against the dagger thrust or arrows of temptations to immorality, pride, and disobedience to God. We are called...

We are in constant battle against sin within, the fallen world around us, and the Devil. We must have our tunics tucked firmly into our belts so we are not tripped up and fall. The tunic is our minds, thoughts, desires, passions, who we are -- and the only way we will be able to stand firm and advance against our enemies is having all of who we are firmly held together by the truth of Jesus Christ...

In every moment we are on the front lines, in the heat and intensity of battle. The Devil, the demonically inspired and influenced fallen world systems, and our fallen flesh/old-dead-nature are our enemies. We are to resist these enemies in the name of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we humble ourselves and draw near to God the Father our rock our fortress and our protection. God&a...

God shows no partiality. No matter how low you are, God can lift you up in His son Jesus Christ. No matter how high you are, God can bring you down and humble you in His Son Jesus Christ. This is why every believer, regardless of background, brokenness, political power, wealth, education, or social standing is first and foremost brother and sister, members of the body of Jesus Christ. We submit to...

Every believer in Christ, at the core of their identity, is a slave of Jesus Christ. Jesus is a wonderful master, infinitely better than our former masters of sin and the Devil! A part of being a slave of Christ is picking up our cross, dying to our self and following Jesus. The more we become a slave to Christ the freer we become to everything and everyone else. This is why we can render service...

God disciplines and instructs those whom he loves. Earthly fathers are to love their children enough to sacrifice themselves for the sake of not only their wives, but also their children so that their children will grow in the truth of God. God's word is to so permeate the words, actions, conversations and instructions of the father so that the truth of the one true Heavenly Father is always...

Parents are to raise their children in the love, truth, word, and in obedience to God. Children are to learn, honor, respect, and obey their parents in all good and right things. Obeying parents is training for obeying God; disobedience and disrespect to parents is training in disobedience and disrespect for God. Jesus shows all of us children what it means to live out obedience to our heavenly Fa...

A husband and wife are one flesh. This is a mystery and it is to help us better understand the mystery of how every believer, the church, is a part of the body, flesh, of Christ. This is part of the reason that marriage is "until death do us part." Just as the church can not be separated from Christ its head, a husband and wife are to be one flesh, the wife respecting her husband and the...

Jesus cares for the church more than we can hope, imagine, or fully comprehend. Jesus gave His life for the Church! Jesus frees the church from the bondage of sin, death, the devil, eternal judgment and wrath! Jesus interceded to God on behalf of the church. Jesus is returning for His church when all will be made well in the New Heavens and New Earth. Husbands, how much are you sacrificing for, se...

In Jesus Christ, wives are able to live out the most God glorifying and Christ exalting life of submission to Christ depicted in submission to their husband. God has created an order of husband as head over their wife to model and display in beauty Christ's head of the church. Christ is a perfect husband to the church, let husbands be like Christ! Christ displayed perfect submission and obed...

Christ is the Head of the Church and each Christian is a member of His body. The hand cannot say to the foot "I do not need you!" We must care for one another as Christ cares for us. This means sacrifice, suffering, service, and the willingness to die to our self, pick up our cross, and follow Christ. To love Christ is to love our brothers and sisters as Christ loves them.