Anchor of Hope Reformed Church

Isaiah the Prophet of God

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 destruction. It was the same for the people of Judah, the people of Israel, and for us.  Let us seek G...

Love Incorruptible

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 have in Jesus Christ will never end, diminish, fade, or fail in any way. Praise God!

Alert Prayer

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 is that God will enable us to proclaim the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ in boldn...

The Sword of the Spirit

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 likeness of Christ! It is only with this sword that we can do battle against all the deceitful schemes, dece...

The Helmet of Salvation

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 stay fixed in Him no matter how strong the storms. Amen!

The Shield of Faith

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 continue to trust, believe and obey Jesus Christ knowing that He is our everything. Amen!

The Gospel of Peace

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 against us? (32) He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with ...

The Breastplate of Righteousness

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 to be holy as He is holy. Help us and guard us O Lord! Amen!

The Belt of Truth

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 and His Word. Let us wrap every thought, word, and action in the Truth! Amen!

Stand Against the Devil

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's word, the Bible equips us for this battle. Let us put on the armor of God, stand firm in t...

No Partiality with God

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 one another as we all ultimately submit to Christ. Amen!

Serving Christ the Master

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 to anyone and do good to anyone regardless of their attitudes and treatment toward us. Ven...

Discipline not Provocation

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 front and center so that everything focuses on glory to God! Their is no room for provoking to a...

Honor and Life

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 Father. Even if our parents are godless and haters of God, we honor them in whatever ways w...

The Mystery of Christ and the Church

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 husband loving his wife. Let us pray that our marriages display the unity, love, tenderness, self-sa...

Husbands and Christ

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, serving, caring for, and loving your wives? Hopefully, as much as Jesus does for His church.

Wives and the Church

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 obedience to His Father, let wives be like Christ!

Submission and Fear

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.

Spirit Life and Speech

Be careful little eyes what you look at, be careful little ears what you listen to, be careful little mind what you think about and meditate on, be careful little mouth what you say, be careful little one how you live because your heavenly Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful. Because of Jesus Christ's obedient life, sacrificial and atoning death on the cross, and victorious resurrection - those who believe in him can be set free from sin, death, and foolishness. The wisd...

Children of the Light

I love to sing the song I learned as a child in Sunday School "This Little Light of Mine." Hide it under a bush, o no! Wont let Satan blow it out! I'm gonna let it shine! It turns out that the source of this light is not "little." The Scriptures tell us that, "God is light and in Him is no darkness." Jesus is spoken of as the "light of the world." God's word is a "light unto our path." For us to let the light of Christ shine in our words, thoughts and actions means imitation of God's hol...

No Inheritance in the Kingdom of God

We need Jesus! We need new hearts that will love God and desire what God desires. We need new minds, transformed by the Holy Spirit, to think of and meditate on God's word and truth and holiness. We need new mouths that will speak truth, love, and holiness to one another. We need salvation and to be made holy as God is holy by His grace. O Lord, help us to put to death what is of the disobedient flesh within us and live according to your Holy Spirit in all things! Amen!

Walk in the Love of Christ

If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior with all your heart and confess Him with your mouth through the power of the Holy Spirit then you are a loved child of God! As God has loved us -- let us talk, walk, think, act, and display His perfect, holy, and just love. Christ died on the cross so that we could live. He became sin so that we could be credited with His righteousness. He intercedes on our behalf and is returning to make all things right! This is love unspeakable a...

Mouths Washed Out by the Spirit

What comes out of our mouths begins in the deepest recesses of our hearts and minds. When we are saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior we are given new hearts and new minds and are to grow in the likeness of Jesus Christ. Let us pray and be disciplined through the power of the Holy Spirit to meditate on and speak out only love, truth, grace, peace, forgiveness, justice, and kindness. Thank you Jesus, help us Jesus!

Members - One of Another

To believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and that he paid the full debt for your sins and has made you right with God is life-changing and life-saving! Your life is changed in that you become free from lying, free from sinning in your anger, free from stealing, free from selfish pride and only thinking about yourself. You become free from the devil and can now resist him firm in the faith and not give him an opportunity for division and conflict within the Body of Christ! Only...

Old Self - New Self

If you have been taught the truth about Jesus Christ by faithful teachers, then you have learned that the good news of Jesus Christ is of life and death importance because it is about living and dying. Jesus died on the cross so that the elect could could be forgiven and set free of sin and go from eternal death to eternal life. Believers are then to die to their old lives of sinful rebellion and hatred of God and live out the new lives they have in Christ. Let us live out the righteous...

Darkness of a Hard Heart

To become saved through faith alone in Christ alone by God's grace alone means we are given a new mind, a new heart, and a new life because of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit enables us to become sensitive and be able to experience love for God, love for one another and the desire to be holy as God is holy. Let us no longer live like the fallen rebellious God hating world, devil, and fallen flesh! Let us live like Jesus Christ! Amen, help us Jesus!

Grow Up Into Christ

You can be the fastest, smartest, strongest, most creative, and considered the top of your profession or area of discipline, yet, if have not been born again by God's grace to faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior then ultimately all you are is dead. Dead in sin means no life and no hope. Once you have been made alive in Jesus Christ then you are able to grow and flourish in His life, His truth, His grace and His love. The people of God are to grow up into Jesus Christ! Growin...

Grace Given Gifts

Jesus has won the victory over sin, death, the devil, all rulers and authorities! Jesus is King, and as a loving and gracious king he gives gifts to His servants so that they can do His work in the power of the Holy Spirit for God's glory! What an honor and privilege it is to be equipped for the work of ministry and for the building up of the saints. Service to Christ should be first and foremost in everything we think, say and do! Amen!

Does Your Heart Burn Within You?

Praise the Lord with joy and thanksgiving! Boast in the Lord and give Him all glory, praise and honor! Jesus comes alongside God's elect, speaks His word into their lives and gives them eyes to see that He has saved them from sin, death, and the devil and freed them to sing God's praise! I hope that through this time of Holy Week as we consider Good Friday and Easter Sunday the Holy Spirit will make the Scriptures and the gospel burn in your hearts as you consider more and more the love...

Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep Will Be Scattered (Good Friday)

Zechariah 13:7-9

Humble and Mounted on a Donkey

We need a King who is righteous. In a world so full of corruption and sin we rejoice in a King who is righteous and good. We need a King who is a savior. Before salvation, we were prisoners of sin, the world, the devil, and our fallen rebellious nature. We need a King who is humble enough to die, spill His own blood and pay the penalty for our sins and bear the wrath of God we deserved so that we can be forgiven. Praise God; Jesus is such a King! Amen!

Only One

How does knowing that our brothers and sisters in Christ are members of Jesus body affect our thoughts words and actions concerning them? When we understand that there is only one Lord and God over all, whether they know and or believe it or not, how does this affect our evangelism? How does “one Lord, one faith” support the Biblical truth that there is only one true Gospel and one way of salvation? Paul wants us to ask these questions and find the answers in the person, work, words and ...

Worthy of the Calling

Is knowing, having, loving, and having life in Jesus worth more to us than our earthly comforts, fleshy pleasures, and personal "rights" and "freedoms?" Is the work of Christ more important to us than our anger, frustrations, impatience, grievances, and hatred toward other people? Do we want the gifts of salvation and suffering from Christ? These questions expose our hearts. Are we living in the flesh or in the Spirit? O Lord, we are not worthy; help us by your grace to live worthy to o...

Rooted and Grounded in Love

Paul is praying that we would begin to know, comprehend, and understand something that "surpasses knowledge:" the love of God fully displayed in Jesus Christ. Such a love as this will drive out of our hearts, minds, mouths, and actions our sins, doubts, and fears. To know the love of Christ means we are freed and enabled to love God and those around us. God can do this in your life if you have faith in Jesus Christ! God can do more than what you can ask or imagine! God gets all the Glo...

Faith - Christ in Your Hearts

Do you ever feel physically, mentally, spirituality or emotionally weak? Do you want to be strong? If you will believe, confess, and trust Jesus Christ as your savior, friend, and Lord then he will give you the strength of new life, freedom from sin, peace with God, love for God and love for others.... Jesus gives you this strength through the Holy Spirit to all the Father has given to Jesus. A person with such Jesus granted, Holy Spirit enabled, Father directed strength is able to declare,...

The Gospel- The Mystery Brought to Light

We can only boast in God! The riches of Jesus Christ are unsearchable! Jesus is higher, greater, more wonderful, above all, with everything that was created, created by, for, and through Jesus Christ! How can we come into the presence of a holy almighty God with boldness and confidence? Only by, in, and through Jesus Christ. Let Jesus be your everything because He is you all in all! Amen!

Fellow Heirs, One Body

To be a servant of Jesus Christ means a willingness to obey Jesus your Master, Savior, and Lord in all things and at all times. Paul suffered much so that we who are gentiles could hear the Gospel and have the mystery explained of how we can be united to Jesus Christ through faith and by God's grace. Christ is our everything! Let us also be willing to pick up our cross and follow our Master Jesus! Amen!

Bill Camp Memorial Service

A Holy Temple in the Lord

We are one in the Spirit and one in the Lord! Our salvation is a trinitarian salvation. God the Father has chosen from eternity past who will be made alive to trust and believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. God the Son, Jesus Christ, pays the full wages of our sin on the cross so that we can be saved and forgiven, and God the Holy Spirit makes and gives us the gift of faith so that we can believe and be saved! God does this because He is gracious and loving. Just as there is one God...

Brought Near by the Blood of Christ

Jesus Christ has made forgiveness, reconciliation, and an eternal life of peace with God possible for everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself. God is calling people from every tribe, language, and people group from all over the world to be one family in Jesus Christ. This is why we can go to every person on the earth and tell them the gospel - that they need a savior; and Jesus Christ is the only savior. If you believe in Jesus Christ as your savior and lord then you become God's...

No Hope and Without God

If Jesus is not your God, your Lord and your Savior then you are hopeless and helpless, dead in sin and destined for eternal death and destruction. To be separated from Jesus Christ is of more dire consequence than to be separated from food for more than one month, separated from water for more than five days, or separated from oxygen for more than six minutes. Let us hunger, thirst, and gasp for Jesus Christ all the more knowing that He is our everything! Amen!

Crafted to Do Good

The workmanship talked about in Eph. 2:10 is that of the finest craft and exquisite detail. God’s plan and will is perfect and we must trust Him completely in all things. We are saved by grace for good works that will give God all the praise, glory and honor. Being saved, reconciled, justified with God means we have been made alive to live for Him and freed from living only in enslavement to the fallen world, the devil, and our own sinful desires. Let us live to do good now that we have...

By Grace You Have Been Saved

Spiritually dead people can do nothing to bring about their salvation! This is a biblical fact. An unsaved person is not spiritually sick, or spiritually lacking something, or in need of something more than what they have to make them whole. A person who does not believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is dead, completely empty, and must be made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit in the new life of Jesus Christ according to the will and ways of God. This is why we boast in ...

Walk or Stumble in the Ways of the Lord

Let us Praise God with honest lips and sincere hearts as we love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Though we have stumbled in sin God has made a way for our return to Him in His Son Jesus Christ! We say of Jesus what John proclaimed "behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!" As we enter into a new year let us be wise and discerning through the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us know Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life and the only way t...

Prophet, Priest & Sacrifice

I pray that you will hear the roar of the Lion of Judah this Christmas! The roar of God brings terror to those on the way of destruction; yet to those being saved the roar of God brings comfort that in Jesus Christ there is safety, love, protection, and peace. Jesus is torn so that we are healed. Jesus is killed so that we can have life. Jesus is condemned so that we can be forgiven. This is what Christmas is all about. God sends his son to be the savior of the world. Amen!

He Will Roar Like a Lion (Christmas Eve Service)

God is a loving father to Israel. God's just judgement against Israel's sin. A destroying lion tears. God's compassion grows warm and tender. A restoring lion roars.

Seek God and King

Our rebellion against God and hatred toward His commands brings about our condemnation, death, punishment and enslavement to sin. We cannot and will not save ourselves! For us to be saved, God must save us. He does this in His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus buys us out of our slavery to sin and death by taking God's just judgement that we deserve on His perfect self! God is good! He is always faithful! Jesus is our king! Let us rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit! Amen!

I Will Betroth You to Me Forever

A key aspect of God's grace to us is when he wakes us up from the slumber and death of the desires of our sinful flesh and makes us aware that without Him we have nothing. Though the world, the devil, and our sinful flesh makes endless promises of pleasure and fulfillment to us, they are nothing but empty and destructive lies. Let us pray that God will graciously remove all obstacles and road blocks between us and Him through His son Jesus Christ and the sanctification process of the Ho...

A Dead Follower

How gracious is God? How loving is God? How just is God? How holy is God? How merciful is God? Answer- "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" This is the life changing, pride removing, new life giving, reconciling, joyful, peaceful, glorifying truth of the cross of Jesus Christ. This is good news! Amen!

The Power of Christ's Resurrection & Rule

How great is the power of God for those who believe in Him? Immeasurable! How great is Jesus Christ? Immeasurable! If we repent and place all our hope and faith in Jesus Christ we die with Him and we will be raised with Him. We are absolutely secure in Jesus Christ! He is above all and the church is His body. Let us trust our all powerful, loving, gracious, holy God who is our all and all.