Anchor for the Soul

Have you ever gone swimming at the beach and suddenly realized you've drifted far from where you started? One moment you're playing in the waves near your family's towels, and the next you look up to find yourself a hundred yards down the shore, disoriented and slightly panicked. The invisible current carried you away without you even noticing.

This common beach experience offers a powerful metaphor for our spiritual lives. We can drift away from God in much the same way—gradually, almost imperceptibly, until one day we wake up and don't recognize where we are anymore.

The Invisible Currents Shaping Our Lives
We're constantly being shaped by invisible forces. Our entertainment, social media feeds, friend groups, music choices, and cultural messages act like spiritual currents, always pulling us in one direction or another. We're being discipled by something, whether we realize it or not.

Recent research reveals just how far many professing Christians have drifted from biblical truth:

• 70% believe God accepts worship from all religions
• 43% say Jesus was a good teacher but not God
• 69% believe people are good by nature
• 61% claim church attendance isn't necessary

These statistics reveal a disturbing reality: many who claim the name of Christ have been carried far from the shore of biblical truth. But here's what's most telling—when researchers filtered responses by church attendance, they discovered a direct correlation. Those who attended church more than once weekly held significantly more biblical views on morality and doctrine. With each decrease in church involvement, beliefs shifted further from Scripture.

The tide is real, and it's powerful.

Two Types of Drift
The book of Hebrews addresses a community experiencing spiritual drift, and it identifies two distinct types.

Theological Drift
The first is theological drift—a loss of desire to know God more deeply. In Hebrews 5:11-12, we read a sobering assessment: "We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again."

Notice the language: "you no longer try to understand." Other translations say "you have become dull of hearing" or "too lazy to understand." The issue isn't a lack of intelligence—it's a lack of desire.

Spiritual immaturity isn't about knowing less; it's about wanting less. When we stop hungering for God's Word, when we're content with spiritual milk instead of solid food, we've begun to drift. We stop looking to Scripture for answers and instead trust our feelings, our experiences, or the prevailing cultural wisdom.

The basics mentioned in Hebrews 6:1-2 include understanding justification (repentance and faith), sanctification (baptism and spiritual gifts), and glorification (resurrection and eternal judgment). These are elementary teachings, yet many believers haven't mastered even these foundations. How can we move to maturity when we haven't secured the basics?

Moral Drift
The second type is moral drift—when our lives fail to produce spiritual fruit. Hebrews 6:7-8 paints a stark picture: "Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned."

This echoes Jesus' parable of the soils. Some hearts are hardened paths where the seed never takes root. Others are rocky ground where faith springs up quickly but withers under pressure because it lacks deep roots. Still others are thorny ground where the seed grows but gets choked out by life's worries and the deceitfulness of wealth.

Only the good soil produces fruit—the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These aren't fruits of our own effort; they're the natural result of the Holy Spirit working in receptive hearts.

When our lives lack this fruit, when we're characterized more by thorns and thistles than by Christlikeness, we're experiencing moral drift. And the warning in Hebrews is severe: persistent, unrepentant drift leads to destruction.

A Serious Warning
Hebrews 6:4-6 contains one of Scripture's most sobering warnings: "It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance."

This isn't saying a true believer can lose their salvation. Rather, it's warning those who have been exposed to the faith, who have experienced religious life, who have tasted the truth—and then turned away. There comes a point where God says, "You can have what you want." And what is hell if not getting exactly that—an eternity without God telling you what to do?

But here's the crucial distinction: if you're reading this with a convicted heart, asking "Have I gone too far?"—the answer is no. The very fact that you desire to repent means you haven't drifted beyond reach. The desire to turn from sin and turn to God is itself evidence that God is still working in your heart.

The Anchor That Holds
So how do we stop drifting? We need an anchor.

Hebrews 6:13-20 points us to the only anchor that can hold: Jesus Christ, our great high priest. God made both a promise and an oath—two unchangeable things in which it's impossible for God to lie. The promise reaches back to Abraham: "I will bless you and make you a blessing to all nations." The oath is Jesus himself.

God couldn't swear by anything greater than himself, so he swore by his own name. And to keep his promise, he sent the oath-keeper—Jesus, who lived perfectly, fulfilled the law completely, and offered himself as the final sacrifice.

Unlike the Old Testament priests who had to atone for their own sins before offering sacrifices for the people, Jesus is the perfect high priest. He entered the heavenly sanctuary on our behalf, sprinkling his own blood on the altar so ours could be spared. He is "a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek"—a mysterious biblical figure who foreshadowed Christ as both king of righteousness and king of peace.

This is mature Christianity: understanding that we have a high priest who has gone before us, who has made a way where there was no way, who anchors our souls firmly in the promises of God.

Throwing Out Your Anchor
If you recognize yourself drifting today, the solution isn't to try harder or turn your life around through sheer willpower. The answer is to anchor yourself to Christ. He hasn't moved. The promise hasn't changed. The oath still stands. The blood has not lost its power to save.

When you were a child drifting down the beach, panicked and disoriented, the solution was simple: swim back to shore. Your family hadn't moved. They were right where you left them.

The same is true spiritually. Christ is exactly where he's always been—faithful, true, unchanging. Throw your anchor to him. Trust that he is able to hold you fast against every current, every tide, every force that would pull you away.

Root yourself in Christ, and watch your life begin to bear fruit—not through straining effort, but through the natural overflow of being anchored to the source of all life. That's the anchored life, and it's available to anyone willing to stop drifting and hold fast to Jesus.

The anchor has not moved. The question is: will you grab hold?