We (who are holding on to the hope of God’s salvation promises) have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. Hebrews 6:19-20.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 1 Peter 1:3.

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23 NKJV.

We need help! So I’m sharing two excerpts before our chapter. From Hearing God by Dallas Willard: “We must never forget that God speaks to us for the purpose of developing an intelligent, freely cooperative relationship between Him and us, in which we are fellow workers or colaborers with Him. God wants us to participate in the governance of His kingdom. This relationship is drenched in the maturity and richness of genuine agape love. Our primary goal, then, is not just to hear the voice of God but to be mature people in a loving relationship with God. This will result in our living a certain kind of life – one of loving fellowship with God and those who love Him. Only with this in mind will we hear God rightly.” And from You Are The Beloved by Henri Nouwen: “Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other, but does not create true intimacy. When Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples were overcome by fear and they all “deserted Him and ran away” (Matthew 26:56)…Fear makes us move away from each other to a “safe” distance, or move toward each other to a “safe” closeness, but fear does not create the space where true intimacy can exist…To those who are tortured by inner or outer fear, and who desperately look for the house of love where they can find the intimacy their hearts desire, Jesus says: “You have a home…I am your home…claim Me as your home…you will find it to be the intimate place where I have found My hope…it is right where you are…in your innermost being…in your heart.” The more attentive we are to such words the more we realize that we do not have to go far to find what we are searching for. The tragedy is that we are so possessed by fear that we do not trust our innermost self as an intimate place but anxiously wander around hoping to find it where we are not. We try to find that intimate place in knowledge, competence, notoriety, success, friends, sensations, pleasure, dreams, or artificially induced states of consciousness. Thus we become strangers to ourselves, people who have an address but are never home and hence cannot be addressed by the true voice of love.”

I know this is long already but as we read Ezekiel 22, can we not hear what is happening today in our broken and fractured world? The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, will you judge her? Will you judge this city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her detestable practices and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: You city that brings on herself doom by shedding blood in her midst and defiles herself by making idols, you have become guilty because of the blood you have shed and have become defiled by the idols you have made…See how each of the princes of Israel who are in you uses his power to shed blood. In you they have treated father and mother with contempt; in you they have oppressed the foreigner and mistreated the fatherless and the widow. You have despised My holy things and desecrated My Sabbaths. In you are slanderers who are bent on shedding blood; in you are those who dishonor their father’s bed; in you are those who violate women during their period, when they are ceremonially unclean. In you one man commits a detestable offense with his neighbor’s wife, another shamefully defiles his daughter-in-law, and another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter. In you are people who accept bribes to shed blood; you take interest and make a profit from the poor. You extort unjust gain from your neighbors. And you have forgotten Me, declares the Sovereign Lord.’” v. 1-4, 6-12. In these acts and so many more today, we become dross, the impurity within precious metals. But we are so much more when we let Creator God – Father, Son, Spirit, speak to our hearts and minds. Creator God is here in the joy, the hope, the love we instinctively know we need so desperately. He is here when we sense what is wrong and long for what is true. He is here in our longing for more. Have you forgotten God? He has not forgotten you. And look what He does for us…I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me – just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father – and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life – only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father. John 10:14-18. We get so tangled up and confused in the prison of this world’s thinking and in our own confused reasonings. He will lead us faithfully to closeness with Him and with Him we begin a life that is true and real and full! He is ready to help. Ask. He hears. He listens. He knows.