Mid-Week Message - Storms

It rained today.  It rained hard.  We were under threat of severe thunderstorms most of the day and tornadoes part of the day.  The weatherman said there could be winds up to eighty miles per hour and to expect tree damage.  We also had a chance for large hail.  Gratefully, the dangerous part of the storms all passed to the north of our home and they ended much sooner than we expected for them to.

As I was listening to the pouring rain, I was thinking about life.  We all have times of hardship, or storms if you will, that we encounter.  Like rain, some storms we can anticipate, but others seem to pop up out of the blue.  Someone gets gravely ill.  A job is lost.  The economy takes a downturn. Relationships end.  A child struggles with addiction.  A loved one passes away.  The list is endless. Everyone encounters something in life that is difficult to make it through.

How should the storms of life be dealt with?  In a perfect world, we would go straight to the cross and dump those issues at the base, trust the Lord to take care of them, recover our smiles and go on. In a perfect world.  But since there are no perfect people, we do not have a perfect world.  We fight our humanness as we struggle to gain or maintain control.  We do the best we can as feeble beings who were never intended to carry the weight of these burdens.  Then, eventually, hopefully, we remember that we have a Holy Advocate who has all power and can calm our storm just as he calmed the storm for His disciples.  His words were, "Peace!  Be still."  The storm stopped raging and calm was restored.

One evening while scrolling through a social media site, I saw these words, "Don't tell God how big your storm is.  Tell the storm how big your God is!"  Jeremiah 32:17 states, "Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you."  No storm, physical, mental, emotional or spiritual is too difficult for our Lord.  Not depression.  Not divorce.  Not money problems.  Not addiction.  Not the loss of a job, the rebellion of a child, illness or the death of a loved one.  Nothing is beyond His ability to turn darkness into light, sadness into joy, or emptiness into the abundant life that He promised.  Nothing! 

So, what do we do?  Pray!  Tell the Father how we are feeling.  He delights in His children confiding in Him.  When Jesus was in the garden before His crucifixion, He was honest with His Father.  He admitted how He was feeling and asked God to take what was coming away from Him if there was another way to accomplish His purpose.  Surely, if Jesus can do that we can too.  God didn't remove the storm from Jesus, and He may or may not remove ours.  But look at what is available to us as His children because of what Jesus went through.  This is our assurance that the Lord will use our storms for our good if we will allow Him to.  

Facing a storm today?  Turn to the only One who can calm it then hang on for whatever comes next and know that on the other side of the darkness is the great light of His goodness, grace and mercy.