Storm Watch: March 20th

Here is the message from last night:

STORM WATCH (3): The Aftermath
Bottom Line: God can use the storms of life in ways we would never expect.

From the outside looking in, it seems like following Jesus or going to church would exempt us from all of the pain and trials of life. After all, shouldn't all those Sundays waking up early count for something? There should be some payoff, right?

But one of the difficult things we discover when we become a Christian is that we can pray a prayer and invite Jesus into our lives, but we still have all of the hardships we did before. In fact, Jesus assures us that we will face hard times when we follow Him.

Even though we are connected in an intimate way to the all-powerful God of the universe who could stop all of the hardship from even entering our lives--He doesn’t.

Even as a Christian, we still face hardships.

We discover in Scripture a God who doesn’t protect us from pain, but a God who can use pain to shape us and others around us.

All of us are either in the middle of something hard, or we will be soon, or we are coming out of something. What we discover in Scripture is a God who doesn’t protect us from pain. But we do discover a God who can use pain to shape us and others around us.

Have you ever heard about a guy name Paul from the Bible? He wrote more than half of the New Testament and experienced a number of actual, real-life storms.

Paul was a Christian during a time when it was dangerous to declare your belief in Jesus Christ. Some people pull back when that threat is looming, but Paul wasn’t scared of threats. He knew that whatever happened--good or bad--God was in control.

And because of his boldness, Paul was arrested and put on trial in the city of Jerusalem. During his trial, Paul appealed to Caesar. Because he was a Roman citizen, that move gave him the right to be tried in Rome. As a result, Paul was placed on a boat bound for Rome with other prisoners.

SCRIPTURE ACTS 27

After you’ve been in that kind of storm for a while, and you’ve tried everything you know to do and nothing seems to be working, it’s easy to lose hope.

But Paul hadn't lost hope. In fact, God spoke to Paul through an angel. Even though Paul hadn't slept or eaten in days, he wasn't hallucinating. This was a real angel. And the angel's words held a promise.

We watch people in the storms, don’t we? We want to see how they’re doing and how they’re handling life. Paul showed that he knew he was not in control--and he was okay with that. You see, your faith and trust in God don't mean you're oblivious to the realities of the storm. You’re not standing out getting drenched by what life throws at you, dodging debris as it flies by and asking, “What storm?”

Trusting God means that the storm is not the end of your story.

God is in control. And regardless of whether you know how or why you are experiencing what you are going through, you’re never going to go through it alone.

Life gets really hard, and being a follower of Christ doesn’t mean that you are exempt from the storms. But like Paul, you see God in the storm.

God is in the middle of your storm.

I love this promise from God in the book of Isaiah: “I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you” (Isaiah 43:1-2 NLT).

Pain and joy are always linked. When we mourn the loss of someone, we cry. Yet we also have moments of joy, realizing how special he or she was, and somehow the tragedy brings people closer.

You can choose to focus on the good or the bad.

When you are in the middle of a storm, this truth may not be helpful. In fact, you probably don’t even want to hear it.

So many people’s lives have been changed because of the way a friend or loved one reacted to a storm.

Where we are powerless, God is powerful.

The point of pain isn’t to suck it up so people around you see Jesus. That’s just showing the world how numb you are. But somehow, somewhere, in the middle of all the ugliness of pain, God is doing something beautiful. And it has nothing to do with applying some cliché to the situation. It’s about experiencing a God who is real and beautiful, a God who takes the ugly realities of life and turns them into something more than tragedy.

God wants to use your storm to display His greatness in your life.

We have to stop trying to control the events in our life. No matter what we do, we can’t create a perfect series of events to give us a perfect life. God is in control. Where we are powerless, He has power. And . . . that’s where God gets to show off the most. Our weaknesses get held up against the backdrop of His strength. And at the end of the day everybody goes “Wow. Did you see God work?”

Paul experienced good times and bad in his life. He didn’t just accept it, he believed that God had a plan in it all and that He would use him. He didn’t escape it. His faith didn’t mean that he didn’t have to endure what everyone else did. But Paul’s experience was different. And not only did he have the personal satisfaction of God seeing Him through the storm, but others watched Paul and what he really held on to when the storm came.