In the Storm (Mark 4:35-41)

The Best day of my Life

Over the course of this weekend you will get to know a bit about me and Im going to be very real with you. Not everything in my life has been sunshine and rainbows. But tonight I want to share one of the best days of my life. Well at the time it was. This was the day I was fired from my job.

I had been living in Costa Rica for three years at that point. I was a international teacher and I had moved into doing property management in the town of Nosara. If any of you have been to Costa Rica you might realize that property management isn't the same as in the US. I was the Director of Operations for this company and my job was to curate 80 properties, manage relationships with the owners and guests, and managed construction repairs and cleanings of the properties. I did this all for the owner who was a very neurotic and arrogant man from NY. After year of working for this man, I had learned what stress was really like. I had my first and only panic attack. Have you ever woke up in the middle of the night and can’t breathe and then not know why you cant catch your breathe. Ya that was fun. Unknowingly the work I did for him aided him in purchasing large amounts of drugs and he stole money from the owners of the houses to fund his drug addiction and surf vacations to Bali. He wasn't good at hiding it and those owners found out and I became the brunt of all their anger. So if you like being yelled at on the phone for hours and blamed for things you don’t know anything about, have I got a job for you.

Well on my birthday, yes the best day of my life was my birthday. The owner calls me into his office for the most awkward conversation of my life. As he is rubbing his chest, proceeds to tell me that I will not be employed at the company any longer because my job is not needed because my coworker with be taking over. This coworker is my friend. I simply smiled very enthusiastically and said thank you. The owner continued saying, “wow I thought you were going to be angry with me and want to beat me up. This conversation is going great for me!” all the while he is still rubbing his chest. I couldn't believe he said that but I wanted to laugh so hard and I did immediately as I left the office with that coworker that was being given my job. I couldn't stop smiling. I felt so free! Those 10 months of working for that man felt like a life time. I had only become a Christ three years prior and I felt that I had retracted back to how I was prior to knowing Jesus. I was angry and overwhelmed all the time. I had prayed for God to get me out of this mess and every answer I got back was “just a little longer. Hold on a little longer” I couldn’t I was at my whits end. I didn’t know if I could handle it any long. I began to hate everything I used to enjoy like surfing, running, hiking. Nothing could get me out of this storm and fog I felt I was in. I couldn’t see a way out and God didn’t seem to be giving me an answer that was helping. And I was getting to a point where I didn’t know if I could trust God.

Something I find wild about the Bible, guys, is that it doesn’t sugarcoat the people we think should be great or who are close to God. It is honest about how people are and shows that people back then are the same as we are today. In Mark there is a story about Jesus and the disciples on a boat. At this point Jesus had done a few miracles and healing. So he was getting recognized throughout the country.

On that day, when evening had come, he told them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the sea.” So they left the crowd and took him along since he was in the boat. And other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher! Don’t you care that we’re going to die?” He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence! Be still!” The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Then he said to them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” And they were terrified and asked one another, “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!”

Idk if you all have hit your fear threshold but I have been in some waves while surfing that I thought I was going to die. These guys were experienced fisherman so this must have been a serious storm. Fear and doubt can lead to a lack of trust in God. These men truly thought they were going to die and they couldn’t see past the storm of the moment they were in. Even though they have seen Jesus do other miraculous things. Fear caused them to lose trust. We are not different than the disciples. The thought jesus didn’t care about them or their lives even though He was on the boat too. I absolutely thought this during that situation at work.

Jesus has all the power and the control over the situation. he has our situation under control as well. But if you notice, the passage doesn’t say the storm went away. He calms it but all of them are still in the storm. Jesus restores hope in the lives of the disciples and he restores hope in our lives when we are in the midsts of a crisis. He never leaves us either.

So the best day of my life happened I was free from that job and all the stress and anxiety it brought. but what about the next day. I now was in a foreign country without a job! I still had bills to pay and I needed to find a way to move back to the US. I didn’t have family or close friends to relay on. I was still in the storm. It was calmer but it was still there. Jesus was with me in the storm. Like said my biggest concern was how am i going to pay my bills. Unemployment doesn’t exist for foreigners in Costa Rica. I didn’t know how is was going to buy food or pay for rent and bills. A few days later, I got two phone calls on the same day. The first one was from a person from Young Life in Maine asking be to be their area director. I applied for many YL positions all over the US over a year and a half. And this one I had not heard back from for 7 months. I was ecstatic. The second call was from the guy who just fired me. Worried when I saw that name on the phone. But he ended up telling me that by Costa Rican Law he had to pay out the rest of my salary that is on my contract. This was great news. I could now pay my bills and start the moving process to Maine.

God provided in ways that I would never have thought. I know had directions for the next step and I could survive. And all thought i began to stumble and lose faith like the disciples God still came through on his promise. I was just a little longer. It was hard. besides the panic attack there were many days I spent in tears even though i was living in paradise. God has control over our situations. He is a loving relational God. He cares about us for both our physical and mental well being. And even in my struggle of my faith in him he gave me grace. He didn’t punish me for being to lose trust. Instead he was faithful when i was lacking. Tomorrow we will go into more about how God desires deeper relationships with us. but I want to challenge you all to start to think about God as the father you run to when you mess up or are struggling, rather than a father you are worried about punishing you when he finds out what you did.