Storm Watchers
\\ Scriptures: Matthew 8:23-27
Most of us have much trouble praying when we are in little trouble, but we have little trouble praying when we are in much trouble.
Richard P. Cook
Intro: The disciples were transporting Christ across the lake to facilitate his ministry. The large majority of these men were sailors. They knew how to navigate, how to harness the power of the wind whether it was favorable or not. Really the calm was more the difficulty for the sailor than even an opposing wind. Although they could not take a direct route into the opposing wind they could “tack”. They could sail in a zig zag pattern ultimately going where they wished to go regardless of the way that the wind was blowing.
"The Winds of Fate"
One ship drives east and the other west,
With the selfsame winds that blow.
‘Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales,
Which tells us the way to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through life.
‘Tis the set of the soul, that decides it's goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
Not only were they seasoned sailors, they were seasoned disciples. In the short time that they had been with Jesus they had seen miracle after miracle. He was a man in demand. Actually this little sail was as much as anything else, an escape from the press of the crowd. Jesus did that every now and then. Luke 5:15,16.
“But the news about spread all the more so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to loney places and there prayed.”
He had never failed to come through and least this far and so they had no reason to doubt. But they did.. . .
It only required a storm. It wasn’t as though they had never seen a storm before. But perhaps this one was just a little more than they had faced. It taxed their sailing skills and frightened them. It was beyond their resource and so they beat a path to Christ who was calmly sleeping in the boat. And they woke him.
They had been content to let him sleep. They didn’t need him to help them sail the boat in calm seas. He wasn’t a sailor anyway, but a rabbi or a teacher. What would they know about sailing boats? Jesus knew as well that they didn’t need him and so he relaxed and trusted himself to their abilities, and napped.
So it seems to be with God when we don’t need him, he is silent, removed. We do the same thing today in our lives. Unconsciously perhaps we send the same message to Christ. You are going to work tomorrow. “Don’t worry, God I have this in hand and you just relax.
Until the storm begins and then we wonder where He is and in the words of Mark in his own account of this story.
Mark 4:38 “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?
How many times have we asked the same question of the Lord?
1.Interpreting the Storm
We interpret:
q the absence of the storm as the presence of Christ. How many times have we found ourselves relaxed and content in the times when there is no storm. We believe that this means that God is with us or that he is good at least. No problems equals the presence and blessing of God. It could mean nothing more than divine inactivity in our lives.
q the presence of the storm as the absence of Christ. And then when the storm comes we wonder where his is or like the disciples we query, “Don’t you care if we . . .”
2.Capitalizing On The Calm
q What happens in the calm?
As we need God less we experience him less. We live in a society that has openly declared and we reinforce it that we barely need God anymore. We rely on our talent, our ingenuity, our creativity and we have crafted a clever existence where God doesn’t routinely show up when we think he should. He seems to be present in miraculous ways in societies today that we would see to be less civilized than our own. The child like faith that characterizes the experience of Christians in third world countries tends to shame our own. All the time, God wants us to move back to a position of simple trust in Him.
Our experience in the time of crisis is shaped by our experience when there is no crisis. We will not know God better on the rough sea than we do when it is calm. He does not change or adjust according to the circumstances of life. He remains the same. Get to know Him when there is no trauma or tragedy and then you’ll find His help more readily when you need Him most.
ISA 61:1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners
When you read this scripture and see that the concern of Christ was to minister to the people that he did, do you wonder why you may not be experiencing him fully. Not because you are not needy – more because you don’t realize it or that you refuse to admit it. When you read this list of various needs do you see yourself listed in one of these categories. Specifically Jesus came to minister to these types of people. If we’re no one of them, then it’s no wonder that we are not experiencing the ministry of Christ fully in our own lives.
q The Poor – Perhaps you may not know financial need but you may have found yourself at one point or another at the end of your own resource. The place where you can go no farther. It’s sink or swim time. Unfortunately it is at this point that many people begin to search for God but they wouldn’t know Him if he tap danced across their foreheads. We’re all beggars in God’s eyes. Someone said of salvation that we are just hungry beggars telling other hungry beggars where to find bread.
q The Brokenhearted So much of this is difficult to admit. Has your heart ever been broken? Mine has. I was brokenhearted when my first girlfriend broke up with me. It hurt. I was brokenhearted when my family, as imperfect as it was came apart. It tore me up inside as though some foreign hand reached into my soul and scrambled my emotional circuitry. I cried as much as I could cry without letting anyone else see and then one day I just stopped, thinking that it was over. It wasn’t and ever since then God has been maintaining a broken heart.
q The Captives And aren’t we all. What is your carefully covered area of bondage? You know what I mean? The thing that you would identify as the major obstacle that prevents you from experiencing total victory in your Christian life. He has come to be your deliverer and one way or the other He will do it for people who trust in Him beyond their own ability. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”
q The Prisoners of Darkness Where were you when the lights came on? What an experience that was when I could see for the first time. Things that I heard about before but never saw. People who live nominal Christian lives are people who listen to the stories of others and think that they are experiencing it for themselves. They've heard the stories enough to feel like they are firsthand recipients but they are merely riding on the coat tails of otherss.
He’ll never force you to admit it and he’ll never pry your eyes open to see it. But He will let the lessons of life and the storms that come become your teacher. What they will show you if you let them, is that He was there all the time.
LK 5:27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, [28] and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. [30] But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and `sinners'?" 31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. [32] I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." 33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking." 34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? [35] But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."
AC 17:24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. [25] And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. [26] From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. [27] God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. [28] `For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring.'
Deuteronomy 4:25 After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time--if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the LORD your God and provoking him to anger, [26] I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. [27] The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the LORD will drive you. [28] There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. [29] But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul. [30] When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the LORD your God and obey him. [31] For the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers, which he confirmed to them by oath. 32 Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? [33] Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? [34] Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? 35 You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other. [36] From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. [37] Because he loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, [38] to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today. 39 Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. [40] Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time.
I Need Thee Every Hour
q What could happen in the calm? If we were driven by hunger to know the heart of God we would seek him in the calm. We would study his heart and we would know his Word. Simply by knowing Him we would prepare ourselves for the rougher times in our lives.
R. A. Torrey lamented the average believer's indifference to prayer by writing: How little time the average Christian spends in prayer! We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little... the power of God is lacking in our lives and in our work. We have not because we ask not.
See: James 4:2-8
3.Experiencing The Storm
q Our experience of God in the storm is nothing more than the extension of our experience of God in the calm.
Ill. Donnie Leblanc – sergeant’s course
!! A LETTER FROM GOD
You may not know me, but I know everything about you ...
Psalm 139:1
I know when you sit down and when you rise up ...
Psalm 139:2
I am familiar with all your ways...
Psalm 139:3
Even the very hairs on your head are numbered...
Matthew 10:29-31
For you were made in my image...
Genesis 1:27
In me you live and move and have your being...
Acts 17:28
For you are my offspring...
Acts 17:28
I knew you even before you were conceived...
Jeremiah 1:4-5
I chose you when I planned creation...
Ephesians 1:11-12
You were not a mistake, for all your days are written in my book...
Psalm 139:15-16
I determined the exact time of your birth and where you would live...
Acts 17:26
You are fearfully and wonderfully made...
Psalm 139:14
I knit you together in your mother's womb...
Psalm 139:13
And brought you forth on the day you were born...
Psalm 71:6
I have been misrepresented by those who don't know me...
John 8:41-44
I am not distant and angry, but am the complete expression of love...
1 John 4:16
And it is my desire to lavish my love on you simply because you are my child and I am your father...
John 3:1
I offer you more than your earthly father ever could...
Matthew 7:11
For I am the perfect father...
Matthew 5:48
Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand...
James 1:17
For I am your provider and I meet all your needs...
Matthew 6:31-33
My plan for your future has always been filled with hope...
Jeremiah 29:11
Because I love you with an everlasting love...
Jeremiah 31:3
My thoughts toward you are countless as the sand on the seashore...
Psalm 139:17-18
And I rejoice over you with singing...
Zephaniah 3:17
I will never stop doing good to you...
Jeremiah 32:40
For you are my treasured possession...
Exodus 19:5
I desire to establish you with all my heart and all my soul...
Jeremiah 32:41
And I want to show you great and marvelous things...
Jeremiah 33:3
If you seek me with all your heart, you will find me...
Deuteronomy 4:29
Delight in me and I will give you the desires of your heart...
Psalm 37:4
For it is I who gave you those desires...
Philippians 2:13
I am able to do more for you than you could possibly imagine...
Ephesians 3:20
For I am your greatest encourager...
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17
I am also the Father who comforts you in all your troubles...
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
When you are brokenhearted, I am close to you...
Psalm 34:18
As a shepherd carries a lamb, I have carried you close to my heart...
Isaiah 40:11
One day I will wipe away every tear from your eyes and will take away all the pain you have suffered on this earth...
Revelation 21:3-4
I am your Father, and I love you even as I love my son, Jesus...
John 17:23
For in Jesus, my love for you is revealed....
John 17:26
He is the exact representation of my being...
Hebrews 1:3
He came to demonstrate that I am for you, not against you...
Romans 8:31
And to tell you that I am not counting your sins...
2 Corinthians 5:18-19
Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled...
2 Corinthians 5:18-19
His death was the ultimate expression of my love for you...
1 John 4:10
I gave up everything I loved that I might gain your love...
Romans 8:31-32
If you receive the gift of my son Jesus, you receive me...
1 John 2:23
And nothing will ever separate you from my love again...
Romans 8:38-39
Come home and I'll throw the biggest party heaven has ever seen...
Luke 15:7
I have always been Father, and will always be Father...
Ephesians 3:14-15
My question is...Will you be my child? ...
John 1:12-13
I am waiting for you...
Luke 15:11-32
Love Always,
God
