Don't Sweat The Storm

Lift your bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Say this together.

Say, heavenly Father, wednesday night is my night to receive encouragement, to receive spiritual nourishment for my faith.

I thank you, lord, that my faith grows exceedingly and I'm moving into victory in every area.

In Jesus' name, amen, amen.

Let's look at Mark, chapter four, please.

We've been dipping into this chapter quite a bit lately, and here's another night, another time, another opportunity to get something out of it, and we're gonna start reading with verse 35, mark 4, 35.

And the same day, when the evening was come, he said unto them, let us pass over.

Unto the other side.

And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him, even as it was in the ship, and there were also with him other little ships.

And there arose a great storm of wind, a mega storm, and the waves beat into the ship so that it was now full, full of what?

Full of water, kind of dangerous.

And he was in the hindered part of the ship, asleep on a pillow, and they awake him and say unto him master, carest thou not that we perish?

And he arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, peace be still.

And the wind ceased and there was a mega calm.

And verse 40, and he said unto them why are you so fearful?

How is it that you have no faith?

And they feared exceedingly and said one to another what manner of man is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?

And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled don't sweat the storm.

Don't sweat the storm.

You know the storms of life come to all.

Jesus said.

You know, when the storm of life comes, he doesn't say if and it beats on your house and if your house isn't founded on the rock of the word of God, well, you know, it's gonna fall, it's gonna rain as the ruin of it.

You're either coming into a storm or you're in the middle of one, or you're just coming out of a storm.

I mean, storms are just kind of normal.

It's the reason storms occur is because of the fall.

I mean, before Adam and Eve fell from in the garden, there weren't any storms.

You know there weren't any floods.

But, um, you know, faith won't stop all the storms from coming, but they'll cause God to invade and turn the storm into your favor.

You know, right here, we see, in that very next chapter, mark, chapter six, this storm really had the intention of killing Jesus.

I mean, if he could have killed Jesus out there on the lake and swamp the boat and they all drowned.

The very next chapter is the chapter where Jesus casts the demons, the legion of demons, by the demoniac.

He took over the regional spirit of that whole area of Israel.

And so, you know, storms many times come, you know, to number one, kill you.

Number two, to stop you.

Number three, to delay you.

Number four, to discredit you.

They're not there just to inconvenience you, you know.

So you know, but the end result is the storms are a dead giveaway that breakthrough and miracles are about to happen.

I mean, god always turns these things that are evil, turns them into your favor.

So don't sweat the storm, don't sweat it.

I look at the Bible, acts 27,.

Paul had a mega storm in his ministry.

I mean, he was a prisoner of the Romans and it was God's plan for him to give a witness to Caesar, the emperor of the known world, Roman Empire, and he had to get to Rome.

And so he got a free trip, paid for by the Roman Empire, and before a portion of the trip, you know, paul said I perceive that this voyage is gonna be, with much hurt, both of the lading of the ship and of our lives.

He was encouraging them not to sail and they had a south wind blowing softly.

They supposed that it was the time to sail and they didn't wanna spend the winter in that port.

And so they ignored Paul and they got out there and got into a huge storm and at one point it looked very bleak and the angel of the Lord appeared unto Paul and said fear not, paul.

Thou must stand before Caesar and lo, god has given you all them that sail with you.

Praise God.

I mean, god invaded that storm and, yeah, the ship was destroyed, but not one person was lost.

Not one life was lost.

They all shipwrecked on the Isle of Malto, where there was a great revival and the governor of the island got saved and there was great revival.

So God invaded the storm and turned it in something good.

And so, in effect, God said to the devil since you tried to kill my servant Paul and prevent him from witnessing to Caesar in Rome, I'm gonna use my servant to set Malto free.

Glory to God.

So don't sweat the storm.

You know, the storm is just an indication of breakthrough just ahead, and so I have some things that I wanna remind you of.

That's my job as pastor.

Just, these things sometimes are not new.

You've heard them before.

Well, if we can refresh you, then that's water for your seed.

If it's something new, a new way to look at things, then it becomes more seed for you to plant in your heart.

So I've got one, two, three things here to remember.

Number one remember God turns and we've mentioned this, god turns what the devil means for evil into good.

And you're saying, well, where's the scripture?

Where Romans 828?

We know that all things work together for good to those who are called of God, who are called according to his purpose.

So God always has good behind every evil.

He doesn't send the evil, but he won't waste it, he'll invade it.

I one of my.

You know Acts 27,.

He invaded that storm and caused revival to happen.

I think about Acts, chapter 16, paul and Silas were obeying the direction they had from the Lord.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

God sent Paul a dream with a Macedonian man come over here and help us.

And no sooner that they got to Macedonia that they were confronted by this wicked crowd that were beating them with many stripes.

They threw them into the inner prison, put their feet in their ankles and hands in stalks.

And at midnight Paul and Silas the Bible says they prayed and sang praises so loud that all the prisoners heard them.

And then there was an earthquake.

The devil got so mad he wanted to kill them right there on the spot.

Just think about it if God hadn't invaded that earthquake.

God did invade the earthquake and it turned into a jailbreak.

Every cell was opened, their bonds were broken and they wound up preaching it, you know, after midnight, to the jailer and his family.

And they all got saved and a church was started there.

I mean, you talk about results, but you know God can invade your storm and what he wants to, he can turn what the devil means for evil into good.

So don't lose heart, remember that.

The second thing is that storms are a revelation of good days ahead.

You must not fear.

You know Jesus showed up.

You know they woke up.

Woke him up.

I mean he's resting.

He's been preaching heart all day.

And when was this?

This was right after he had preached all day on the sower, so as the word, and he illustrated how the kingdom of God operates by the seed sowing principle.

And what had he done?

He had sown the word.

He said let us pass over to the other side.

And that word that he sowed into their heart I mean it.

Just it didn't get very far.

I mean they did obey him.

They put him in the boat, he went to sleep, they start across the sea there, but then that storm rose up and then they panic.

So really they're reliving what he said would happen.

He said there's four kinds of dirt.

The first kind is the devil comes immediately to steal the word out of your heart.

Well, that didn't happen because they obeyed him.

The second one says when persecution or affliction arises, for the word's sake, immediately they're offended and the word doesn't come forth.

So it's the scorched word.

Really, that's what happened to them.

They got offended and they forgot all about the command.

And they woke Jesus up kind of mad, don't you care that we perish?

And so what does he say?

He says he said why are you so fearful?

How is it that you have no faith?

Because their faith was scorched.

There's word that he had said let's pass over to the other side.

He just burned up with the circumstances.

They got offended out there and so listen, don't sweat the storm.

I mean I should think about Paul and Silas.

They didn't get offended, they got beaten with many stripes.

They were thrown into the prison.

They could have complained, they could have murmured, they could have said God, why'd you send us over to this, please?

My goodness man, my back is killing me.

No, they prayed and they sang praises so loud that everybody heard them.

So God invaded that earthquake.

He turned it into revival.

He turned it into exactly what he had given them.

He said go over and help the Macedonian men.

He did.

I mean, he got the Macedonian men saved and later there was a church started.

So remember that storms are a revelation of good days ahead.

It's this.

You know, god didn't send the storm.

I know many of us are going through things.

We're going through storms in our finances, we're going through storms in our bodies, our health.

Some are fighting the good fight of faith on lots of different levels and so again, let's be encouraged.

We have been given this gift.

I was reading about Smith Wigglesworth.

He was known as the apostle of faith and he carried a little pocket New Testament with him everywhere he went and it was reported that when he would go to dinner he'd be somewhere.

He'd be in Wales or he'd be in some other different part of England or wherever he was.

He might be eating a meal and he said, okay, we fed the body, let's feed the spirit.

And he would back away from the table and open up his little New Testament and he would read a scripture and then do a little.

A lot of times he'd do a little faith teaching, like I'm doing tonight, to feed people's faith.

That's my job is to feed your faith.

We all have.

We all have need of our faith being fed and nourished just as much as our body needs to be nourished.

So the third thing is remember, rise up with the Word of God, in the name of Jesus, and rebuke the storm.

I mean, I can't emphasize this enough.

A lot of times when we get under pressure, instead of our mouth moving and speaking against it, we start praying and asking everybody to pray.

We have this idea that if more people are praying for us, that somehow it's going to speed our delivery, deliverance out of the trouble.

We're really, you know, do what Jesus did.

He was awakened and he got up and he rebuked the wind and commanded the waves Peace be still.

I mean, he took authority.

He didn't even, he didn't pray at all.

You know, a scared prayer is worthless.

I mean, if you're going to just go into panic mode and start, you know, having a panic attack and put it into a prayer, I mean that's not effective.

You know, use your authority.

You know you've got the name of Jesus, you've got the Word of God.

You don't have to pray about these things as much as you have to exercise your authority, you know.

And so when he did that, you know, they, I don't know it takes a lot of faith cometh by hearing, and hearing I mean it, it, it.

You have to hear something over and over and over before it finally settles down in your spirit and you get revelation.

Because his appointment let's think about the disciples, they'd heard this all day long he's out there preaching the sower sows the Word.

Then he said the whole kingdom operates on the seed sowing principle, as if a man, you know, cast seed into the ground.

He sleeps and rise night and day, and the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself and knoweth not how.

First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, and after that, you know, it's ripened, he put it in the sickle, for the harvest has come.

Well, you know, they just went, all of that went right over their heads and they weren't listening to him when he said, let's pass over to the other side, I mean they just kind of, yeah, they obeyed it, but they didn't hold on to that Word when they got under pressure.

I mean, they could have done the same thing Jesus did.

They could have rebuked the wind.

They could have, they could have spoken peace to the waves.

And so it's not about how many people are praying for you, it's whether you're going to rise up and and activate, and and and use the authority that you've already been given.

God gave you authority to speak to the mountain.

You don't have to pray about the mountain, speak to it.

Amen.

You've heard us say that over and over, but many times we have.

It takes a while to get the hang of walking by faith and not by sight.

And so they ask him there in verse 41, what manner of man is this?

In other words, when I liked the one verses, who is this guy?

See, they were.

That was foreign to their way of thinking.

And you know, if you've been raised up in religion, you've been raised up in denominational churches where there's no revelation of the authority of the believer, you might say the same thing.

You might feel a little bit, you know, like you're arrogant.

To take your authority, no, no, this is why God gave it to you.

We're seated at the right hand of the Father in Christ.

We're far above everything that's going on down here, and so our first inclination is to use our authority.

I mean, yeah, there's time to pray, but then there's a time to say, there's a time to command, there's a time to demand.

I remember one night I've told the story testimony many times, but we've gotten into this we went to Lakewood Church, brother John Osteen, pastor John Osteen, my pastor, teaching the authority of the believer.

And you know, we started living that way.

We started, we started moving in that direction.

We started more and more to to exercise our authority rather than just always praying and asking God to do this, ask God to do that.

Well, god's already supplied us with a whole lot of things.

Let's just take our place of authority.

And it was the middle of the night and we were awakened and it was a violent storm outside and I woke up, you know, and it takes a lot to wake me up after I'm asleep and we were living in a house, a two-story house, and all the bedrooms were upstairs.

And so I wake up and there's this loud.

It's loud and just lightening and thunder and everything.

I look outside and the trees are all look like they're going to be ripped up out of the ground.

We had these big pecan trees in our yard and and then I heard this noise like a freight train and I knew it was a tornado and suddenly I got so angry, I just I was just like beside myself at anger, at the devil, and I began to rebuke that storm and I commanded it in Jesus' name.

Gladus and I both got up and we stood up and we screamed at that storm.

We said, in the name of Jesus, get out of here.

And I'm, as God is my witness, as soon as I said, in Jesus' name, get out of here, that storm like lessened in violence like half half.

I mean it didn't completely leave, but it just it just went down.

The sound went down, the, the wind went down, the lightning started, you know, started easing off and it got so quiet.

We went back to bed and, you know, didn't didn't wake up till early the next morning to a bunch of sounds of chainsaws, chainsaws is what opened and wait for me up the next morning and I looked out the window and down my street.

There were trees that were, you know, leaning up against houses and trees that had broken off falling into roofs.

There was a.

Our street looked like a war zone.

So I hurried up and got dressed, walked downstairs, went outside.

The yard was covered with little pieces of tree, you know, little tree limbs and stuff, but nothing major.

Just you know the size 12 inches, 14 inches long, little pieces just laying it's litter.

You know, it's all.

It was All I could find.

On my house.

It was damaged.

It was a piece of ridge.

I had wood shingles and a wood ridge row and just one ridge row and just one ridge piece of ridge about eight inches long was missing off the garage and that was the only damage I could find.

And later on I started driving around.

I had houses under construction in that neighborhood and I went back to check on them and they were fine.

But just in the area right behind us I could see where the tornadoes had come across Lueva, headed, you know, toward my subdivision.

On the other side of Lueva it was like the pine trees were snapped off at about 15 foot above.

It looked like a big giant lawnmower had come through there and knocked and chopped the trees off fine trees, 15 foot above the ground.

Well, if they had continued on that course they would have hit my house and it would have destroyed the upstairs of my house with us in it.

But it went over our roof and went above the houses and landed way beyond the subdivision.

It didn't do really very much damage in the subdivision other than just tree limbs and my houses were fine back there.

And then it resumed knocking the tops of the trees off.

It just kept on going.

We later on found it was 18 tornadoes that came through there.

We had 18 that were concentrated right on our neighborhood.

And you know the authority of the believer.

I'm telling you pray.

What got?

What manner of person are you?

Are you a faith person?

Are you willing to operate in faith and use your faith?

Rise up in times of trouble, when you've got storms of life coming.

You just rebuke those storms and watch your authority work.

In the name of Jesus, don't sweat the storm.

Amen, praise God.

I trust you got something out of this tonight.

Hallelujah, I love to teach faith.