Don't Sweat The Storm

Pick up our Bibles and wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Let's get into the Word tonight, be encouraged by the Word of God.

Let's say this together say Heavenly Father, I've tuned in tonight on purpose, because I am hungry for the Word, eager for the Holy Spirit to shine His light on the Word.

Give me revelation where my faith is built and my spirit is nourished, and I will overcome every obstacle in Jesus' name.

Amen, and that's what we are.

We are overcomers.

Let's turn in our Bibles to Mark, chapter four, and let's start reading with verse 35.

And of course this is right.

After Jesus had preached from the boat and given His parable of the so-or-so is the Word, and in verse 35, 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 he was in the ship and there was also with Him other little ships, and there rose a great storm of wind you know the word great is mega a mega storm, and waves beat into the ship so that it was now full.

And he was in the hindered part of the ship, asleep on a pillow.

And they awake Him and say unto Him Master, cares thou not that we perish?

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

And the wind ceased and there was a great calm, a mega calm.

Here we had a mega storm, now there's a mega calm.

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 just wanted to encourage you with this message don't sweat the storm.

Don't sweat the storm.

I'll tell you, storms of life come to all.

You know, maybe not a literal wind and waves, maybe you're not a boater, maybe you don't go out, but I mean figurative storms, storms of life, storms in relationship, storms in your finances, storms in your health.

And you know, when I first got saved and sat under the word of faith, my immature way of looking at it was hey, if I can just get enough faith, it'll prevent the storms.

And then somebody gave me a cassette tape of this woman and it was a woman preacher, by the way.

She had a real Southern accent.

She sounded like she was from Alabama or Georgia, something like that, and she said you know, you're just fixing to go into a mess you in a mess, or you coming out of a mess.

And I ejected the tape and threw it in the back seat.

I said I'm not listening to this.

This is false.

This is a false teacher.

I was really steamed until I learned better.

Oh, the Bible's filled with people that go through storms.

In fact, really, when you have faith, that's a reason for the storm to come.

The devil's always coming against your move of faith.

It won't stop all storms, but it certainly will cause God to invade that storm and turn things around.

You know, the devil is always trying to do one thing he's trying to kill you, and if he can't kill you, then he wants to.

You know, stop you, and if he can't stop you, he wants to delay you.

And then I heard another preacher one time, and one of the main things the devil tries to do is discredit you.

I mean, you know he spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to discredit you, how to rob you of your witness, and to where people won't listen to you.

So you know storms really, though, if we look at it from the biblical side, just think about Jesus.

You know they're on a, they have a mega storm, there's mega waves, and then instantly, you know, he rebukes the storm and then he speaks to the sea peace be still.

And there was a great calm, a mega calm.

So how, if you talk about supernatural, the Bible doesn't say that, you know, in a couple of hours the sea kind of, you know, kind of played out.

No, I mean, it just went flat.

I've been out in the Gulf and I've been in the conditions where there was no wind, it was just flat out there and just a gentle roll.

You know, you could, you know you were on the ocean because there was a general roll, but there were no waves, there was no, there was no white water, there was no ripples.

I mean, it was just so, it was like glass.

And you know, for the for the sea to be stormy and then suddenly be like glass, that's what happened.

And and they said what manner of man is this?

I mean it was supernatural.

And so you know, they had a lot of, they made it across, and so storms are a dead giveaway that breakthroughs and miracles and blessings are in front, because the devil is fighting hard to stop you.

So just take it that way instead of as a bad thing, take it as an opportunity that you're gonna overcome it and get on the other side.

You know that's what happened to Paul in Acts, chapter 27.

Acts 27 · chapter mention

You know, he perceived that the voyage.

You know he was held captive and he was on a ship.

They had sailed over into this place and this port and then they decided to leave there, go to the next place, and he perceived that it was gonna be a troubled voyage.

So he went to the captain of the guard and he went to the owner of the ship and he said look, I perceive that this voyage will be with much hurt, both of our lives and of the leading of the ship.

And they didn't listen to him.

But because he warned them, they got out there and there was a terrible storm, mega storm.

You know if water was hitting them real hard.

And at one point in the voyage it says that all hope that they should be saved was taken away.

Well, god didn't take it away.

Who took it away?

The one who sent the storm, the devil.

He wanted them to give up and at the height of the storm, at the worst part of the storm, you could say, at midnight.

Then the angel of order appeared under Paul and what did he say to him?

Fear not, fear not, paul.

And so God invaded the storm.

He said you know, I've given all those who sail with you, you're gonna be okay, but the ship is not gonna be okay, you know.

They had to leave the ship on broken pieces and fight their way to the Isle of Malta.

They were grounded there and the waves beat the ship up and God invaded that storm and he went and survived.

Every single person survived that storm.

Nobody thought they would.

They all survived.

And they get over on the Isle of Malta and the governor of the island was sick and Paul healed him.

And we're just gonna.

Jesus healed him through Paul and he preached the gospel and that whole island got saved.

And so you can see how God invaded the storm and turned something good out of something terrible.

It's like God said to the devil since you tried to kill my servant Paul and prevent him from witnessing a seizure in Rome, I'm gonna use my servant to set Malta free.

Besides, I'm gonna have a bonus on this thing.

You're gonna get defeated double.

So don't sweat the storm.

I mean, you know, let's not lose our courage and let's remind ourselves.

I know many of you have heard these messages before, but sometimes we need to hear things over and over again.

And so let's let this message be water if we've heard it before and let's let it be seed, if we need to hear something new out of these illustrations and these verses.

So I've got three things I wanted to share with you tonight about to remember.

That's one of the things that's easy to do is to forget.

So the first thing to remember is God turns what the devil means for evil into good.

Remember that song we've been singing lately, you know, and where is that?

I don't know where that's found.

Well, romans 28,.

It doesn't say this in so many words, but this is what it means Romans 28, excuse me, romans 8,.

There's no 28,.

Romans 8, 28.

And it says, and we know that all things, all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are or the call according to his purpose.

So, whatever is happening, whatever a storm is happening, it's going to work for good.

God is going to turn it into good.

The storm is not good.

See, people get this all fouled up and they start praising God for the storm.

Well, the storm is good.

No, the storm is evil.

It's sent by the devil.

The devil cannot do anything.

That's good.

It's God who's good, and he will invade the storm and turn it.

It'll turn, and so let's get our thinking straight.

For instance, that's exactly what happened in Acts 27.

The storm was sent to kill all of them, but God invaded the storm and saved them the governor of Malta and sent revival to the island, and then Paul wound up in Rome.

Anyway.

The same in Acts, chapter 16,.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Paul and Silas waited for the will of the Lord and they waited to go to Macedonia, and they were in the will of God.

They were beaten with many stripes, thrown into the inner prison and at midnight Paul and Silas the Bible says prayed and sang praises, and all of the prisoners heard them.

And it stirred the devil up so much that he sent an earthquake to try to kill him, to just bring the walls of the prison down on top of Paul and Silas and the rest of them.

And so the governor of Malta and Silas was in the middle of the storm, where he was intended to kill them, right there on the spot.

And what did God do?

God invaded the earthquake and caused the earthquake to break them out of jail.

Their chains fell off of their hands and feet, the stalks broke, the cell doors opened.

I mean that was supernatural and the positive.

God invaded the storm and the jailer was gonna kill himself and he said do yourself no harm the gospel, the hymn and his entire family.

They all got baptized.

They got saved.

You know the Bible doesn't say this, but certain books say that that was the man that started a church there in Macedonia.

The jailer got saved and became a pastor and so and then they washed their stripes and ministered to them, and so God turned what the devil meant for evil into good.

So remember that.

Number two, remember that storms are a revelation of good days ahead.

See, that's why the storm has come.

It's not God teaching you a lesson.

You know there's a lot of people think that, well, god allowed God.

Get God allowed out of your vocabulary, get God permitted.

Get all that kind of thing out of your vocabulary, because God allows everything we allow.

This is because we're going through a storm.

It doesn't mean that we have to put up with it all the way to the end.

We have to rebuke it, like Jesus and so.

And so you have to absolutely rebuke fear.

You can't afford to be fearful in a storm of life.

Maybe your marriage is going through a trial, maybe it looks like it's just not going to make it.

Well, don't be fearful.

Just pray in the Holy Ghost and rebuke the devil.

He's the one that wants to break up a marriage.

He's the one that's trying to sow discord.

Maybe you've got trouble at work.

Maybe you've got trouble with your boss.

Maybe you've got trouble in your finances.

Look, all of these things people go through.

They're not the will of God for your life.

In fact, there are revelation that God wants to break you through, and this is just the enemy's attempt to stop it from happening.

You know, paul said one time he said there are great doors and a factual open unto me.

That's a blessing.

And then he said and there are many adversaries, so the greater the opportunity that's in front of you, the greater the resistance the devil is going to throw at you to try to get you, to stop you.

And so they were broken out of jail and God turned what was evil into good.

So don't sweat the storm, don't fear Rejoice.

I mean rejoice.

Why would you rejoice over the storm?

No, you're rejoicing because you're going to, you're victorious over the storm.

You're rejoicing because of what's behind the storm.

I looked what Brother Mark Hankins said one time.

He said, you know, if we only knew what was on the other side of the mountain, we wouldn't delay in moving the mountain.

Now the way, there's something great behind the storm, there's something great ahead of you, and so just just overcome that thing, don't be afraid of it.

And then the last one is remember, rise up with a word of God and the name of Jesus and rebuke the storm.

You know, I mean, sometimes there's real storms, like hurricanes.

I can't count the kind of prayer this church is, is exercised on all kinds of storms.

There's hurricanes, you name it, all kinds of things that have happened.

You know natural things.

But then there are other types.

Like I said, there's other kinds of storms, and and so Jesus rebuked them.

See, and then he in the middle of it, peace be still.

It's not what's not, isn't that what happens in a storm is there's confusion, there's chaos.

You know, you don't know which end is up, you know, I mean, I remember one time I've done a lot of flying in small single engine aircraft, you know.

So that's this was just private aviation.

I had a partner that had a Cessna 206, which is a workhorse aircraft, and we were flying out to our dearlies out in the Hill Country.

We was really south of the Hill Country in a place called Rock Springs and they cleared this area out.

And the great thing about that Cessna is that it was a great short field land and takeoff airplane.

It would just, it would just drop out of the sky and land on a very short field.

It would take off on that field.

So we had developed a little grass airstrip right on our our, our dearlies.

So he and I were headed out there and several other of our partners were already there.

We were coming by plane and thank God he was instrument rated.

Instrument rated means that he had gotten that part satisfied in his pilot's license.

Where he could, he could fly the plane in inclement weather.

In other words, instrument rated means when you get up to altitude you can't see the ground and if you're just VFR visual flight rules, if you're just a VFR pilot, you cannot fly and if you come across those kind of conditions you must land the plane.

You can't fly in those, in those conditions.

But he was instrument rated so he could fly and I wasn't uncomfortable, like we could still see the sky.

We could see, you know, we had a visibility.

But sooner, soon, we got over Austin and it sucked in to where we couldn't see the tips of the wings.

I couldn't see the propeller in front of the windshield.

I mean, it's just, it's white, it's completely whited out and we're bouncing up and down because we're flying through a front.

A cold front was coming in and we were flying through that front.

It was turbulent, we were at about I don't know 6,000 feet and so I had my eyes glued.

I had my eyes glued on the instruments because that's the only thing I could trust.

I have read that without instruments, in those kind of conditions, you have exactly 90 seconds before vertigo takes you over and you will not know how to fly the plane.

A lot of people think that's what happened to JFK Jr when he flew his plane into the Atlantic Ocean off of Martha's Vineyard years ago.

You know he was a young pilot and he was not IFR rated and he was flying in illegal conditions for him.

And what happened when he got vertigo and he, instead of flying the plane straight and level or climbing to try to get above the haze, he flew the plane right into the ground.

Well, I can relate to that because my body felt in that storm.

My body felt like we were descending at a high rate of speed, descending and going to the right.

I mean, my body told me all my signals, my body tells me I'm going down to the right.

And, of course, my heart came up in my throat.

I'm thinking why are we going down?

Why are we descending?

Well, we weren't, because when I looked at the instruments, I've been, you know, I'm over in the right seat, so I look over to the left and we're going up, and to the left we were going exactly opposite of what my body was telling me.

And so I learned I'm not a pilot, but I learned that I couldn't trust my senses.

And this is what I'm talking about.

These are your instruments right here.

This is what you trust.

Don't trust your five senses when you're in a storm.

Because why?

It's chaos, things are crazy, things are spinning out of control.

In some cases You're getting a bad report from the doctor, your boss is giving you trouble.

All kinds of things happen in a storm.

You've got to keep your cool.

Don't sweat the storm, amen.

So rise up with a word and rebuke the storm, like Jesus did.

And I think about what the disciples said, wow, wow, when they saw that mega calm.

I mean, they're fishermen, they know what it, they know that when the, when the water's stirred up like that, it doesn't just turn flat.

I mean it's hours before it calms down.

And here it was like glass.

Mega calm.

I mean Greek words.

You know, jesus, the word doesn't exaggerate, it's exactly what the Bible says it was.

It was a mega calm.

And they were amazed.

I said what manner of man is this that even the wind in the sea obey him?

Well, guess what?

We're the same manner of people that Jesus is, because we're in him, amen.

When we begin to rebuke the storm and we speak to the wind and the waves, peace be still.

It has to obey us.

You know, years ago, of course, this testimony I gave about the airplane.

I mean, I wasn't saved in those days, so I didn't do any pray and I had no idea how to pray.

If I'd have prayed, I didn't know how to pray, god just had mercy on my soul, but anyway.

But after I did get saved.

A few years I've been sitting under good word of faith teaching by the John Osteen, and my wife and I went to bed one night I think it was a Friday night and we woke up two o'clock in the morning with all this lightning, storm, thunder and lightning.

It was violent, wind was howling, and I wake from a deep sleep.

I mean two o'clock in the morning you're sawing logs.

All of a sudden you wake up and I'm just confused.

The lightning is flashing through our window.

Our bed was we were on the second floor, our master bedroom's on the second floor.

So I looked out the window and I could see nothing.

The water was just beating against the window.

I could see every time it were lightning.

Just once those flashes were coming, one after another.

I could see the trees were whirling around, twisting around, and then I heard it.

I heard what sounded like a freight train and I had never heard a tornado.

I had never been in a tornado before, but I'd always heard they sound like a freight train.

And sure enough, this thing sounded like a freight train was coming right through our house.

I mean, it was just loud and I just instantly went into a rage.

I was so angry at the devil.

It's supernatural, because how do you come out of a sleep and get mad?

I mean, I came out of a deep sleep, I was a little bit not fearful, but apprehensive about the weather and then, when I heard that tornado, I got angry and I began to rebuke the devil.

I began to rebuke the storm.

I commanded peace, be still.

And just instantly I mean not 10 minutes later, not 10 seconds later instantly when I quit speaking, the level of all of that noise and chaos reduced by about 50% and it just seemed to.

Really.

It didn't completely calm down, but it just was gone.

There was no more freight train noise.

The lightning quit, being so bad it didn't hear that much thunder, it went still off in the distance.

So I went back to bed, woke up to sound of chainsaws.

The next morning, about 6.30 Saturday morning, I look out the window and I see it looked like a war zone on my street.

It was just trees, my neighbors, their trees were leaning up against their roofs.

It'd come up, you know, uprooted in their front yard, broke off in my yard.

I didn't see anything major, but I saw a bunch of debris, bunch of limbs, little, really more like foliage.

So I got dressed real quick, went downstairs, went out the front door and it was bad on my street.

But my house was not really hurt at all.

I didn't have anything, any damage.

All I could find was about three foot of ridge row on my garage.

We had a hip roof on my garage and where the ridge is there's a ridge row row of shingles that covers that.

It was ripped off and that was the only damage that I could find on my house.

We had no leaks.

We had no damage whatsoever and I was building houses in the neighborhood.

So I went to check on my houses no damage on the houses.

So when I turned around and went up to Lou at a road, it looked like a gigantic lawnmower had come down and mowed all of the pine trees off at the same level, about 15 feet off the ground.

All they were were pine trees sticking up in the air.

You know pine trees have all the foliage, mostly up at the top, and so there was no foliage left, just pine sticks sticking out there in the field across from our subdivision, right on Lou, at a road, and I found out later that 18 tornadoes had come through there and had had been across the street and then, when it crossed Lou at an end of our neighborhood, it went up over our top of our house that's why we didn't have any damage and it went and it missed all my houses I had four houses under construction, missed all of them and landed back out in a field between our subdivision and Enchanted Oak subdivision and did some damage in the woods and then it just dissipated.

So I found out up close and personal that my authority works on natural storms.

My authority works on any kind of storm, whether it's a natural storm like a tornado or like a hurricane.

It works on any storm.

You're that type of person.

You're the supernatural kind of a person that has authority over all storms.

So don't sweat the storm, just take authority over it.

In Jesus' name, amen, let's just lift our hands.

Father, we receive the Word of God tonight and we receive it as seed and we receive it as water and we are the overcomers.

In Jesus' name, be encouraged tonight, amen.