Miracles of Jesus – When the Storms Come

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Let's get to work.

We are in part two today of a series that we kicked off last Sunday that I love.

The series leads us up to Easter.

It's called Miracles of Jesus.

Last week, my wife brought a beautiful message on the story of Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead.

It was amazing and beautiful and powerful.

If you missed it, it was one of those don't miss kind of messages.

I want you to go online to access.tv slash messages or find us on YouTube.

You can listen to it and watch it there.

It was powerful.

Today I want to talk about a different miracle of Jesus.

In Scripture, we have recorded 37 unique miracles that Jesus did.

It's fascinating.

At the end of the book of John, it says about Jesus that he did so much other stuff that if all the stories, all the miracles, all the teachings were to be transcribed, there wouldn't be enough room on earth to hold it all.

Like he lived this extraordinary life.

But in scripture, we only have accounted for 37 unique miracles.

And what we wanted to do is we thought to ourselves, if there's only 37 recorded, they must be meaningful.

They must be powerful.

I mean, Jesus was the most influential person to ever walk the face of the earth.

More books are written about him than anyone else in the library of Congress by a mile.

He second place is Abraham Lincoln, and it's a huge distance and gap.

He literally split time in half.

2,000 years later, we're gathered in buildings, churches, schools, movie theaters, all around the world to remember and celebrate his life and to honor him that he still lives.

He's the most important person to ever live.

And today I want to look at one of the miracles of Jesus that, in my opinion, has the power to reorient your life if you'll understand it and if you will learn to see the storms in your life from God's perspective.

A couple weeks ago, I was flying home from speaking at a conference in Houston, and it was already going to be a late night for me, and I had a super early morning the next morning, and all I wanted to do was for that plane to have a perfect flight.

I wanted to land early, I wanted to get home, I wanted to get in my bed, and I wanted to go to sleep.

Plane takes off, everything's fine.

We get into the air, and the pilot comes over the intercom and he says, ladies and gentlemen, I've got some bad news for you.

He says, On the way, there's a storm near Tampa that we will fly over, and because we're flying over it, we will hit some turbulence, but don't worry, I got you.

And I'm like, You got me.

You ever have someone text you, have a safe flight?

Like, what are you gonna do about it, right?

Like, nothing you can do.

So he said, He got me, so I was fine.

So we fly in, we get we get close to Tampa, and on the screen in front of me it says, you know, 20 minutes remaining in your flight, and I'm like, can't wait, everything is good.

And then the pilot came on the intercom one more time and he said, ladies and gentlemen, I'm so sorry, I have more bad news.

And he went on to tell us one of the worst pieces of news a pilot can tell you.

Now, not the worst news, the worst news is, ladies and gentlemen, ah! That's the worst news.

Wasn't that?

He said, That storm in Tampa is way worse than we anticipated.

We're gonna have to circle the airport for a few minutes.

I think my pilot should run for a political office the way he twisted those words, because what he said was a few minutes turned into an hour and a half circling the airport.

And how many of you know that it only happens to you that when you are on a flight that is going to be delayed, you get sat next to a person who should never be allowed to sit in the middle seat.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Sitting like this the whole flight, my back's in pain at this point, and we're circling, and I'm just like, land the plane.

Like, I don't care, risk it.

At this point, just risk it.

I'm either gonna get home or get to Jesus.

I don't care.

Like, just land the plane.

So we finally land, and when we land, I was so annoyed that we had to circle the airport for an hour and a half that it pulled up the radar app on my phone to see how bad the storm actually was.

And this was a picture of it.

And this massive storm swept all the way across the state.

Zoom in for me, on it.

I want you to see this.

And there was this little gap, and they were able to land it there in this gap.

The storm was nasty, and the truth is, as I talked to my wife about it, she goes, we weren't expecting it.

It was a beautiful day, and all of a sudden, this storm came rolling in.

Now we live in Florida.

We are used to storms rolling in.

Come on, you ever gone to the beach and it's beautiful and it's sunshiny, not a cloud in the sky, and you close your eyes for three seconds and you look up and there's dark clouds and there's a storm.

Have you had this happen to you before?

Because we're from Florida.

If you go to the beach in Florida and it rains, here's some advice.

Wait five minutes.

It'll stop raining.

But that's what happens in Florida, right?

And we've all had these moments where it's like, ladies, you just got your hair done, everything's perfect and beautiful, and you walk out and it starts pouring.

And the thing about Florida that's so weird is like in Florida it can be dry one moment, it can be no clouds in the sky, and one moment later it's raining, and then one moment later the rain stopped.

Florida's weird because you can be standing on one side of the street and it's pouring rain, and across the street there's literally no rain.

Have you had this happen to you before?

And all of us understand because we've lived some life, we understand that storms can roll in at any time, and they can come through and they can blow through and they can be devastating, but then eventually they pass.

But what about the storms that seem to hit our lives?

I'm not talking about rain, I'm talking about those moments in your life when everything seems good.

Skies are blue, the birds are chirping, it's all sunshine and roses, and then all of a sudden you get that phone call, and it's a diagnosis that you weren't expecting.

Everything is good and everything is fine, and then all of a sudden, one day out of the blue, you just get this anxiety attack, and it feels like cold hands strangling your heart and making it hard to breathe.

Everything can be beautiful and sunshiny, and like I said, full of roses, and then all of a sudden you lose that job, the friend betrays you, that person you committed your life to walks out on you.

Everything can be going good, and then a storm can roll in and it can devastate you.

But what I want to wrestle with today is what do we do with those storms?

What do we do with the storms in life?

And here's one quick thought for everybody before we even get into it.

In the same way that storms tend to show up and then pass here in Florida, in Scripture, one of the most powerful phrases is, and it came to pass.

From the beginning to the end of the Bible, you can find that phrase over and over again, and it's a reminder that nothing that comes in this life stays in this life.

The storms that come, they tend to eventually leave.

But what do you do in the middle?

Like what do you do in the middle of life, the middle of a storm, when everything is raining down on you?

You find it hard to breathe, hard to collect your thoughts, anxiety is reigning supreme.

What do you do in those moments?

Well, today I want to look at one of the moments in Jesus' life.

It's one of his 37 recorded miracles.

This story is accounted for in the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are called the Synoptic Gospels.

It's a story of Jesus and what he does in the middle of a storm.

To get us going, I want to rewind to the beginning of Matthew, Matthew chapter 8, verse 1.

Matthew 8:1

Here's what's happening.

Jesus has just taught what we would call the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most beautiful sermons ever taught before.

And at the end of it, there's all these people who have crowded around to hear him, to see what he's gonna do next.

And it says this about Jesus, Matthew 8, verse 1.

Matthew 8:1

Large crowds follow Jesus as he came down the mountainside.

So I want you to notice something.

Jesus is the one out front and everyone's following him.

What we tend to do in our life is we tend to follow the crowds of people, but that's not how Jesus rolled.

In fact, I could summarize it like this Jesus was led by the Spirit, not the crowds.

The crowds will lead you away from the things of God, and Jesus models for us what it looks like.

And then Matthew chapter 8 starts this whole interesting series of moments where Jesus does miracles.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

In fact, if I could compare it to a storm, I would say this is one of the most beautiful, sunshiny, blue sky kind of days.

It says that Jesus heals a man who was called a centurion, he heals his servant.

Jesus heals Peter, one of the most influential people in the Bible.

He heals his mother-in-law, which that was probably a fun conversation.

Peter's like, Why don't you take the day off?

We're good.

It'll be fine.

I love my mother-in-law.

Um He then there's this whole section of scripture where it says Jesus did many more miracles, and so you have this whole beautiful, no turbulence, all blue skies kind of moment.

And then we get down to Matthew 8, verse 23.

Matthew 8:23

Here's what it says.

It says Jesus got into the boat and started across the lake with his disciples.

Pause here for just a moment.

If you were Jesus' disciples and you had been with him, and there was all these crowds of people who were around who wanted a piece of his attention, who wanted to talk to him for just a few minutes, and you were with Jesus.

You're almost his entourage, his handlers, and you're there with Jesus, and there are these crowds.

You might say to Jesus, hey, you get in the boat, we'll deal with the crowds, we'll take care of this problem.

But it says the disciples also got in.

Why?

There is this principle that really is going to run through the story.

It's that they were following Jesus.

Their whole life was literally learning from Jesus.

It was all about proximity, closeness to Jesus.

And it begs this question before we even get into the storm.

And here's the question: Are you?

Like, are you following Jesus?

Are you with him?

Do you allow him to be in charge?

Do you allow his word to have the final word in your life?

I told you three different books account for this story.

We're reading from Matthew, but in the book of Mark, there's this interesting angle.

Mark 4.36.

Again, it says leaving the crowd behind.

They took him along, and I want you to see this phrase just as he was, just as Jesus was in the boat.

There were also other boats with him.

Pause here for just a moment.

I want you to see this phrase just as he was.

They made this decision that we're going to follow Jesus no matter what Jesus calls us to do, no matter what he asks of us.

Here's the funny thing.

If we could take a step back from this moment, I wonder how many of us have fallen into the trap of taking the words and the message of Jesus and trying to make it fit our beliefs and our desires and our political affiliation and our voting patterns.

And we want the words of Jesus to make sense as long as it lines up with what we want.

Here's the interesting thing.

We're coming up in an election year.

I want you to pay attention.

People on every side of every issue will use the words of Jesus to make their point.

But which one is it?

I want you to understand that as a follower of Jesus, following him is such a unique challenge.

What it is, is it's making this decision to say, I'm laying down my rights, I'm laying down my opinions, and your voice has the final word.

They follow Jesus just as he was.

Why?

Because that's the call of every follower.

If you're gonna be a believer, a follower of Jesus, you need to understand this principle.

Salvation happens when we put our faith in Jesus.

But real life change happens when we choose to actually follow him.

Okay.

There's a lot of people who have made their faith into a Sunday faith.

Sunday faith is we come to church and we love it.

We get goosebumps when they sing those songs and when they hit those high notes, we love those moments.

We love that our kids love church.

We love the feeling we get.

We love that Access is the church that will build you up, not beat you up, and so we leave a little taller and a little stronger.

We love that.

But then there's the Monday through Saturday.

Following Jesus is such a big commitment.

It's so much more than just a moment of emotion or a moment of expression.

Following Jesus is a lifelong 24-7, seven days a week, 365, or this year, leapier, 366 day a year commitment.

It's all in forever.

In fact, if you want to take it farther, this is Jesus' words.

And I want you to pay attention because you have to ask the question, am I actually following?

Jesus said in Matthew 16, 24, he said to his disciples, Whoever wants to be my disciple, this word means student or follower.

Whoever wants to be my disciple must hold up.

They must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.

I don't love that.

We'll be honest for a moment.

Like I wish following Jesus was to follow Jesus, everything comes up, sunshine and roses.

Following Jesus is like pulling the the jackpot and you see cherry, cherry, cherry, pop following Jesus, everything is easy, everything is good, everything is fine, but that's not what Jesus said.

He says, if you want to be my follower, if you want to be my disciple, you have to deny yourself.

And I don't like denying myself anything.

I like buying whatever I want from me.

You must take up your cross.

What is that?

The cross was an instrument of death in the time of Jesus.

And he's not saying you have to die physically every day, but he does say there has to be a funeral every day.

The funeral is to your preferences, your desires, your sinful nature.

All of it has to die because following Jesus is letting go of your opinion and picking up whatever he says as the final word so that we can follow him.

C.S.

Lewis, the brilliant Christian author, said this.

He said, Until you have given up yourself to him, you will not have a real self.

And I wonder how many of us, part of the reason that our relationship with God feels stale and stagnant, part of the reason it feels like we're just kind of going through the motions and going through the doldrums, is we have a Sunday faith, or we have an occasional faith.

As long as everything's good for me, everything's fine for me, then Jesus has my heart and he has my attention.

But but no part of our life seems to match.

It's like we have the Sunday part of us and the rest of our lives part of us.

And I just want to say following Jesus is an all-in chips to the middle of the table.

There is no way to follow Jesus except to follow him wholeheartedly, every single day, denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him.

So are you following?

The story goes on.

Matthew chapter 8, verse 23.

Matthew 8:23

Here it is again.

Then Jesus got into the boat and he started across the lake with his disciples.

So he's now in the boat, and they're going across this lake, and then there's this word that says, suddenly, we're gonna read this word twice in these verses, suddenly, a fierce storm struck the lake with waves breaking into the boat.

I love Jesus.

Jesus is sleeping, he's asleep in the boat.

Now I want you to understand what's happening here in this moment.

Jesus has come off this mountainside.

He and his disciples have gotten in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, and they're literally just crossing the lake.

This is a lake that they've been on many, many times growing up.

In fact, about five years ago, I had the privilege to go to Israel, and one of the highlights of the trip was being on this lake.

Here's a picture that I took on my phone.

This is not a stock photo.

I took this picture, and it's this beautiful lake.

The day we went, there was kind of a haze or a fog out over the water.

It was beautiful.

It was serene.

The water was still.

The next picture will show you something kind of interesting.

On this lake where everything was flat, there are these things that surround the lake.

They are these tall parts of land.

I think they're called mountains.

Now we don't have those here.

Um we have them, but they're filled with trash.

These are just filled with land.

It's really cool, actually.

You should see these someday.

And here's what's happening.

In this lake, the water sits about 700 feet below sea level, and then there are mountains that surround literally the whole Sea of Galilee.

So what happens is this weird natural phenomenon when you get the cold air coming across the mountains mixed with the low, warm air from the Sea of Galilee.

And when those two mix and the conditions are right, suddenly a terrible storm can erupt.

In fact, it is so bad that this still seawater at times will get into 10-foot surges, 10-foot waves.

It's so bad that literally in parts around the lake, the businesses and buildings that are built are built up high on stilts to avoid the crash of the waves.

And this is a lake that these disciples had been on many times.

And this is they get in the boat and they're on their way, and then suddenly, like all of a sudden, there is this storm that hits.

Now, I grew up going to church, I know not everybody did.

I grew up going to church, and I've heard this story a lot of times.

And in my mind, growing up, here's what's happening: Jesus gets on the boat and he says to his disciples, you guys do whatever you're gonna do.

I'm tired, I'm gonna take a nap.

So what I'll do is I'm gonna go down to like the second floor, I'm gonna catch me a nap, I'm gonna hit the buffet one more time, and I'll meet you at the ice cream stand.

Have you ever been on a cruise?

You have ice cream after breakfast, ice cream after lunch, ice cream after dinner, then you have a pre-bed ice cream, four ice creams a day.

And Jesus is like, I'm gonna meet you at the ice cream stand, I'm gonna be there, you'll see me there.

But but this isn't what it was like.

Jesus is on the boat, and there is a storm that came.

Now, if you go to the Sea of Galilee, there's a little museum you can go to at the end of the tour, and at the end they show you this boat.

This is another picture that I took.

Archaeologists in 1986 found this boat.

This has been affectionately nicknamed the Jesus Boat.

It's kind of funny.

Uh, this is what a boat would have looked like in Jesus' day.

This metal frame is just there to hold it together.

It was small.

You could maybe get four or five men in a boat like this.

So Jesus doesn't go like down into the bottom of the boat.

He's literally like sitting right around his disciple buddies, and he lays down and he goes to sleep in this boat, and all of a sudden a storm comes.

Now, here's something that you need to wrestle with, and this is one of the places I want to be honest with this message.

Jesus knew that there would be a storm.

He's Jesus.

Jesus knew that there would be a storm that would threaten their lives because he's Jesus.

Why would Jesus, the master of creation, the one who lives and reigns above it all, why would he allow them to go into the storm?

You ever ask that question?

You ever said to God, God, where are you?

Like, why are you asleep at the wheel?

Where are you?

Why did you let me walk through this?

Why did you let me go into this dark, difficult day?

Where are you in the storms of my life?

And I just want you to get this one principle.

Christians aren't exempt from the storms.

They're exempt from the storms with no purpose.

See, what God tends to do, I don't know if God allows the storm, I don't know if God sends the storm.

That's a question for God someday.

But here's what I do know: God gets more done in the difficult, turbulent storm days of our life than in all the blue skies and smooth sailing days.

God tends to draw people to himself in the moments of transition in their life and in the moments of trials and tribulations in their life.

God seems to get a lot done in the moments where we're like, God, I need you so much.

When we don't need God, what we tend to do is we tend to slowly drift away.

And these storms have a way of drawing us to him.

The brilliant Christian author Charles Furgeon said this.

He said, Storms help to make the sailor sturdy, and trials make the Christian strong in faith.

What does this mean?

It means you need some difficult days in your life so that you learn to trust God in a way that you hadn't before.

Storms tend to give you a different kind of strength and a different kind of resolve.

Storms tend to help you to keep your life in perspective, starting to know that storms will come and storms will pass, but no storm lasts forever.

Storms cause you to lean into God and to need him in ways that you can't even begin to imagine when you're living in a smooth sailing blue skies kind of day.

I want you to understand this.

So I don't know if God sends the storms, but here's what I do know God uses the storms.

The book of James, chapter one, James says this.

He says, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, my brothers from different mothers and sisters from different misters, I guess.

Consider it pure joy.

Whenever you face trials of many kinds.

What?

Let's read that again.

Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds.

Like I don't consider it pure joy.

I consider the ice cream machine four times a day on the cruise ship pure joy.

He says, consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of any kind.

Let me take it back to the story.

Consider it pure joy when there's the miracle after miracle after miracle.

But also you need to understand that you can also consider it pure joy when there's the storm that hits.

He says, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

It's a different kind of strength.

He says, so let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

God uses the storms in our life to strengthen us, to draw us closer to Him, to give us a different perspective on this life.

And so we would be amiss to waste the storms in our life instead of getting God's point out of all of it.

So now let's get back to the story if we can, okay?

So all of a sudden, it says suddenly Verse for me, please.

Suddenly, a fierce storm struck the lake with waves breaking into the boat.

And all of a sudden, we we realize that the ship's gonna go down.

And it says Jesus was there and he's asleep.

And the disciples, they're doing everything they can.

They're shoveling all the water out of the boat.

They don't know what's gonna happen.

They think they're going to drown.

And it goes on to say this.

It says the disciples, next verse from my please, the disciples went and woke him up shouting, Lord, what are you doing?

Wake up, save us, we're going to drown.

I don't know if you've had this moment where it feels like you've exhausted yourself doing everything you possibly can, and then you turn to God.

And so they're in the boat and they're doing everything they can and they freak out.

And then there comes this moment where they're like, Jesus, we need you to step in.

Jesus, we need you to intervene.

We need you to do something, or we are going to drown.

And Jesus is going to do something for them.

But what he's going to do is he's actually going to teach a principle that all of us can live with.

Literally, what they were saying is, we have troubles.

We have problems that we can't get through.

We need you.

We need you in this moment.

I want you to see something that Jesus says about himself.

Look at this.

In the book of John 14, Jesus said, Peace I leave with you.

My peace I give you.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

So here's what you do do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Essentially, what Jesus was saying in this moment to these disciples is this is that peace isn't the absence of fear.

Peace is the presence of a person, and that person is Jesus.

Peace isn't about not having fear, peace isn't about not having panic attacks.

Peace is about realizing that Jesus is with you and he's in the boat.

For these disciples, they're in the middle of a storm that could easily take their life, and Jesus is going to say to them, I'm going to teach you something.

But before we do, I need you to understand that I am peace.

Let me contextualize this to you.

No matter what you're walking through, no matter how dark your circumstances, no matter how how tragic the storm that you are facing seems, you don't have to worry because Jesus is with you, and where Jesus is, peace is.

Okay, can I confess something to you?

I'm a pretty chill guy.

In fact, like I don't really let stuff rattle me, at least on the outside.

But I have this weird thing that happens to me when something is weighing on me, when I'm walking through a storm or a tragedy in my life, something happens to me, and it seems like it always happens the same way.

About three o'clock in the morning, I'll be sound asleep and I'll go and I'll wake up.

Three o'clock in the morning, and I'm never able to go back to sleep.

I can't tell you how many times it happened to me twice this week.

I just woke up wide awake in the middle of the night, wanting to fix something, wanting to control something, and there was nothing I could do to fix it, there was nothing I could do to control it.

And here's what I've learned.

In these moments, you can fight for control, but control is only going to lead to panic.

Or you can trust the person who brings the peace.

Maturity is not, it's not about how strong are you, how can you deal with your own problems and come up with your own solutions.

Maturity is saying, I can move to peace because peace means that Jesus is just with me, that he's in the boat.

That no, if he's in the boat, like it doesn't matter what happens.

In fact, let me say this to you: one of the great testimonies you can have in a world that's freaking out is to walk in peace.

One of the great testimonies you can have to the world around you is when we come up on this weird election year and there's gonna be people fighting and everyone's gonna be angry at each other, you can laugh and you can have peace.

One of the great testimonies you can have when it feels like people are leaving you, hurting you, betraying you, is you can walk in peace.

It doesn't mean you won't have problems.

It just means that Jesus is with you in those moments and he's in control.

So here's what you can have.

In these moments, what happens is our faith grows.

Over time, as we've walked through storms with Jesus, we start to have faith that if he's gotten us through, he's going to get us through.

And here's what I want you to understand: faith is seeing from God's perspective in the middle of the storm.

Faith is learning to see that no matter how much the storms around me are raging, if Jesus is with me, I can have peace because He is He is peace.

I want to end the story because I want you to see what Jesus does in the middle of the story.

The verses go on, Matthew 8, verse 26.

Matthew 8:26

It says Jesus responded, Why are you afraid?

And I love Jesus.

Like, you have so little faith.

I don't know if anybody in the room is an NBA fan.

I love the NBA, especially after football season.

I love it.

Can I tell you my favorite insult?

It's my second favorite insult.

Number one is always your mama.

Number two is number two, don't clap for your mama.

Um number two, I love this one.

In the NBA, I love it when a guy goes and he postures somebody, like dunks over them.

And when he dunks over them, I love this insult so much.

They look him right in the eye and they go like this.

Have you seen this?

You don't even have to say a word.

You just go, what does that mean?

It means you're small.

It means you can't hang.

That's what it means.

I love doing this to my boys.

Any chance I get, if I can show them that their dad still got it, I love it so much.

So much.

When they can beat me, they can earn it.

Until they beat me, that's what's happening right there, okay?

I love it.

And Jesus is saying, why do you have such little faith?

He's not saying, Why are you small?

I wanted you to see something that he's gonna say in a moment.

It says, then Jesus got up and he rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly there was a great calm.

Jesus stands at the bow of the ship and he extends his hands and he says a word, and that Jesus' word, everything around ceases to be a storm.

And everything turns calm.

Why does this matter?

Because if Jesus is Lord over creation, that means that he's able to fix anything happening around us, but it also means that he can call many storms in us.

He says, Why do you have such little faith?

And I think this is interesting because this feels like one of those, like your small kind of insults.

But later in Jesus' life, he says, if you can have faith like a mustard seed.

Have you ever seen a mustard seed?

It's a little bit larger than a flake of pepper.

It's tiny.

But from a little mustard seed can grow a huge mustard tree.

Jesus says, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to a mountain, be moved, and it will be moved.

Why does he say that?

Because you don't need to have a lot of faith.

It's not about how much faith you have, it's about where your faith is planted.

See, if you have faith in yourself, we call that self-confidence or cockiness.

When you have faith in Jesus, what we're calling it is holy confidence.

It says that it doesn't matter how much faith I have because my faith is irrelevant.

My faith is in you and you're big.

So here's what I want you to understand.

I don't think Jesus was minimizing them.

I think he was teaching them something.

And it's that little faith is where we start, but little faith is not where we stop.

He wants us to walk through the storms so we have the strength and the courage to trust him, even when our circumstances around us seem so tumultuous, we can trust him in every circumstance and every season.

Story ends with this.

Matthew 8, verse 27.

Matthew 8:27

Jesus has calm the storm, and it says the disciples were amazed.

Who is this man?

They said.

Who is he?

Even the winds and the waves obey him.

What does it mean?

It means that if he has power over the storms in our life, he has power over the storms that rage inside of us.

If he has the power to calm the wind and to cease the waves from crashing, he has the power to be with you in your worst and darkest moments.

Look, I said this earlier, I want to say it one more time.

There's three different groups of people today.

There's some that came in today and you are walking through the worst storm of your life.

You came in today just saying, God, I have no idea how I'm going to make it through today.

He's with you in the boat.

There's some people who are here who have come out of a storm recently, and you've thought to yourself, oh, finally the wind is gonna stop, everything's gonna be better.

He was with you.

There's some people who your whole life has been blue skies, everything's been sunny, everything's come up roses, and there's going to be a day when you walk through a storm.

What do we do in those moments?

I think it's appropriate to say this on this 17th anniversary or birthday of our church.

Before we started the church, I had this beautiful plan for my life, which is a very funny phrase to say.

We're never in control.

Had this beautiful plan for my life.

I was gonna graduate college, do a master's degree, get married in the middle of that.

That was my plan.

And then my wife and I would go and take a job at a big church and then grow to a bigger church and bounce around.

And then eventually, maybe someday I'd get to lead a church.

That was my plan.

And in that season of my life, I had been traveling all over the country teaching kids about God and his love at camps all over the place.

Got married, married this beautiful Italian girl.

She was the homecoming queen.

Holla at me, somebody, and we get married.

And then six months into marriage, I'm literally in Texas preaching at camps to kids.

My wife found a lump in her body one test later the next.

They found out it was cancer.

Told the story a bunch of different ways, but one of the details in the story that's so confounding to me to this day, some she's 18 and a half years later.

Is when this happened, my first reaction wasn't trust.

My first reaction wasn't peace.

My first reaction was anger.

I was so angry at God.

Why would you allow this storm in my life?

I'm serving you.

Like give it to someone far from you.

I'm here serving you.

And I made an appointment with a counselor who uh I don't I don't know if you have anybody in your life who just reads your mail.

Did anybody have this person?

Like this guy, when I was with him, I had to I had to give a whole week to no sin before I met with him because I thought he'd call me out on my sin if I was with him.

Like he he just read my mail, right?

So I go meet with him and I'm like, I am so angry.

I had very choice, colorful words for him about my frustration and anger towards God.

And he looked me in the eyes and he smiled.

What are you doing?

He smiled at me.

And you said, you know what this is, right?

And I said, No, he said, You're walking through a storm in your life.

Every person suffers at some point in their life.

And what does suffering do?

It's like he quoted the verse we read from James earlier.

It literally carves out of you the capacity to know God and to trust him more.

It builds perseverance because there's going to be bigger storms that come.

And if you can trust God in this season, you can trust him in the next, you can trust him in the next, and you can trust him in the next.

I had no idea what God was doing.

What I do know is that Christians, we're not exempt from the storms in life.

But here's the blessing, and here's the testimony to the world.

You are gonna walk through some storms.

Jesus Himself said in Matthew, or John chapter 16, verse 33, he said, In this world you will have troubles.

John 16:33

I wish he would have said anything else, but he said, In this world you're gonna have some troubles, but take heart.

I've overcome the world.

Like you're going to have some storms in your life that you walk through that make no sense to you at all, but you can walk in peace because he's in the boat.

Like, when do you have permission to freak out in the middle of a storm?

If Jesus is freaking out.

I could summarize it this way: we're in the storm with his presence, he's with us, but we're also in the storm for his purpose.

Some of you have walked through some storms in your life that are so hard, so difficult, they are so incomprehensible, to be honest.

I would never wish some of the things that we've walked through on anybody else, it would be horrific to do.

But here's what I know that God has this way of using the storms in our life for his glory.

Every once in a while, I'll hear a miracle story from someone in our church.

It's the reason I'd love it if you shared your story.

I hear a miracle story of something that God did through our church, and I think to myself, thank you, God.

None of the season of cancer made any sense to me at all.

I was angry and hurt.

I was ticked off and angry with God.

But here's what I've learned: God has this way of leveraging those storm seasons in our life for his good and for his glory.

Can I get a good amen from anybody who's walked through something?

Here's how I want to end today.

Would you stand up with me?

We're gonna end in a different kind of way.

In a moment, I'm gonna pray for those of you who are in the middle of a storm.

And we're gonna pray for the peace of God, which somehow comes, it somehow passes what we can comprehend or imagine, to flood your hearts.

Here's how I'm gonna pray, and here's how I'm gonna end.

Would you do this with me?

Would you take your hands and put them like this?

Nothing weird or mystical is happening.

It's just saying symbolically, God, my hands are open, my heart is open.

Would you speak to me?

And let's pray.

So, Jesus, in this moment, we thank you that you stand above the storms in our life.

One word from you can calm any physical storm, but in the same way, one word from you can calm any storm that we're walking through.

Jesus, thank you that everything, including nature, is subject to your authority and to the power of your voice.

So, Jesus, today we ask you to do what only you can do, which is to calm the storms in our life.

But we also say thank you because you bring peace in the middle of the storm.

Jesus, there's some people today that walked in and they're in the darkest storm season of their life.

They're not sure how they're gonna make it through today, much less this week, much less this month.

Thank you for the reminder that you're in the boat.

That no matter what we're walking through, you're with us.

And it's not just a storm that we're walking through, but God, we really do believe that you have a purpose in it.

So we love you and we trust you.

Jesus, we say thank you for your peace.

Peace isn't the absence of fear, it's your presence with us.

Thank you that you're with us.

We love you, we worship you in Jesus' name.