Wednesday, January 2, 2013
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So an angry girl named Sandy came storming up the Eastern Seaboard - the largest Atlantic hurricane ever up to that point. It was sort of like a Halloween snowstorm that happened the previous year that dumped a crazy two feet of snow onto Connecticut, where I just happened to be. And Sandy, then, did what "Snowy" had done the year before; made a whole lot of folks change their plans.
Planes didn't fly and trips weren't happening. Gazillions of "important" meetings and appointments were cancelled. Even the Stock Exchange and the U. N. bowed to Miss Sandy. She pushed the Presidential candidates off center stage and cancelled potentially decisive campaign events in the final week of a nail-bitingly close election.
Yup, storms change your plans. Suddenly, you have no control over events. The question is, do we ever have control over events? When you consider that God decides if we take our next breath, our fiercely defended "control" of our lives, that's just the illusion of control.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Storm Surge."
The sheer power - the uncontested authority of a major storm, they're really just intense reminders of a bedrock fact that we tend to forget: God's in charge and we're not. Job observed that it's God who "loads the clouds with moisture" and "scatters His lightning with them. At His direction they swirl around over the face of the whole earth to do whatever He commands them." Why? It says, "So that all men He has made may know His work, He stops every man from his labor" (Job 37:7-12). Okay, God's God, we're not. Just ask Hurricane Sandy.
Storms aren't random - whether they're the meteorological kind, or they're medical, or marital, or the hurricane of a broken relationship, a broken dream, a broken heart. And our word for today from the Word of God, Nahum 1:3 tells us that, "The Lord has His way in the whirlwind and the storm."
Now, here's what I know from the times "severe weather" has hit my life and the lives of people I love. You start asking important questions then that you'd never ask if it weren't for the storm; questions that make you stop and think about what's really important and what really isn't. You face issues you might not face otherwise, and the storm pushes to the front some of the basics that you've pushed to the edges.
Most importantly, the storm that's blowing you around can actually blow you Home to the God of the storm. Because, sadly, we just keep doing what we want to do with our life until there's something we can't fix, or we can't change, or we can't control. So your storm may be your wake-up call to change your plans, to take your clenched hands off the wheel and let the One who should have been driving all along take you where you were created to be.
John Newton, the author of "Amazing Grace," was a slave trader until a violent storm hit his ship and he cried out to Jesus to save him from his sin. That's why he could say, "I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see." It was the loss of my baby brother that brought my dad, and my mom, and me to see our need of Jesus. So many could testify that the worst thing that ever happened to them turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to them, because it drove them into the life-changing arms of Jesus.
Strangely, we often see better in a storm. Often, that's when we finally see that Man hanging on the cross and realize the sin He was paying for was mine. Battered and confused, we finally open our soul to the love that we've been looking for all our lives. And we find in Jesus what the Bible calls "an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19). The howling winds leave us, not lost, but found and finally at peace. In the arms of the One who speaks "Peace, be still!" to the storm in your soul.
Maybe you're ready for that inner peace that Jesus died to give you and the security of knowing that you belong to the only Man who ever walked out of His grave under His own power. He'll walk into your life at your invitation. You want to know how to begin with Jesus? Would you go to our website today, YoursForLife.net, and you'll find out there. And you will finally find your way Home.