When the Storm Hits

I've yet to meet anyone who hasn't weathered a few storms in their life.  On my mind this morning are those I know who are in the middle of a storm right now.  Some have lost loved ones.  Others are helplessly watching friends hurt. Others face an uncertain future.  One of the most disturbing things about life in the storm is that you can't see.  You can't see 2 feet in front of you sometimes.  We can tend to let worry come right on in and swirl us around more.  Worse, we can be given to panic which can cause a hurricane of negative emotions and fear trying to figure out how to get out and what the damage of the storm will leave behind.

This is when we reap the benefits of friends outside who can see for us.  They remind you of things the storm can try to wipe from your mind.  Like who you are in Christ.  Like how much God loves you. Like even if God seems far away, He is not.  Like how being in a storm doesn't mean you've done something wrong. They redirect your thoughts to the future, life after the storm.  Because every storm passes.  No storm lasts a lifetime and God promises to bring good from everything.  Isn't that good news?  I have better - God is with us in the storm.  Very present.  Holding us safely in His arms.

 Brings a song to mind called "Safe".  Have you ever heard it?  You can listen to it here.  I've been hearing it often on the radio lately. The other morning as I sat in my favorite chair with a cup of coffee, I imagined myself sitting in God's strong, protective arms.   That comforted me.  I just love Him so much.  (And for the record, I don't only like the song because my favorite lead singer of MercyMe is featured in this duet. That's just a coincidence.)

This morning I was reading Romans 8.  I think this may be my new favorite chapter of the Bible.  After reading it in the ESV, I took out a different version I like to complement.  Although it's a long chapter, I'm going to print it here for you.  I just love the language and the message of truth.  Kind of sums all of life up.  I'm going to underline verses that spoke volumes to me today.  Actually, I just underlined them and re-read and I'm going to have to add a few comments.  I'm sorry, I just can't help myself!  These will be in blue.  Check it out:

8 ^1-2 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

^3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

^5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.  Sometimes we just get too caught up in our self.  This especially happens in a storm.  Total preoccupation with me.  Yuck!  I get so sick of that, don't you? We can become self-focused to the point that we miss the fact that God has a purpose for our lives that involves serving others, not worrying about what we can't control anyway.  Take a look at your storm.  Can you control the outcome?  Make it go away?  If not, then it's time to let go and trust.  We need to get on with life!  A friend said to me the other day, "No more self pity".  We only have so much time on this Earth to serve God and glorify Him.  See why you need good friends?  A decision to not waste any more time needs to be made.    
^9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
 
^12-14 So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!  Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  A decent burial.  Things to do and places in Christ to go!

^15-17 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!  Remember what I said about glancing into the future when you're in that storm?  Asking God, "What's next?" knowing that we are going to get what comes to us....a glorious inheritance!  Not condemnation (see vs. 1).  Go through the hard times with Him and expect the good times with Him as well!

^18-21 That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.  So good...keep reading!

^22-25 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.  As a woman who has been pregnant 6 times, I get this!!  And that's exactly how I'm feeling today - yearning for full deliverance - joyful in expectancy.  Girlfriend, can you get there even if your storm is raging?  It is indeed a happy place.  We are all longing for something, we just may not realize that it's for something that God will bring out. 

^26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.  And the news keeps getting better.  When you don't know how to pray, don't worry...the Spirit is going to God on your behalf.  Rest there for a while. God is on the job!  Good is on the way!

^29-30 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

^31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? This just about lifted me right out of my chair today.  God is for us and what won't He do for us?  Trust Him with all that is on your mind and heart today.  And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.  Amen and amen.  Does anything else really matter?  Relationship with God through salvation in Jesus is all that really matters and that cannot be taken from you no matter how raging the storm.

 God's Word always has what we need.  Girlfriend, if you're in your own storm today remember that God's got you.  He is there with you in it. It will end and when it does you will see the good He brings forth.  And maybe ask Him who you can do something for today - serve others to get your mind off self.  I told my son Ben on the way to school today that it's time for me to get someone else on my mind.  My plan is to bring some cider to my elderly neighbor today or tomorrow.and ask her to tell me her story and see if there's anything I can do to help her get ready for winter.  Could the clouds be lifting?

 Romans 8 in The Message