How to Survive a storm

How to Survive a Storm

Mark 4:35&36

³⁵ As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” ³⁶ So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats followed).

Mark 5:1

So they arrived at the other side of the lake, in the region of the Gerasenes.

So of course these verses are not back to back but it is simple they got in the boat to cross to the other side then they came to their destination…. Simple, right?  But sometimes so much like life there are things that arise on our way to where we are going and below are the missing verses starting again in Mark 4

³⁷ But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water.

 ³⁸ Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up, shouting, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?”

 ³⁹ When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Silence! Be still!” Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰ Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

 ⁴¹ The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!”

I always saw the fact that Jesus was sleeping in the boat when there was a storm and now I looked at the fact that there was a storm and Jesus was with them even though he was sleeping he was still with them. Not only that, but his disciples got to witness him do something powerful. The disciples were obviously afraid and low on faith otherwise Jesus would have never said “Why are you afraid? Do you still have not faith?”

Last night   I was watching an episode of Joel Osteen and he was talking about storms and I thought it tied in well with the above.  He talked about one of Paul’s journeys where the weather was so bad, so I was curious and read through Acts 27.  Paul was a prisoner and they set sail for Italy. The weather was bad from the start and they changed ships along the way. Verse 7 says ‘the wind was against us’. Paul even spoke to the ship’s officers about it but the officer in charge of the prisoners listened more to the ship’s captain and the owner that to Paul (who would listen to a prisoner on a boat anyways?).  So even the midst of our storms and when we feel like the ‘wind is against us’ and when others are in charge we can still rely and trust on God to get us to where we are going.

The sailors kept wanting to sail against the winds but finally gave up and let it run ‘before the gale’ as verse 15 says. They ended up dumping so much stuff overboard, cut the lifeboats off, and even cut the anchors.

If you continue on in Chapter 27 they faced days and days of bad weather  and in verse 21 it says ‘until at last all hope was gone.’ Then Paul talks to the men and told them they should of listened to him and says take courage ‘for last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me and spoke to me’. Verse 31 Paul again speaks to them and has everyone eat as they had not eaten for weeks. Paul’s life was spared cause the captain wanted him alive and everyone on ship survived.

Sometimes we have to let the storm blow us to wherever it is taking us, instead of us fighting against the wind even though the way we are going may be right and proper and of course it can be, but sometimes God has another plan. Lets ride out the storm and see where it takes us and meanwhile we can be assured God is in control, we can pray and hear from him during the most intense parts of the storm knowing we are going to ‘get to the other side’ and we can see God do powerful things in the midst of our storm when we have lost all hope.

A great picture of this is in the movie Madagascar 2 where a lion cub is captured in Africa put in a wood crate and then falls off of a truck into the ocean and ends up in New York, during the trip he is alone in the dark in the ocean in a wood crate and can’t see anything.   

So in our storms of life, and when we feel like all hope is gone or we are in place we don’t want to be in our circumstances, be assured Jesus is with us even if we feel like he is doing nothing (sleeping) and we can be assured he can and will do powerful things in the midst of our storms and get us to where we need to be.