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. 

When It Is Too Dark To See

When my daughter was growing up every summer she would go to summer camp.  One year I forgot to pack a flashlight that was on their list of things to bring.  During one dark night she was on her own out using the bathroom, they had just finished up playing some night games and on the way back to her cabin, she all of a sudden felt herself going downhill and could not see anything, she ended up falling in the ditch that had a creek and hurt her foot.   
Some days it can  feel like we do not know where we are going,  God says he will be a guide for us so we won't ever get lost or fall in a ditch, it may feel like we don't know where we are going or how we are going to get there but Psalm 119:105 says "your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path". We might make choices in our life that lead us into a ditch but God is there to help us out of a ditch and guide is in the way we should go. 
God will not leave us alone, He will show us the way even when we cannot see one foot ahead of the other. If we have a bad feeling about where we are headed or a decision we are about to make we can stop the direction of where we are going and turn around. Isaiah 30:21 'and you will hear a voice say "This is the way turn around and walk here".
 This works for so many things in life.  Several years ago I accepted a one year maternity leave position with the government.  When the position was finished the person who's job it was decided to stay home with her family  so she did not return.  My boss offered me the full time permanent position.  I declined this as it was not what I wanted to continue doing and there were several things going on in my family which made it difficult to work every day.  After I went home I had a terrible feeling that I did the wrong thing so I went to my boss the next morning and asked if I could still have the position. She allowed me to have it (even though it was not my ideal career choice) and three months later I was laid off, as was my boss, anyways due to changes in the company. On the plus side of this job my sister worked in the same building and I enjoyed going to chat with her or going out for lunch with her and just spending some of my everyday life with her.  God's timing is not always our timing.  I am now in my field of chosen work doing what I love and working at a University I prayed 8 years to get a job at, I work with wonderful people and have an amazing office with a great view of our river valley.  Psalm  32:8 The Lord says " I will guide you along the best pathway for your life, I will advise you and watch over you. 
God will watch over us He knows what we like and if we listen for his voice and have peace about the decisions we make we can avoid falling into a ditch.  Although falling into a ditch can be a great learning experience and I have fallen in the ditch more times than I would like to mention,  I do not want to continue doing it over and over again. 


We can know that God will give us strength and keep us safe as we continue to walk along on life's journeys.
Psalm 18:32 God arms me with strength, he has made my way safe.


Blessings,
Shelley

A Glimpse of God

A Glimpse of God

I wanted to share the picture I used in this blog.  I found it last week as a story in yahoo and was completely amazed by the photograph.  At the end I have included a write up on it. The photo includes the milky way galaxy, the northern lights and a meteor.  At this time of year where we live we can see the northern lights and they are truly amazing to look at. I googled a few websites trying to see how many stars were in the Milky Way Galaxy and got several different answers of course,  but on average there were 500 billion or a thousand million or let’s just say there were too many to count.  A few days before I found the picture I was reading Genesis 1:

 ¹⁴ Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them mark off the seasons, days, and years. ¹⁵ Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. ¹⁶ God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And evening passed and morning came, marking the fourth day.

Genesis 1:1-3, 14-19.

God is an immeasurable God who not only made the heavens and the earth and a kajillion stars but He also made me and made you.  You and I are one of billions of people on the planet, yet He knows you and cares about you and loves you.

Psalm 139 tells us how well he knows us.

¹³ You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴ Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. ¹⁵ You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
 ¹⁶ You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
   Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.  ¹⁷ How precious are your thoughts about me,^[a] O God. They cannot be numbered! ¹⁸ I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me! Psalm 139: 13-20

So whatever you face today He knows you, He knows what you face and if he can make the universe He can help you through the day you are facing, no matter what your day may hold. I pray that you would be filled with peace and strength as you go thru your day today.

Blessings,

Shelley

An Amateur photographer, Tommy Eliassen, composed the image in Ifjord, Finnmark, Norway. Eliassen made the photo on Sept. 25 using a Nikon D700 with a wide angle lens.  You can see the milky way,  the northern lights and a meteor as well. 

When Weariness Sets In

I am blessed with a great job and wonderful people to work with and I enjoy my work,  the one thing about this job that is different from any other I have had is I don’t have any benefits, which also means if I don’t work I don’t get paid and I don’t get paid for statutory holidays either.  The reason I am sharing this as it does relate to what I am going to share this morning.  I accepted a one year term position in June of 2010 which has since been extended to March of 2012 which I am very grateful for.  It is now almost Nov 2011 and I have yet to take two weeks off in a row for some down time.  I am getting quite weary and thought to myself one morning as I was getting ready for work “I am so tired of getting up every day and taking the train and getting to work I would just really love to stay home for a few weeks”.    So that brings us to a discussion I had with my daughter two months ago.  I went over to visit her one evening as she had a new baby and I wanted to go and hold the baby for a while,  there is something therapeutic about holding a newborn.  So as I entered her house our conversation when something like this.  Daughter – “how are you tonight”? Me – “I am tired”, even as the words escaped my mouth I wish I could have stopped them as I briefly forgot I was visiting my daughter who has a newborn (and who is more tired then a mother with a new baby, not to mention she has two other girls under the age of three).  So I then quickly tried to cover my tracks, but it did not work.  Daughter then says – “at least you get to shower and dress up and take the train to work  every day”. My brief thought on this statement was ‘see highlighted sentence above’.  I then responded with something like “yes but I have been working for more than 15 months and just want some time to stay home”,  I realized I was digging a deeper hole in this conversation by complaining  about my weariness to my daughter who has not slept thru the night for some time and sometimes doesn’t even get to shower during the day. So in closing this part of our conversation my daughter responds with “at least you get to shower and sleep at night”.  Enough said she was right, at least I get to shower and sleep at night and if I remember correctly sometimes even going to the bathroom can pose a problem when you have toddlers who don’t want you out of their sight or try to wiggle their little hands under the bathroom door while you try to take 10 seconds to use the bathroom. Well as we had a good laugh over this conversation,  she also asked me if I would like to trade for a while and no I would not like to trade for a while as much as I love my grandkids. 

As I reflected on this conversation after I got home I thought of the mother of my grandson, who is a full time single mom and full time student and I know her workload is never ending and challenging, I think of her often and how courageous she is,   I think of my mother who will do anything for anybody at any time,  I think of my son in law who works long hours for his family,  and then I think of many others including you who might be reading this today,  you may be tired and not sure how you may make it thru another day of the same workload you may have with no end in sight, you may be a student and working a full time job,  you may be a dad or single parent working long hours to support your family,  you may have rebellious teenagers and are worn out from standing your ground, your child may be in trouble with the law and you are just trying to stay afloat, you may need some change in your life and have no idea when it is going to come  and so these words came to my mind from Isaiah:

²⁸ Have you never heard? Have you never understood?  The Lord is the everlasting God,  the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary.  No one can measure the depths of his understanding. ²⁹ He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. ³⁰ Even youths will become weak and tired,  and young men will fall in exhaustion. ³¹ But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary.They will walk and not faint.  Isaiah 40:28-31

These words impacted me greatly that evening as I once again took my cares and worries to God in prayer and asked Him for strength to continue on this journey of one day at a time. If I think too far ahead it can be discouraging, so I think of the words my husband, who I am so thankful for, frequently says 'live for today, enjoy the day you are in' so  I am at work this morning enjoying the day I have, enjoying the view of the city as it is still dark out and the lights are pretty,  and not complaining about how I want some time off but instead being thankful for the many blessings in my life, and I do have many. 

So as you go about your day today try to live just for today and focus only on what you are currently doing, God says he will give you strength for today and He really will!

Blessings,   Shelley