Storms

"Then He [Jesus] arose and rebuked the wind

and said to the sea, 'Peace, be still!' And the

wind ceased and there was a great calm."

     Mark 4:39 (NKJV)

"For He commands and raises the stormy wind,

which lifts the waves of the sea. . .He calms the 

storm, so that its waves are still."

    Psalm 107:25, 29 (NKJV)

 Now that spring is here in Minnesota, we encounter wind and rain, thunderstorms, hail and even tornadoes.  To increase my knowledge of what to look for in stormy weather, I watched a webinar by the National Weather Service.  It was interesting and informative, but not surprisingly, there was no acknowledgement that God is behind the weather.  We know that the Lord Jesus is Creator and Master of heaven and earth, and that even the wind and the storms obey Him.

When I was growing up, there were a lot of tornadoes in our area and they really scared me. (That's one reason I never liked the Wizard of Oz movie.)  I didn't know Jesus then so I had no good way to calm my fears. I'd heard about Him but it wasn't until decades later that I accepted Jesus as my Savior and Lord. I still get uneasy when the skies get dark and tornadoes are threatened, but now I know to turn to my Rock and my Fortress.  Jesus can speak peace into our hearts during all kinds of storms.  We read His word and find comfort, strength; we seek His face in prayer and are quieted.

 Jesus is God of the storm and God in the storm. If you're trusting Christ as your Savior and Lord, that should bring peace to your heart. 

For those who are interested, a song link: Master of the Wind by Candy Hemphill Christmas.

Thursday Devotional - Courage to do Nothing?

Jesus timely encouraged Paul in prison, giving him assurance he would go to Rome to testify. Jesus is trustworthy and Paul didn’t have anything to worry about, but did that mean he sat back and did nothing?  

Paul was in prison, so there wasn’t much he could do besides pray. Although he was already in prison, the Jews’ continued plots to kill him. God had Paul’s nephew find out about the plots, though, and he told Paul.

Paul could have told his nephew “Just trust God. Don’t worry about it!” since Jesus told Paul he would testify in Rome. However, Paul wisely (and prayerfully, I’m sure) did what he could do by sending his nephew to the commander.

Acts 23:17-22 ¹⁷ Then Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the commander; he has something to tell him.” ¹⁸ So he took him to the commander.

The centurion said, “Paul, the prisoner, sent for me and asked me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.”

 ¹⁹ The commander took the young man by the hand, drew him aside and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”

²⁰ He said: “Some Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about him. ²¹ Don’t give in to them, because more than forty of them are waiting in ambush for him. They have taken an oath not to eat or drink until they have killed him. They are ready now, waiting for your consent to their request.”

²² The commander dismissed the young man with this warning: “Don’t tell anyone that you have reported this to me.”

Paul had active faith. He also had the Holy Spirit and godly wisdom.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we can fully trust God as Sovereign and in control of everything. That doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing. We are to have active faith. We can pray for wisdom to listen to the Holy Spirit’s direction on how to use the information available in a way that glorifies God and accomplishes His will. How will you and I do that today?  

Alice

When To Follow, When To Lead

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain. Stay there, and I will give you the tablets of stone on which I have inscribed the instructions and commands so you can teach the people.”  So Moses and his assistant Joshua set out, and Moses climbed up the mountain of God.

Moses told the elders, “Stay here and wait for us until we come back. Aaron and Hur are here with you. If anyone has a dispute while I am gone, consult with them.”  Exodus 24:12-14

Leading is hard.  I find this out every time my daughter decides to push a boundary, and each time my wife and I disagree on something.  My challenges to help people grow and to work with those who may struggle while still managing to achieve the goals of the business at work is nothing short of an undaunted task.  Some might say ‘undaunted’ is a strong word for the simple day to day task and compared to a soldier in the Alamo when it was under siege, it is not that undaunted at all.  But if you have a family and perhaps others that depends on you and your successes, the weight on one’s mind can make it seem that way.  Don’t believe me?  Ask Abraham Lincoln.  Him being a man of faith once said, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”  And yet, he was arguably the greatest President of this nation.  How do you go from ‘my own wisdom and that of all about me’ being ‘insufficient’ to greatness?  It really depends on who you follow and what you learn when you lead.

God provides for us a shining example how to follow Him, and in kind, instructs us on how to lead others.  In reading through this portion of Moses and the journey to The Promised Land, he and several of his leaders and elders are climbing the mountain to God.  In today’s verses, the Lord instructs Moses to carry out His plans for Israel, and two key words shape the narrative here.  The first word ‘come’ was a command that Moses was to follow.  The saying is those who are great leaders must first become great followers.  They are willing to take instruction and commands, and Moses proved his willingness to follow the Lord’s commands at multiple turns.  Second was the word ‘teach.’  This implied to help others.  God could have just as easily come down from the clouds and spoken with fire and brimstone, but Moses was His guy!  Through trials and doubts (remember Moses considered himself not the most eloquent of speakers), he had grown to become the trusted leader of Israel.  And as such, God entrusted him to teach the others.  This principle is not to say everyone must lead.  God gives us all an opportunity to come to Him and learn of His goodness and grace.  In doing so, we are given additional opportunities to teach others these things as well.

God’s plan is always multiple steps ahead of our own.  Our goal is not attempting to outwit Him.  It is to prepare and act on what is needed when called upon.  Sometimes it is to come closer to Him.  Others, it is to teach.  Lincoln understood this as well.  In the middle of the Civil War, he wrote a proclamation for a day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer saying:

We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.  Presidential Proclamation 97, March 30, 1863

Lincoln was humble enough to fall to his knees understanding he didn’t have all the answers, and wise enough to remind a nation where grace, sufficiency, humility, and forgiveness come from.  That is why Paul wrote to Timothy, “I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them.  Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity.” (1 Timothy 2:1-2)  I pray we are so humble as to know when to follow, and when chosen, to lead.  Amen.

The Faithful Example of Abraham

The "Role Call of Faith" continues in Hebrews 11. After the "antediluvian" examples, we reach Abraham. He is such an important example, there are four instances listed where he shows great faith. We're going to look at three of them:

By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised. Therefore there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead at that, as many descendants AS THE STARS OF HEAVEN IN NUMBER, AND INNUMERABLE AS THE SAND WHICH IS BY THE SEASHORE. (Hebrews 11:8-12 NASB)

The first is the call. Abraham responds when Yahweh calls him to leave Haran and head to Canaan (Gen. 12:1-4). He responds by obeying, and this meant leaving the comfortable and known and going to the uncomfortable and unknown. There was a promise involved, so, obedience was to be rewarded. But there had to be belief involved, trust in the One making the promises. You and I are called. And there are promises involved. Will we obey, leave the known for the unknown, the comfortable for the uncomfortable? Will we trust the One making the promises?

And then we have the demonstration of faith in Abraham living as a sojourner in the land promised to him. Here the other patriarchs are mentioned, along with a reason for living this way. They were "looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder are God." Really? Is that why they lived in tents in Canaan? Reading the Genesis account of these men may not leave you with that impression, but what does become clear is that they lived in tents in a land they believed was theirs.

Living in a land believed to be theirs, meant living among cities of stone, and those who lived in them. It meant pasturing flocks around tilled fields of others in a land you knew was yours. It was an act of faith that waited for the timing of the One making the promise rather than taking matters into your own hands (except possibly for Simeon and Levi at Shechem).

How willing are we to faithfully persevere in obedience, even not seeing the promise? How long will we wait for the promise, while being obedient? Abraham sometimes waited more than a decade before another recorded conversation with the One making these promises. How long will we live in tents, temporary houses, waiting on the promise of real permanent mansions? The writer of Hebrews is pushing his audience to persevere to the very end.

And Abraham is used again, along with Sarah, in faithfully conceiving Isaac. Think about that, though. How much faith did that take? We tend to skip by the uncomfortable consideration of intimacy between spouses here. But, really, is it surprising they conceived? Abraham had been promised, and specifically promised that one from Sarah would be his heir, not Ishmael. He laughed, as did Sarah, but the "mechanics" of the process hadn't changed. It's just that this time it worked. And yet, the writer of Hebrews calls it faith.

 And, I suppose, it was faith. After Sarah dies, Abraham has other kids, so it wasn't Abraham who had the difficulty, it was Sarah who was barren. That's not a criticism, it's an important detail. Abraham doesn't "jettison" his wife at any point along this process. She's not the "problem", from his point of view. He is dedicated and devoted to her even though she cannot, in herself, provide the promised child. In a way, her barrenness is what brings God to the forefront. Unless He steps in, nothing changes. But, even as long as he doesn't, Abraham is faithful to this barren woman, and is for her whole life. That's faith.

You see, we can become so pragmatic about how God's promises are fulfilled. We can "see" His work, only under certain parameters, as if He can only work in certain ways. And yet, Abraham simply obeys God, remaining faithful to this woman who cannot provide him a son, an heir, the one thing he needs to see what he has been promised. And in remaining faithful to her, he remains faithful to the One promising.

Let's pay close attention to the example of faith provided in Abraham. Let's be uncomfortable, persevere without seeing our hope fulfilled immediately, and live faithful to the ones our Savior has provided to us. Being cooped up with people around the ones we love can strain that love. But it can also build it, renovate it, rejuvenate it, and make it new again. Your choice. Like Abraham, let's choose faith.