Surviving the Storm

When you go through the storm, whose voice are you listening to? In our lowest moments, we try to fix our way out, but the most important thing you can do is remain steadfast! You will not die here. The vast storm you’re facing is an indicator there’s an even greater assignment on your life. Rebuke the storm! You’re not finished — you’re coming out victorious on the other side!

The one thing that we all have in common, black or white, rich or poor Democrat or Republican short or tall vegan or a foodie.
I don’t care what philosophy you choose to fly up under.
The one thing I can guarantee you that all of us will face.
Male or female is a storm, single or married is a storm, divorced or not, is a storm.
There is nobody you’re going to meet or greet or fall in love with or fall out of love with that will avoid the fact that storms are built into God’s plan for getting you to the other side.
You have to know that he equipped you with a fire extinguisher and a life raft and an emergency exit and a door that moves and an automated system and a microphone.
And so that even when you can’t see him, you can hear him and if you will follow his voice, you will get to the other side.
The problem is storms are noisy and they’re loud and they’re disruptive and there’s so many people screaming and hollering and people are saying a whole bag and people are saying, push through and people are saying, turn the wheel and somebody else is saying, grab the rudder and somebody else is saying, throw the weights off.
And somebody else is saying, cast the anchor and somebody else is saying, put up the sail and you stand there.
You don’t know where to put up the sail, throw the anchor and the real art I have learned so far in the storm is not fixing the storm.
The first thing we do when we get in the storm is to try to fix the storm.
The storm is not yours to fix the storm is yours to survive.
You cannot fix the storm.
That’s number one, you cannot fix the storm, you cannot fix the storm and this drives you crazy.
And I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a generalization. It’s not always true, but I’m gonna make it anyway.
But it’s particularly difficult for men because we are raised to fix stuff.
We grew up fixing stuff.
Women grew up, a lot of women grew up with relationships with dolls, with doll babies, play in the house, all that kind of stuff.
You grew up with that kind of stuff. We grew up fixing stuff.
Most of us, they didn’t give us to our babies. They probably should have.
Maybe we would have been better fathers if we’d have practiced with babies, we, we practice making them better than we did have.
So, so maybe we would have been better, but they gave us tools and they gave us stuff to build and they gave us stuff to fix.
And so whenever you give us a problem, we wanna fix it because we feel like we’re a failure if we don’t fix it.
And there are some women who feel that way too.
You feel like you failed if you don’t fix it, if your daughter doesn’t turn out the way you wanted her to turn out, if your son doesn’t turn out the way you want it.
If your marriage doesn’t turn out the way you want it to turn out, you lose self esteem because you feel like it’s your fault because you can’t fix it.
And you’re embarrassed to admit to other people that you’re on your third marriage and, and that you can’t fix it.
And you’re embarrassed to admit to other people that you have been here a year and gone through three jobs and you can’t fix it.
And I came to tell you every storm that comes your way is not your job to fix.
I’m gonna let that sink in a little bit because a lot of you pride yourself on being able to fix people.
And that’s why you pick out fixer upper because you think you’re so good at fixing stuff that you are drawn to people who are fixer upper so that you feel needed and you can fix them up.
You are not on this boat to fix this storm when they set sell, everything was cool.
Jesus is taking a nap because this is an important trip.
This is an important trip because to cross over the sea of Galilee and go to the other side was to go to gather, not just that the man was possessed with demons, but the man who was possessed with demons was a gentile.
And getting the gospel over to the gentiles was a very important trip.
It was a prophetic trip, Jesus experiencing the Jews on one side and the gentiles on the other was a prophetic picture of what was gonna happen to the early church.
The early church was gonna start being offered to the Jews and consequently end up going to the Gentiles.
It was gonna start out being based in Jerusalem and end up based in Rome.
The church was gonna take the same journey that the boat did.
The church is the boat, the sea is the world.
And here we are trying to navigate the church through the tempest of the world.
And the, and the boat has one culture and the and the sea has another culture and we are in it though we’re not of it and we have to survive it being in the middle of it because even though we’re not of it, we are still in it and we get tossed and beat to and fro because we can’t get the boat to work without putting it in the water.
And the church doesn’t work without the world.
The church doesn’t work without the world.
Every time the church has tried to escape the world, we’ve made fools of ourselves.
If you know church history, there are many times we’ve gone up on the mountain to wait for Jesus.
We, we’ve colonized and moved out and become cultish to wait on Jesus.
Any time the boat tries to escape the sea, it ends up embarrassed because the boat only works in the sea and the church only works in the world and the world is unpredictable.
One text can change the next 10 years of your life.
One phone call can change how the rest of your day goes.
One text and you’re trying to book a flight to get out of here on the next flight.
Possible to get to some place that you never expected to get to as quickly as you could because all of a sudden a storm hits you.
Storms don’t always warn you that they’re coming.
It’s not like they send out a notice and say you get ready to get on a boat and all hell is gonna break loose.
Oh, about 50 fathoms out into the water. You’re gonna run into the worst time of your life.
You’re gonna think you’re gonna die.
Oh, once you get so high in the air, the pallet is gonna pass out and you’re gonna be scared out of your wits and you’re gonna almost lose your mind.
Oh, you’re gonna have a baby and the baby is gonna die in your arms and you’re gonna be sadder, sadder than you ever been in your life.
You’re gonna lose all three of your first pregnancies.
You’re gonna, your husband is gonna leave you for, for your girlfriend and your sister, your auntie, your cousin run off with your mama.
No, nobody, you don’t get to pick, oh, you think that’s funny?
You think it’s funny, don’t you? Yeah. You think that’s funny? But that’s happening.
That, that, that’s happening. That’s happening. That’s happening. That’s happening all around you.
Nobody gets to tell you that your beautiful bride is gonna fall in love with a beautiful bride and leave you home alone.
He ha ha ha ha. But it’s happening.
And how do you sit down at the sports bar and tell your boys you lost your girl to a girl but it’s happening.
You don’t get to pick the storm. You face, Peter didn’t ask for this storm.
He didn’t vote for the storm.
He didn’t have a meeting with God and say, oh God, I wanna deal with leukemia. I picked Leukemia.
What do you want? Do you want to go blind? Or would you prefer leukemia?
How about losing a couple of toes?
Would you rather lose your family or lose your toes?
Would you rather lose your leg or lose your sight?
Would you rather lose your mind or just lose your memory?
Which you don’t get to pick what life is going to hand you.
You cannot control the storm and to all those control freaks which come in both genders.
You have a special degree of trauma because the only time you feel safe is when you’re in control and what binds together, the story between the airplane and the boat is both of them faced a season of being totally out of control.
And I confess to you, I hate it. I absolutely hate it.
I don’t want to be in something I can’t control.
I don’t want to be in a plane because I can’t fly it.
And if you can’t fly, then I can’t fly.
I don’t wanna go, I don’t want to operate on myself because I’m not trained to do it.
I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna be picked for a job. I can’t perform.
I wanna know clearly what the expectations are for me before I get the job because I’d rather give you the check back than to take the money and disappoint you because I can’t deliver what you’re asking for.
And when you’re in a storm, the big question in your mind is, do I have what it takes to stand against this storm?
Do I? Am I equipped? Am I fully equipped? Can I get my hand on my life vest?
Can I have? Can I swim out of here? Can I withstand how cold this water is gonna be?
Can I make it through at my age. Can I make it through at my stage?
Can I make it through at this moment in my life?
Can I make it through after all the other stuff we’ve been through? After all?
We were busy before we got on the boat. We were journeying before we got on the boat.
Oh, hell, it broke loose before we got on the boat.
And now I’m on the boat and I’m so tired that Jesus has gone to bed.
This is not a good time to have a storm.
I want to talk to some real people who were tired before it ever even started.
All hell was breaking loose before it ever even started.
And you know, if Jesus went to bed, Peter was sleeping because everywhere Jesus had been, Peter had been and the worst time to have a storm is when you’re already tired, that’s why the enemy waits till you’re tired.
He waits till you’re burned out. He waits till you’re frustrated. He waits till you’re out of gas.
He don’t jump on you when you’re fresh.
He don’t jump on you when you’re feeling strong, he don’t jump on you when you got it all together.
He waits till you are exhausted and you feel like if one more thing hits me, I am going to lose it up in here.
And that’s when the storm comes over and over and over and over and over and over and over from Old Testament to New Testament.
There’s one consistent phrase you see over and over again and it came to pass and it came to pass and it came to pass.
After many days Jesus was in and it came to pass, that Ezekiel found himself in the valley and it came to pass.
And what you don’t realize is that phrase is not just a leading to the story.
Every storm that ever hit the planet came.
Let me try this side over here.
Maybe I can find a little bit more faith.
Every storm that ever hit the planet no matter how fierce, no matter how devastating, no matter how many homes were destroyed, no matter how many people died in it, they always come, they give them new names, they give them different names.
They run out of alphabet for hurricane Ira, hurricane Zozo, hurricane Mabel, hurricane. I don’t care what you call it.
It’s still a hurricane and no matter how severe, no matter how terrible, no matter how many lives were lost, dogs were lost, horses were lost, people were lost, families were lost.
It still comes to pay us.