Danger: The Fear of Sudden Trouble |  Mark 4:35-41

Message Description:

Have you ever felt like you were in the “perfect storm” where everything goes awry at one time? Have confidence—we have the perfect Captain to guide us safely to the shore.

• We walk Through the valley…not just into it
• Dr. Jeremiah’s message – “Danger: The Fear of Sudden Trouble”
• Next Time on Turning Point

There are 2 kinds of destinations that deserve our attention, temporary destinations, and ultimate destinations.
god assures us that we will arrive at our ultimate destination, life with him in his eternal kingdom.
That is not up for discussion.
That promise alone should help us with all the kinds of fears that we face.
This is not forever. This is something that’s going on now. This too shall pass.
We walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not into it.
If god says that those in Christ will be saved, they will be saved.
In other words, what this is teaching us is that while the journey might be difficult, the ultimate destination is not in doubt.
And what a blessing that is when you’re going through a tough time?
Lord, I don’t know what this is all out, but I know you’ve got me in your hands.
And ultimately, I’m gonna be with you in heaven.
I wish this journey weren’t so rough right now, but I’m sure grateful that I’m not in doubt of where I’m going to end up.
The Andrea Gail left the harbor in Massachusetts on September 20 1991, and it headed into the North Atlantic no one could have known when that happened that that ship would never ever be seen again.
Only a bit of debris turned up to remind everybody that it had once existed, and all 6 of the crew members, uh, perished in the storm.
I went back and found the book that was written on the perfect storm, written by Sebastian Younger that immortalized the fate of the Andrea Gail.
quite an interesting read. And as many of you know, a film was made from that book and from that event, featuring George Clooney and Mark Wallberg, But as famous as those stars are and were, they played just a supporting role.
The real star was the storm terrifying, relentless oppressor born of fierce wind and tremendously high waves.
it was meteorologists who named this cataclysmic tempest, the perfect storm.
It was just a vivid way of saying the worst case scenario you can imagine.
In the case of the Andrea Gail, it was the simultaneous convergence of the toughest weather conditions possible on earth.
3, deadly elements came together in October of 1991, a front moving from Canada toward New England, a high pressure system, building over Canada’s East Coast, and the dying remnants of the hurricane grace, all of them turning along the Eastern seaboard of the United States and converging on the little Andrea Gail.
The last radio transmission of Billy Tine, the captain of the fishing boat, came at 6 PM on October 28th, He reported his coordinates to the captain of his sister ship, the Hana Boden, saying, she’s coming on boys, and she’s coming on strong.
and that was the end. The popular book and the movie brought the term perfect storm into common usage.
But the concept, oh, the concept is as old as humanity.
I mean, people have always had to deal with the convergence of multiple rough circumstances.
Uh, we say it this way sometimes today when it rains, it pours. Yeah.
Today, in our faster, more crowded and more complex world, a few little squalls can quickly become the perfect storm.
When multiple conditions converge and threaten critical areas of life, such as our financial security, our marital harmony, our relationships, our jobs, our health, sometimes we just throw up our hands and say, I can’t take anymore.
It does seem, doesn’t it, that these things never happen alone? They happen together.
Seems like when we’re going through tough times, it’s not one thing that gets us.
It’s one thing, and then something else happens, maybe to that one thing.
And before we know it, we have our own version of the perfect storm.
We can’t imagine how things could get any worse.
And when that happens, fear enters our life, there are 2 kinds of fear that we experience when a perfect storm happens.
First of all, there’s the fear that can immobilize us completely. That’s the very fear of fear itself.
It’s the fear that it could happen, or the fear that it might happen, the fear of something that hasn’t happened, the fear that something that could happen is a kind of fear that we all experience.
I would tell you that’s probably not a healthy fear, because life is difficult enough without thinking about things that could happen.
Uh, you gotta deal with the things that do happen. Isn’t that enough?
But the kind of fear that you experience in the middle of a storm is a good kind of fear.
That’s when the adrenaline flows, and and the the gut level, uh, courage comes to face the challenges.
There there’s a kind of fear that I believe is helpful to us when we face experiences that are beyond our imagination, that fear fills us with kind of strength to deal with the challenges.
And when we have the perfect storm in our life, we usually have a little bit of both kinds of those fears, don’t we?
The fear that can immobilize us because we think it’s going to happen, I would say we need to put that behind us as much as we can.
Don’t worry about the things that could happen.
I remember, uh, somebody gave me a little bit of poetry that was written back in 1922.
And, uh, I thought this is really cool, but you gotta listen carefully to get So when you do that, listen carefully, here’s how it goes.
Last night, I saw upon the stair, a little man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today. Oh, how I wish he’d go away.
Now you say, what what does that mean?
Well, it he was never there, but he thought he was there, so he might as well have been there, amen?
And that’s the way we deal with fear a lot of time too.
You know, it could happen to me, but it hasn’t happened to you. So puts that aside.
As we examine the fear that we face in our lives, and we’ve talked about this now for these weeks, fear is a fact that we have to deal with because we live in a fallen universe, don’t we?
In the Bible, we learned that fear can be managed.
In god’s word, there is a wealth of guidance on dealing storms, both perfect and imperfect.
And don’t let anyone tell you that fear is something we will never experience if we live the Christian life.
I think you should know by now, that the most often repeated instruction in the Bible, more than any other instruction is fear or not.
And if there wasn’t a possibility of fear, I doubt that almighty god would allow his word to be salted with that instruction.
So fear is a reality.
And I wanna remind you of a time when fear took over in the lives of some followers of Jesus Christ.
In Mark chapter 4 verses 35 through 37, we have the story of the disciples caught in their perfect storm.
and it begins with verse 35 of the 4th chapter and the probability of storms in our lives.
The Bible says that when evening had come, Jesus said to them, let us cross over to the other side.
Now, when they had left the multitude, they took him along in the boat as he was, and other little boats were also with him, and a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the so that it was already cord that this event took place at a time when Jesus was at the peak of his personal ministry.
The Bible tells us that he was at the edge of exhaustion He and his disciples were reeling from uninterrupted ministry.
They were healing the sick. They were casting out demons.
They were dealing with opposition from those who didn’t like them. People were coming from all over.
Jesus had become an international celebrity and people who had sick folks were bringing the sick folks to Jesus, and the crowds had become so large, they were almost unmanageable.
And on this particular day, has recorded here in the 4th chapter of Mark, the crowds had become so large that Jesus in order to escape from the crowds had to get into a little boat and push out away from the shore using the boat itself as a pulpit so that he could teach the people who were there.
And the Bible tells us that as evening came, after a long day of exhausting ministry, Jesus felt the need, and his disciples saw the need to get him away from the pressure of the crowds that had gathered to be ministered to by him.
And so, using the boat that had once been their pulpit they pushed off from the shore to go to the other side of the lake.
And the Bible tells us that there were other little boats that went along with him.
So there was Jesus and his entourage heading over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.
there’s a lake in the United States that reminds me of the Sea of Galilee, and that’s the the Lake Erie.
If you’ve ever been on Lake Erie, you know that you can be out on Lake Erie, and all of a sudden, in a moment, a storm can come up that can be very frightening.
The sea of Galilee is the perfect place for a perfect storm.
It’s a a little bowl of water nestled nearly 700 feet below sea level.
And around this little bowl of water called the Sea of Galilee, there are mountains on every side.
Some of them jutting up to 12,000 feet.
And in between these mountains are these gullies where when a windstorm comes, it channels the force of the wind through these gullies and levels it on the water below.
So when the cool air from the mountain top swoops through the valleys and collides with the warm and moist air that hovers over the water, violent storms can erupt in just a matter of minutes.
There would be no way you could prepare for that. It’s the perfect storm.
The sudden intrusion of trouble. And that is just what happened.
It says in verse 37 that a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat and the boat was filling up with water.
Mark uses a little word in the Greek language to tell us how serious this storm was.
The word that he used can be translated by the phrase, furious, squall, or hurricane. This was a hurricane.
Matthew describes the storm as a great seismos, and seismos, as you probably can figure out, is the word in the language of the new testament for earthquake.
So Matthew says it was like an earthquake in the water.
We know that today as a tsunami, Those words give you the impression that the gospel writers saw this as a very, very serious storm into which the disciples and Jesus had found their way.
And just as the sudden storms happen in the physical world in which we live, how many of you can raise your hand and say, I’ve had a few sudden storms in my life as well.
Isn’t that interesting? The probability of storms question, this doesn’t make sense.
At this time in their lives, the disciples were following Jesus wherever he went.
That’s what a disciple is. He’s a follower of Jesus.
Not just a normal follower of Jesus, but an an ardent follower of Jesus.
Jesus never went anywhere that his disciples didn’t go with him. He didn’t do anything that they didn’t do.
He had even recently empowered them to preach and heal the sick and cast out demons.
So what the disciples were doing on this particular day was they were serving their lord with all of their hearts and all of their soul and all of their might.
And in the midst of that situation, they found themselves in a very threatening moment.
They were in the middle of god’s perfect will and found themselves in the middle of a perfect storm we say, now that’s not the way that’s supposed to work.
I mean, if you’re a Christian and you’re following the lord, doesn’t he keep you out of the perfect storms?
I don’t think so.
I’ve been in a few perfect storms my life has given me some instruction about that, I don’t think it was because at that particular time, I was not in the will of god.
No. The paradox of this is that sometimes we are in perfect storms, not because we have disobeyed god, but because we’re in the midst of obeying god.
That god himself allows us to experience, difficult times, sudden trouble, not because we’ve done anything wrong, but because we may be doing something right.
Storms are not always punishment for the lack of obedience. Sometimes they’re the result of obedience.
Those men were in that storm that day because they had jumped in the boat when Jesus said, let’s go.
And now they find themselves in this frightening, terrifying situation.
We always do wrong men and women when we judge others on the basis of the storms we see going on in their lives.
We may say, oh, they must not be doing something right. No. No. They may be doing something really right.
god allows storms in the lives of his children, and we’ll see some of the reasons for that in a few moments.
But I just want to encourage you that if you’re going through a rough spot, if you’re having some squalls in your personal life.
Don’t necessarily beat yourself up about it.
God might be using it to teach you something to help you be a better servant going forward, and a better person going forward.
The paradox of storms, Notice thirdly, that in the midst of this storm, there was a presence, the presence in the storms.
Here he was Jesus verse 38 in the stern asleep on a pillow, and they awoke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing Now, try the best you can in your in your creative mind to picture this situation.
The disciples are, they’re probably with everything they have, trying to get the water out of the boat, trying to keep this boat a float.
And all of a sudden it dawns on them, that their fearless leader is asleep in the same boat that they’re trying to keep afloat.
And finally, they had had it, and they go back and they wake up Jesus, and they say, don’t you even care about us?
Don’t you care that we’re perishing?
The disciples you see really still didn’t know who Jesus was.
That’s the that’s the funny thing
about the gospels. And if you study the gospels, the more you read the more you become aware of the fact that while they follow Jesus, and they love Jesus, and they recognized him to be a very important figure in the world, and perhaps the one who would break the the bonds of the Roman empire that that they felt.
They did not understand that Jesus was the son of god, and most of them didn’t figure it out until after the resurrection.
So we can be hard on them if we want to, but here’s this powerful person that they followed, that they love, this Jesus of Nazareth, in the very boat where they are, and they don’t recognize who he is, so they don’t realize that they’re okay.
And so they wake Jesus up and said, don’t you care that we’re gonna perish?
And before we’re too hard on them, before we’re too hard on them, have you done that?
Lord, don’t you care about this mess I’m in? Don’t you know the problems I have?
Don’t you know I don’t have enough money to pay my bills this week?
Lord, don’t you know that my marriage is coming unglued? Lord, lord, we’re are you asleep, lord?
So that night, on the sea of Galilee, the exhausted Jesus slept on a cushion in the rear of the boat, with the waves crashing all about him and his disciples in despair for their lives.
There’s an untold miracle here. I’m not sure anybody ever notices it, but I noticed it, and that is Jesus was sleeping during the storm.
Now, I’ll tell you what, my wife will tell you.
I can sleep almost anywhere, but in a situation like that, I’m not sleeping. I’m probably on my knees praying.
And the Bible tells us that this presence in the storm called forth peace in the storm.
The peace in the storms of our lives is in verse 39. And Jesus arose and he rebuked the wind.
And he said to the sea, peace be still.
and the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
Mark tells us that Jesus spoke to the wind in the same way that he had spoken you’ll discover that Jesus rebuked demons.
It’s the same word. Jesus spoke to the wind, and he said, wind. Stop it.
And immediately, the wind ceased.
Miracle number 1, And immediately, the waves were calm, an even greater miracle.
Those of us who live on the coast know that when the wind stops, the waves don’t immediately stop.
They keep going for a while.
But on this day, the wind stopped, and the waves stopped, and it got the disciples’ attention.
And we’re reminded as we study this, that loving heavenly father is kind and patient with us when the storms of life overwhelm us.
He’s gracious to show us his power, even when we’re beginning to wonder if he’s asleep or absent, even when our cries to him for help are permeated with doubt, but we can face whatever circumstance awaits us with courage if we just reflect on the faithfulness of god.
Let me tell you something. If you’re a Christian, Jesus is in your boat.
He’s in the midst of your trouble. He’s with you. He hasn’t gone to sleep.
He’s not on vacation. He’s there with you. Count on it. Believe it.
trust it, exercise your faith around it.
If you put your faith in the one who is with you, you won’t be afraid of that which is around you.
He’s in your boat. He has promised never to leave you nor forsake you.
In the midst of your trouble, my friends, whatever it is, and I have no idea you’re experiencing right now, you have one thing you can count on that’s undeniable, the savior of your soul, the creator of the universe, He’s in your boat with you, and he’s promised to help you.
Now, let’s talk for just a moment about the purpose of these storms that we face and the purpose of that storm.
I’ve always been intrigued by this because I’ve heard people say that that Jesus set this whole thing up.
And he was in control, so he set it all up and that he really probably wasn’t sleeping.
He was peaking.
You know, I’ve actually heard people say that, you know. He’s laying in
the and he’s watching his disciples, watching them go through this thing.
And of course, I know that isn’t true because that involves human manipulation, and Jesus is not a manipulator.
No, he allowed this storm in their lives. He did it put them into the storm.
He didn’t try to hurt them. Uh, and you know what? And somebody said, well, did he create the storm?
How many of you know that Jesus doesn’t have to create an special storms because storms are just a part of life.
He just waits for the storm to come to show us how we can deal with it.
So I don’t think he created that storm specific for his disciples, it was gonna storm that day no matter what.
He was just with him when it happened.
And in the midst of the storm, he showed himself to be so strong.
I see no reason to believe that Jesus went to sleep for any other purpose than the fact that he was tired, he’d had an extremely exhausting day.
But when the storm came, he took advantage of that situation to use it as a teachable moment.
And that’s what you see Jesus doing all the time. He walked through life.
And when he saw things, he used them as teachable moments, Here was a storm, and Jesus said, well, this is a great opportunity to teach my disciples to trust in me.
These same men had been with Jesus while he had healed somebody, while he had brought someone back from the dead, while he had taken, uh, demons out of people while he had preached to they had seen his power on display, but they obviously were still more controlled by their fear than they were by their faith.
And Jesus wanted to help them understand.
You know, one of the beautiful things about growing older in Christ is the ability to look back over your shoulder and realize that I’ve been here before, and he was with me then why should I not expect him to be with me today?
The disciples hadn’t come to that place yet, and they were still struggling like crazy with their fear.
You see, men and women, if we have the right perspective on the storms in our lives, we will always come out of them better and not bitter.
We don’t have storms that are meant to hurt us if we’re believers.
The storms in our lives are meant to help us David certainly understood this.
He he wrote in Psalm 1 19, in two places, just a few verses apart from each other, these words.
psalm 1 19 verse 67. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word.
verse 71. It was good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn your statutes.
David said the difficulties I’ve been through have been used by god to make me better, and I refuse to get bitter I’m going to get better.
So, Jesus allowed the winds to rage in order that his disciples might learn to trust him and through the storms of life, our lord teaches us many precious lessons.
He reminds us of our human emptiness and our total dependence on him.
He teaches us to fear god with astonished reverence and not to fear the storms and not to think that we’re big enough and strong enough ourselves to face whatever life might bring.
Uh, guys, that’s that’s what we’re taught from the earliest days. this is a man thing here.
I can do it. I don’t need any help. I’m strong.
if I can believe it, I can achieve it, all that mental, powerful, uh, motivational stuff that sounds good when you hear it and gives you a vicarious blessing when you hear it, then you get in the middle of it and you find out it isn’t so.
We’re not who we think we are.
We’re weak people who are dependent upon god, and sometimes the storms remind us that we can control a lot of things, but there are a lot of things we can’t control.
And in those moments, we find ourselves linked to god in a way we could never have before been linked to him.
We come out of the storms with a greater sense of how dependent we are upon the almighty.
So we’ve talked about the probability that storms in our lives and the paradox of it and the presence, who is the lord and the peace and the purpose.
And the product is, interestingly enough, the disciples came out of the storm in some sense with a different kind of fear that was greater than
the fear they had in the beginning. For it says,
in verse 40, Jesus said to them, why are you so fearful?
How is it that you have no faith? And they feared exceedingly.
I mean, at least in the beginning, they feared. Now they fear exceedingly, you say, well, what kind of
help is that? And they said to one another, who can this be?
that even the wind and the sea obey him.
Jesus said to his disciples, why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?
And he revealed a key concept about fear that we must not forget.
The opposite of faith is not unbelief. the opposite of faith is fear.
Belief breeds confidence, unbelief breeds fear. Essentially, Jesus was saying, Why are you afraid?
Don’t you know I’m in this boat with you? And I, um, god, and that was the problem.
They didn’t know he was god. They hadn’t come to that realization yet.
And the the different for us men and women is we know he’s god.
We believe in his power, but sometimes we don’t accept his presence, do we?
We know he’s god, but we don’t believe he’s really interested in or that he’s in our lives.
We don’t believe in his presence.
The disciples had the problem that they knew his presence was there, but they didn’t believe in his power.
We are just the opposite. We believe in his power, but we don’t think he’s involved with us.
I wanna tell you something he’s involved with you.
The Bible tells us that he knows everything there is to know about you And especially when you’re in a storm in your life, count on it, he’s in your boat, and he’s there He’s willing to wrap his arms around you and help you and strengthen you.
He won’t always make the storm go away immediately, but he will add to you the strength that you need so that you can get through it not somehow but with your hands up high.
That’s what he promises.
So maybe there’s a specific fear that’s claiming your attention today, whatever it is, it will only be amplified by failure to trust in god.
He is not sleeping. He is here.
He knows every thought in your mind, every feeling in your heart, And while I stare with fear at the dark skies, he focuses on the person he is forming me to be.
he sees beyond the storm to what he’s going to make out of me in the storm.
He knows that a storm is the very thing that I need at this time in my life to make me the person that he longs for me to be.
the purpose of the storms.
I’d like to review this for a moment with 4 principles that come from this story that our enduring lasting principles, and I hope will be a blessing to all of us as we think about fear going forward in our lives.
the promises for the storms in our lives. Here’s the first one.
God’s word assures us of a safe landing. Notice 2 verses.
I love to put these 2 verses together. You have your Bible still open to Mark chapter 4.
Here are the 2 verses.
The first one is verse 35 of the 4th chapter, mark 4 verse 35.
On the same day, when evening had come, Jesus said to them, let us cross over to the other side.
Got that one? Take your finger and just go all the way down the page to the first verse in chapter 5.
Then they came to the other side. Jesus said, let us go to the other side.
Mark tells us they got to the other side.
The interesting thing about this story is that there are 2 kinds of destinations that deserve our attention.
temporary destinations and ultimate destinations.
God assures us that we will arrive at our ultimate destination, like with him in his eternal kingdom, that is not up for discussion.
That promise alone should help us with all the kinds of fears that we face This is not forever.
This is something that’s going on now. This too shall pass.
We walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not into it.
If god says that those in Christ will be saved, they will be saved.
In other words, what this is teaching us is that while the journey might be difficult, the ultimate destination is not in doubt.
And what a blessing that is when you’re going through a tough time?
Lord, I don’t know what this is about. But I know you’ve got me in your hands.
And ultimately, I’m gonna be with you in heaven.
I wish this journey weren’t so rough right now, but I’m sure grateful that I’m not in doubt of where I’m going to end up.
You know, you can get a little illustration of that in your own lives now that we have all these GPS systems in our in our culture.
I saw the story. Some of you did this last week about how many people have gotten lost following their GPS.
And one terrible story was one one group got out, got got out into the middle of the desert, and we’re in terrible danger almost lost their lives because the lady in their little phone told them to go this way, and they followed her.
And so, uh, their destination was never ever, for sure.
And every time I do that now, we have it in our phone, and we have it in our car, and I tell this lady where I wanna go.
I just pray, like, I pray she’s got having a good day. That’s all I can tell you.
Because you ask my wife, she’ll tell you that lady has led us to some very strange places.
not long ago, we were coming back from a trip, and we were going to the airport, and it was a little airport.
And this lady didn’t know that the back entrance is to the airport, which w w w were closed for construction.
So she kept taking us to the back, and we would check-in with her again, and she take us all around, and we rewrite back at the back answers again.
It was terrible. Oh, I’m telling you, friends, My
lord Jesus has a GPS that never fails. And he knows where we’re going, doesn’t he?
He knows that we’re going to end up there. We might have a detour a show along the way.
That’s what this teaches us, that the destination is never in doubt. Never. The journey might be rough.
but the confidence that we have is that one day we’re going to spend eternity with the lord, Pallelujah.
But, of course, god’s word also alerts us to expect stormy seas.
The new testament is salted with warnings about storms.
That’s what’s so surprising when Christians go through tough times, and they act like, well, why is this happening to me?
Probably somebody told them, or they heard some preacher say, if you’re a Christian, All your problems go away.
You gotta be kidding me. When I got saved, I inherited a
few I’d never had before. How about the rest of you?
got some people that used to like
you, don’t like you anymore.
Now, you’re a Christian. The Bible doesn’t tell you that when you get saved, all your problems go away, The Bible tells you very forthrightly that life is filled with storms here are 2 verses to put in your notes.
James want to, my brethren count it all joy when you fall into various trials, not if you fall into them, but when you fall into them.
And Peter says, do not think it’s strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing is happening to you.
In other words, men and women, the destination is sure
but so are the storms along the way. One of
the things that’s lacking in our pulpit ministries these days is the failure and refusal to prepare people for adversity.
adversity is a part of life, We don’t get a different route through life because we’re Christians.
We are on the same road with the same adversity that everybody else has.
The difference is he’s in our boat, he’s in our car, he’s with us, and promises to carry us through, and the ultimate promise is that one day we will be with him forever.
Here’s the third thing that I’ve learned, that god’s word announces that the savior is on board the disciples were too inexperienced with Jesus to have a faith devoid of fear.
And maybe you’re the same way.
You you’re a Christian but you draw no assurance from Jesus when the clouds roll in.
When the sky darkens, you may wonder whether you should step into the boat with Jesus or stay ashore in hopes of avoiding the storm.
Let me say this to you as clearly as I can.
As a follower of Christ, I’d rather be with Jesus in the boat in the midst of a storm than on the shore without him.
I’d often thought how strange it is, this little detail that Mark throws into the story that I haven’t figured out yet why it’s there, except I had this one thought.
The Bible tells us that when this boat went across to the other side, there were other boats that went with him.
There was a flotilla of boats that went with him.
And my only thought was when the storm came, I would have been glad I was in Jesus boat and instead of one of those other little boats where Jesus wasn’t.
We’re never told what happened to them. No. Jesus is not sleeping.
He’s not disinterested in your situation. He is with you. He’s on board. Say that with me.
Jesus is on board. Jesus is on board. He’s on board in your life.
Hebrews 135 says, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
Matthew 28 20 says, lord, I am with you all waves. Those are promises.
And as far as I know, Jesus has never yet broken a promise that he makes.
What’s uncertain is your grasp of that fact, your ability to trust, your ability to comprehend it, but the fact itself is not up for question.
It’s the only storm proof foundation in existence.
Jesus is on board, and he cares deeply about what’s going on.
and the Bible tells us that god’s word will drive that fear out of your life.
I hope you will never forget these two verses and that you will make the right choice between them.
Here are 2 men from the Old Testament, David and Isaiah, both talking about fear, but if I could be so bold and, and reverent and saying it, I like Isaiah better than David.
And here’s why. David says it this way, whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you.
Psalm 56, 3. Isaiah says, I will trust and not be afraid.
I like that one better, don’t you?
I’d rather trust god going into a storm and know ahead of time that he’s gonna care for me, and I’m gonna be okay, then to have to figure that out while I’m in the midst of the storm.
I’d rather build my trust and my faith in god so that when the storm comes, I know that the lord Jesus and I are anything that life ever throws at us.
But if I don’t have that, I might have to go through the storm and learn it in the midst of the storm.
So you can either be David or Isaiah in this whole deal.
You can either trust god in the midst of the storm and learn it in the process, or you can learn to trust him ahead of the storm and know that he is sufficient for every need that you have.
I know we’re all creatures that deal with fear.
Here’s what I know that I can tell you that I hope you’ll never forget.
The more you build your faith, the less you will be terrified by fear.
Life is basically a choice. We either live by fear or we live by faith.
Faith comes by the hearing of the word and the hearing of the word and the teaching of the word and the understanding of the word of god will little by little build you strong faith so that when things come that you’re not expecting sudden storms, sudden things that you never dreamed could happen, maybe it can convergence of things, like, uh, like we talked about today, if you stay strong in faith, if you build your faith in Christ, If you spend time knowing him, you will not ever feel alone in the storm, and you will negotiate the storm by the grace of god was, I said before, with your hands up high, you don’t have to be afraid.
You should not be thinking what to do if sudden trouble comes your way.
You should be thinking where you will turn when the trouble comes.
You see, we can’t escape storms and waves of life.
his word.
We can experience the peace that only Christ can provide.
Jesus to be the lord and savior of your life.
It’s my prayer that you have done that, and that you’re eager to continue growing in rise.
And I’d like to provide you with some free resources that will help.
A booklet called your greatest turning point, and our monthly devotional magazine turning points.
We’ll put them in the mail to you immediately at no charge if you’ll just contact us today at Turning Point.
Next time on Turning Point.
all done with his depression. He did not sin. The Bible says that.
In his crying out to god for answers and for help, he sinned not.
So make sure that what’s going on in your life drives you toward your god and not away from you.
Thank you for being with us today. Join Doctor Jeremiah next time for his message.
Depression. The fear of will break down.
Here on turn important.