In 1996 photographer Charles o’rear was driving through Napa Valley north of San Francisco.
When a particular landscape caught his eye, it was a green hillside sloping and smooth with a few wild flowers dotting the grass at the bottom of the hill was struck by the beauty of that peaceful scene.
So he did what any good photographer would do.
He pulled over lined up a picture in the resulting shot, the lush green of the hill is framed perfectly by the bright blue sky with just enough wispy white clouds to add another layer of color and texture.
If you look closely, you can even see the lines in the hillside where a lawn mower has recently done its symmetrical work.
Pleased by his excursion o’rear packed up, his gear went on his way.
He had no way of knowing that he had just taken what would become the most viewed photograph of all time.
You see a few years later, the Microsoft company commissioned the rights to Rear’s picture now named Bliss and designers set the picture as the default background for their new operating system.
And by the time Windows XP was retired, Microsoft estimated that bliss had been viewed by billions of people around the world.
More than even the most famous paintings in history including the Mona Lisa.
One of my favorite features of the Psalms is the pictures that they paint.
Like Charles Rear. The the Psalmist were experts at creating pictures and except that they didn’t use a paintbrush.
They, they use cameras, not, no, not cameras. They use words as an example.
Psalm 100 and seven celebrates the friendship and the faithfulness of God.
It’s a beloved hymn of Thanksgiving for his deliverance.
In the section from verses 4-32, we can find four word pictures, four biblical camera pictures of circumstances faced by God’s people along their journey.
The first picture is that of a desert.
It is a landscape and this landscape happens to be a desert.
It’s described in verses four through nine of Psalm 100 and seven.
And you can read the word picture painted by the Psalmist. Here’s what it says.
They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way.
They found no city to dwell in hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.
Now, the Bible tells us that life for Christians and life for all of us who are God followers can sometimes be like being in the desert.
We, we lose our way, we get in a dry wilderness. We don’t understand what the meaning is.
This is true for those who don’t know God but sometimes even after we come to know God, we can fall back into sort of a self absorbance that puts us in the same place.
For some, the desert is loneliness.
Others are lost in a cycle of routine futility and still others become dislocated in the desert.
They get caught up in affluence which turns out to be a land drier and thirstier than they ever expected.
The wanderers trudge through the sand without hope or out without help and they seek true spiritual meaning that always seems to elude them.
The Psalmist paints this picture of people lost in the desert.
What a picture of hopelessness and helplessness that is. And that’s unfortunately where many people are right now.
And this whole pandemic that we’ve been through has just uh exaggerated that experience in their life.
Well, the Psalmist paints another picture and this one is the picture of prison.
He said sometimes life can be like prison.
The desert may have seemed an odd subject for a painting, but verse 10 offers one even less likely.
It’s a group portrait of prisoners.
Psalm 107, verse 10 says, those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death bound in affliction and irons.
Leonard Griffith has written that people are like prisoners trapped in the dungeon of their own moral folly, the victims of evil rather than the doers of it.
They started out with freedom of choice, but they continue to choose the wrong thing, but that freedom will be fleeting.
When we choose evil, the wrong choices become patterns of behavior that finally master those who made the choices.
Griffith continues. He says the drug addict would give anything to be set free from the chains of his habit, but it has him hooked and he knows that the end of it will be his death in his sober moments.
The alcoholic hates himself for the hell that he creates in his own home.
But his bottle is like a chain and he knows that he cannot break loose from it.
Not all prisons are of our own making.
However, some of us are trapped by difficult circumstances from which there seems little hope or escape.
These prisons might have been constructed by other people’s evil, by persecution or by matters over which we don’t have any control.
We don’t have to be at fault to become hopeless captives.
The psalmist says that sometimes life can be like a desert, the dryness and bareness of it all.
Sometimes it’s, it’s like being in prison, you’re caught up in the chains of your own making.
And here’s one, many of us know he, he, he, he paints the third picture.
He says sometimes life can be like a hospital.
We come to the portrayal of a familiar and forbidding setting fools because of their transgression and because of their iniquities were afflicted, their soul abhorred all manner of food and they drew near to the gates of death.
This is a ward of illness and affliction and it serves as a corridor that opens into the darkness of death.
Now, not every illness of course is caused by sin, but the people here have poisoned themselves with their own transgressions here in the Psalms and there they are in the ward.
They lie there waiting only for their final moments on this earth.
So the first three paintings are easily described.
Sometimes life is like being in a desert where there’s no water where you’re parched and you’re thirsty.
Sometimes life can be like being in a prison. Sometimes it’s like being in the hospital.
These three pictures are easily described and we can dispense with them.
And the few words to which we have given it is the fourth picture that is very meaningful for all of us.
Now, it’s the picture about which Michael was singing a few moments ago.
It’s the picture of the storm picture causes us to catch our breath.
We’re gazing at the portrait of a furious storm. Here are the verses from Psalm 100 and seven, verse 23.
And following those who go down to the sea in ships who do business on great waters.
They see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep for he commands and raises the stormy wind which lifts up the waves of the sea.
They mount up to the heavens, they go down again to the depths, their soul melts because of trouble.
They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man.
They are at their wits end and then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble and he brings them out of their distresses, he calms the storm so that its waves are still.
And then they are glad because they are quiet. So he guides them to their desired haven.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people and praise him in the company of the elders.
How many disasters like COVID-19 have felt like a raging storm?
That’s why this Psalm is so meaningful because when we go through these storms, here is God’s word, helping us to understand the storm and understand where he is in the midst of it.
So let me just unpack this for us in this message.
First of all, I want you to notice the place of the storm when I’ve encountered the storms in my life.
I’ve taken encouragement from this psalm.
It has always been when I have ventured out into the open sea when I have taken a great step of faith and moved beyond the borders of safety that I’ve been caught by the treacherous winds.
Here’s what he says. They will go down to, to the sea who do business in great waters.
I feel certain that I’m pursuing the will of God for my life.
But my faith is tested by the wind and the rain. Have you ever been there?
As far as, you know, you aren’t out of the will of God.
You’re doing everything God asked you to do. You’re even walking in faith.
You’ve taken a big step to trust him for something important and then all of a sudden the storms come.
The message is simply that great works are done in deep waters. Many of us never learned that lesson.
We want to hang around in the shallow part of the pool and we do that because we’re afraid.
We don’t want to get out of our comfort zone where we, where we will feel, feel fear.
But Jesus tells us to launch out into the deep and take risks in the pursuit of excellence and in the knowledge of God, we walk to the edge of all of our light and that next step into the blackness holds the destiny God has for us, but it also holds whatever dangers are out there.
We know that we, we realize the risk and perhaps we’ll never take that one terrifying step that makes the miracle possible.
It’s not simply biblical sense. I mean, this is common sense.
I, I read this not just in the Bible, I read it in business books.
If you’re in the business world, you realize if you play it safe and you’ll never build a business.
Launching a new firm is launching out into the deep. Some of you are right there.
Now, you’ve lost your businesses and you’re sitting there thinking, well, I’m not going to try this again.
I’m going to take the easy way out. I’m going to just fold my tent and quit.
And maybe God doesn’t have that in your plan. Maybe God wants you to rebuild.
Maybe he wants you to take that step into the unknown. The storms are certain to come.
If you do it and the winds will howl you’ll be out on the edge all by yourself and unsteady, but your business will fail despite all of your best efforts.
If you don’t go where God calls you, you’ll never know what God wants to do unless you get out into the deep.
No one ever said it would be easy in the deep waters.
I mean, all of us who are leaders in the church, we know the difference.
We take faith steps, the world calls it risks.
We build buildings when we don’t have enough money to pay for them and when they’re done and God supplies it all the stories we could tell of what God does for us when we step out by faith into the deep waters and all the sadness and sorrow as we watch people who just hang on to the shore, only doing what they can themselves understand to do.
They stay along the shore and as they stay along the shore, they discover that they’re safe, safe from drowning, safe from disaster.
But they never will know the blessings of the deep things of God. The place of the storm.
Where is it? It’s in the deep waters. That’s where the wind blows. That’s where the challenge is.
Now, here’s something that’s really surprising and you may, um, this is sort of counterintuitive if you want to know the truth.
Let me talk to you about the producer of the storm. Where’s the storm come from?
Well, what’s wrong with this passage is that it’s very unusual. It seems backwards.
Psalm 107 verse 25 for he commands and raises the stormy wind which lifts up the waves of the sea.
And the pronoun here is he capitalized.
And we realize that this storm is, is created and produced by Almighty God himself as great as the power of the wind and the waves may be.
There is something someone more powerful in the background behind it all it is God. Now, let’s enemy.
We’re much more comfortable crediting God with calming storms than causing them.
And yet we have to take the scripture at its word here in Psalm 107.
It teaches us that the Lord is the one who produces this storm. His purposes are at stake.
Let’s take care before blaming God for every storm. I mean, that may be a dangerous thing to do.
But sometimes we’ve done just fine on our own bringing on those dark clouds and we make the mistakes.
And God’s place is simply to let us discover how deeply we need Him when we’re just about to go under the waves.
So we’re not referring to those self induced storms. We’re talking about storms brought on expressly by divine intention.
Did you know that sometimes God puts you in the middle of the storm?
He has done that for so many of us during these days. Here we are.
This is not man cause we didn’t do this. We didn’t ask for this. We didn’t pray for this.
This is what’s happened. We’re in the midst of this storm.
Have you ever been through fire and water in your problems?
Why did he send that storm into your life?
If you’re weathering a storm, you can be certain the winds are no random weather front.
They blow for a clear purpose.
And as you’re caught up in the tempest, you need to ask God to help you be caught up in his purposes.
The place of the storm is the deep waters and the producer of the storm is God himself.
Now notice the peril of the storm. What an image God paints on the canvas of scripture in Psalm.
A 107. Here’s verses 26 and 27, they mount up to the heavens, they go down again to the depths.
Their soul melts because of trouble.
They reel to and fro they stagger like a drunken man and are at their wits end.
This is a riot of mixed metaphors in the service of a strong point.
This is a passage that is spinning wildly out of control.
Have you ever lost control of an automobile on an icy highway? If so, you know this feeling?
Well, these passengers of the rocking ship are at their wits end.
By the way, did you know where that expression at your wits end came from?
It came from right here in the Bible. These people have been outwitted.
They’ve come to the end of all their ideas and strategies. The tempest has mastered their vessel.
The ship has set off to navigate the winds and the waters, but that’s all been turned upside down.
The wind in the waters are now navigating the ship and the passengers can’t do anything but watch and pray.
They’re at their wits end. The place of the storm is in the deep waters where you’ve stepped out by faith.
The producer of the storm is often God himself and the peril of the storm, it leads you to the very end of your own rational ability.
Now notice the prayer, I can promise you if you’re a Christian and you’re in a storm, you pray may not be a very, a fundamental prayer, may not be a very polished prayer.
Storms produce prayer. Unfortunately, prayer seems to be our last port in a storm. It should be our first.
But the people of this passage do turn to God in verse 28.
Here’s what it says and they cry out to the Lord in their trouble and he brings them out of their distresses.
Here’s the thing I’ve noticed. Have you ever noticed this?
Think about this carefully, the inverse relationship between the depth of a crisis and the length of a prayer.
You could almost create a mathematical formula to demonstrate that the calmer things are the longer and more eloquent are your prayers.
But the greater the storm, the shorter and simpler are your prayers starting with this classic prayer adopted by many devout and troubled believers over the century.
Here it is. Help. Have you ever been there?
Have you ever been in a place where all you had time for was help.
The seafarers of this psalm may have called out the same words and probably more than once their circumstances have certain similarities to the characters in the other paintings.
Let’s look at the first picture again. The desert wanderers hopelessly lost. Here’s what it says about them.
They cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them out of their distresses.
What about the prisoners? Remember them in their cell? What are they saying? Here’s their verse.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he saved them out of their distress.
Meanwhile, back in the sterile death life hospital ward. What are the patients saying?
And they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he saved them out of their distresses in the storms, in the wilderness.
In the captivity. In the illnesses, people desperately seek and escape.
And the only way out is the way up, no matter what the problem may be, no matter what the trouble may be.
There is only one path to safety.
The only hope is to reach beyond ourselves to someone stronger than we are stronger than the shackles that bind us.
And only one can fill that requirement and even the proverbial a atheists and the foxhole realizes if, if he trusts God, that’s his only hope.
You know, the old adage is there aren’t any atheists in foxholes because once they’re there and they’re all of their other options are gone.
God becomes their only hope. God certainly hates everything that causes us pain, whether it’s imprisonment or illness or storms.
But God knows that lesser pain is necessary to avoid deeper pain.
It hurts to pull out a thorn, but the pain of leaving it would cause the deeper agony of infection.
God knows that he has to pull out a few thorns occasionally and we’ll cry out in pain and even angry, we’ll talk to God, but it’s all for a purpose.
God knows, even if we don’t, that we’re not self sufficient.
He loves to bring us to our knees in fresh dependence on him.
Has he ever done that during these days? If only peace time prayers carried the intensity of storm tossed prayers.
I remember as a young pastor, my wife became very ill one day and we couldn’t figure out what it was, what was going on and then she lost consciousness and the ambulance came and, and, uh, we put her into the ambulance to take her to the hospital And this was back in Fort Wayne, Indiana and I crawled in with her in the back and kind of stretched out over her and, and prayed and prayed.
And I pled with God, uh, to, to not let anything happen to Donna.
I don’t think I’ve ever prayed such an intense prayer. That was my big storm.
And ultimately, since she’s sitting out here in this service, she made it and we both made it.
We never did know for sure what happened. But we know God heard our prayer.
I remember thinking about the intensity of my prayer when that all took place and wondered, why can’t I pray like that all the time?
Have you ever thought about that?
Have you ever had a moment where you’ve cried out to God in intense prayer?
And maybe God has heard you and answered you well, we, we often don’t pray like that unless we feel trapped and we feel desperate.
So here we go, we’re in the storm.
We’re in the midst of this thing and God has heard our prayer.
So let me tell you, let me just review where we are the place of the storm that’s deep water who produces the storm?
Almighty God, what is the peril of the storm?
We go up and down and we are at our wits end. And what is the prayer in the storm?
God help. And here’s the peace in the storm. Here’s where it should end. Psalm 107, verse 29 and 30. Here’s what it says.
He calms the storm so that its waves are still and they are glad because they are quiet.
Have you ever noticed the wonderful purity of silence?
After a long cacophony of noise, the tyranny of sound suddenly loses its hold and, and the, and the ensuing quiet seems to liberate your spirit.
It’s truly a peace that passes. Understanding. We refer to this phenomenon as the calm after the storm.
It’s not just in weather situations, but it happens in life.
I’m sure that some people are hoping that all that’s been happening in our country now is going to be pretty much settled and there will be a calm after the storm.
It’s about comfort and relief and deep inside us, we realize that the bringer of the storm is also the master of the storm and he can take it away in a blink of a moment when we realize he is great enough to send the storm and remove the storm, we fall down and we worship him.
When the people of the somme were being battered by the storm, they cried out in fear and helplessness and God responded, he calmed the storm.
He still the waves. Speaking of storms, Ron Mell told me about a woman who was caught in a frightening storm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
She was aboard a luxury liner that was carrying a large number of Children.
And the women, the woman saw that everyone was panicking and obviously the panic was spreading to the kids.
So, so they were running to and fro and all through the passages and this was upsetting the Children.
So she gathered all the Children together and began telling the Bible stories to keep them calm and the Children became quiet, captivated by the wonderful stories.
The ship made it through safe and sound and the captain made his rounds and he saw the woman laughing and talking with the Children.
She had stayed calm through the storm and she was calm now and he was very puzzled.
So he said, how did you keep your cool when everyone else was falling in pieces?
Have you been through this before?
It’s simple said, the woman, I have two daughters, one of them lives in New York and the other one lives in heaven.
I knew I was going to see one or the other of them tonight and it didn’t make any difference to me.
Which one does that story seem a little trifle maybe sentimental and unrealistic.
Well, it shouldn’t, it simply describes the mindset of the serious believer. The follower who takes Jesus at his word.
If you feel such a story is simply sentimental, you may feel the same way about heaven.
And the concept that God is in control grace through the storm is a function of believing that the creator of the storm is also the deliverer from it.
He is also the one who can bring us peace and strength.
When all those around us are falling apart, he is our deliverer.
And the fact is gloriously portrayed in living color in every canvas of the eternal gallery known as Psalm 107.
The first painting shows desert wanderers, those who can’t find the path and he led them forth by the right way that they might go to a city for a dwelling place, a city for a dwelling place.
The very words that define hope and peace.
When you’re lost in the desert, then we revisit the darkened prison. What happens to the captives?
Someone comes to unlock their cell and show them the sunlight again.
Psalm 107, verse 14, he brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and broke their chains in pieces.
And then over in the hospital, the patients are almost ready to die. Only they, they get healed.
Miraculously notice verse 20 he sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions downpour or desert dungeon or disease.
The specific facts of the crisis ultimately don’t matter for God is in control and whatever we’re doing and wherever we are, we may be up against everything that’s so negative and difficult.
But when we cry out to God in our trouble, he will hear us.
He will calm the waters and the time may come when He will even let us know the reasons he unleashed them on us.
So we’re almost finished. But one more review the place of the storm.
That’s the deep waters where you’re trusting God for great things.
And the producer of the storm is often God himself and the peril of the storm takes you to your wits end.
The prayer in the storm is God help us.
And the peace in the storm is the calm of the waves and the coming of your heart.
And let’s notice the purpose of the storm verse 30.
So he guides them to their desired haven.
The Lord didn’t stop delivering the people from the storm. He took them where they needed to go.
There’s only one twist. The storm may change our idea of a destination crises never leave us the same way as they find us.
I hear people all the time asking this question.
How are we going to be different after the Coronavirus is over?
How are we going to be different as people. How are we going to be different as families?
How are we going to be different as churches?
Those of us who love and trust God through the worst times, those of us who are receptive to what he might be trying to teach us, find that our hearts have been changed by the time the stillness replaces the storminess and sometimes we don’t know what to do with it.
We will be far more in tune with his desires.
When the storm has passed, we will know that the one who delivered the storm also is the one who delivered us from the storm.
And our goals will have moved closer to his.
So you have the place of the storm, the producer of the storm, the peril of it, the prayer of it, the peace of it, the purpose of it.
And here we are once again to worship the praise after the storm.
What is there for us in the time when the calm returns?
But to praise God, have you ever been in a terrible situation where it looked like there was no way out and God miraculously moves in and shows you the way and not only shows you, it carries you through and you’re on the other side and you’re so full of, of, of gladness and, and praise how we wish everyone we know and all the men and women on the face of the earth could come and join us in praising and exalting God.
He’s so much greater than any of the forces of nature.
So we read in Psalms 100 and seven verses 31 32.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people and praise him in the company of the elders.
We’ve been hopelessly lost in the barren wilderness and suddenly we find ourselves in an oasis.
What do we do? We give thanks back to the first of the Psalm.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness, for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
For he satisfies the hungry soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness.
Or we’ve been imprisoned by addiction or abuse or past memories or another cruel master.
And we discover a master who is loving and who freeze us. And what do we do? Psalm?
107 15 and 16. Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
For he has broken the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron into in the first two word pictures in Psalm 107, we offer Thanksgiving to the Lord for what he has done.
But in the last two pictures, the image changes. We’ve been desperately ill, waiting only for death.
How do we respond to healing? We come together for worship.
Verses 21 22 all that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
Let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving and declare his works with rejoicing.
And finally, we make it through the storm. God brings us through. And what do we do?
We assemble for Thanksgiving praise and worship verses 31 32.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people and praise him in the company of the altars.
This psalm is like the hymns we used to sing when I was growing up.
I remember we used to have a um they call them song leaders back then we would call them worship leaders now and they would get up and some of the old hymns had six verses and the, and I remember if I loved the hymn, that was all right.
I don’t mind. But if I didn’t really care for the hymn and we had to sing it six times, that was another deal.
But after every verse, there was a chorus and you know how the hymns are you, you sing the verse and then the chorus is down at the bottom.
It doesn’t change all the verses change, but the chorus remains the same.
That’s what happens in the psalm after the desert experience, let men praise God after the prison appearance experience, let men praise God after being in the hospital and almost dying.
What’s the chorus? Let men praise God?
And when you’re in a storm and you come out of the storm, what do you do?
You praise God? Is it really important to include other people in your praising? The last two celebrations?
Tell us we should, shouldn’t it be enough simply to thank God quietly in the prophecy and sincerity of your own heart?
Well, we’ve had a good experiment with that right here in this building. Is it OK to praise God?
Did we not have great worship and praise tonight? Yes, we did.
It was amazing, but there was no choir and there were no congregates except for a very few.
The balcony is totally empty. All I see is I look further in this auditorium is darkness.
What’s missing in the praise of God at this moment are the people who do the praising you say, well, I’m praising at home, but I can’t hear you and it’s when we can hear each other, when we come together and worship.
That’s what we long for. That’s what we’re missing.
That’s why we can’t wait to get back to church so that we can be with others who are believers.
And so we can blend our voices together and praise the Lord.
I hear people say, and I’ve heard them say this. I don’t really need to worship God in church.
I can worship Him just as well by myself working in my garden on a Sunday morning or up at my lake cottage sounds convenient, but it’s not very biblical.
We are told all through the scripture to come together in the assembly for the exaltation of God together.
So if you’re sitting there listening to this message and making all your plans for a new new moment in your worship of God, and you’ve just decided, you know, this is pretty cool.
I got my coffee and my hands. I didn’t have to get dressed up.
I didn’t have to get out on the highway. I didn’t have to find a place to park.
I’m worshiping God at home. You can do that, but you’re out of the will of God.
The will of God is for you to be with the people of God worshiping together in the presence of the elders.
It says that’s who we are.
We’re the, we’re the teachers, the elders, you’re supposed to come and worship God in our presence, that is the leaders and praise God.
And when we do that together, we become something much greater than we could ever be by ourselves together.
We offer an entirely different brand of worship than we offer. When we’re alone together.
We are the living body of Christ.
Oh how I want to urge you whether you’re ready to do it immediately, don’t lose your motivation to go to.
It doesn’t have to be this church. Maybe you go to another church.
Don’t get yourself in a situation where you’re going to be comfortable out of community.
That is not the will of God for you. That’s not David Jeremiah.
I’m not begging you to come back because I want to see these seats full.
Although I do, I’m telling you what the Bible says, for sake, not the assembly of yourselves together.
So I’m looking for you. I’ll be watching for you when the time comes for you to come back to church.
I’ve been a pastor here at Shadow Mountain Community Church for almost four decades.
But in the early years of my time here, I held two jobs.
I was not only the pastor of the church, but I was the president of Christian Heritage College.
I had a strong feeling of God’s leading in holding both of these positions, but I never saw the storm front that was moving in.
During one particular summer, the college had run out of resources, the tuition money was gone and existing funds were insufficient to carry us through to the fall.
The church had underwritten us. But now those resources were no longer available.
The church had simply given all it could give.
And nearly every week I went to meetings in which we agonized over what to do slowly but surely we were edging toward the idea of simply closing the doors of the college.
We even met with another Christian college to explore the possibility of a merger.
And I remember wondering if this was what God had in mind, but I could feel no peace about it.
One day, I was filled with a sense of the storm raging around me.
I felt like the waves were crashing over us and that we were drowning in the waves and I didn’t know what to do.
So I gathered our senior staff and we all traveled to a local Christian camp called Pine Valley Bible camp.
It was vacant. The caretakers allowed us to use one of their conference rooms.
Our group gathered around a table to pray, but I still felt a deep sense of despair and hopelessness, no options.
I mean, we had tried everything we had used up every option.
We knew our prayers weren’t being answered or so it seemed we had tried everything we could think of trying.
And I remember at that time coming to Psalm 107 and reading it to the group.
It was a storm. My feeling of enduring a storm reminded me of the imagery in Psalm 107.
So we sat there in the conference room at Pine Valley and I opened my Bible and I read the Psalm that we have studied in this service.
I told the senior staff there is one crucial thing. We can never forget together.
We have chosen to do business in the great waters in the deep waters.
Not many churches have schools, but we have several.
We have a preschool and three elementary schools, a junior high school, a high school and a college.
We’ve pursued these out of obedience to God’s leadership. It’s not supposed to be easy.
We’ve launched out into the deep and we shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves caught in the storm.
We talked about the challenge at hand and I returned to the theme of the psalm.
I said, man, what we have to do is to cry out to the Lord.
I remember telling them that when I had cancer, I had gone to the Brooklyn Tabernacle and people came up to me in the Brooklynn Tabernacle and said to me, oh, Doctor Jeremiah, we cried out to the Lord for you.
I’d never heard anybody use that term before. That was how they described the intensity of their prayer.
That’s what the psalmist says they did. They cried out to God.
I said, man, we have to ask God to move in the midst of this situation and do something that only he can do.
I’ve never experienced many events like the one I’m about to describe and I’ll never forget what happened.
We began to pray around the table with very intense heartfelt emotions and tears.
It was one of those powerful, spiritually charged atmospheres that come about when needy Christians get serious about seeking for God’s deliverance, tears, pleading.
And there was a knock at the door. It was the proprietor of a camp.
Uh, she mentioned to me to come out into the hallway and I got up from the prayer meeting and went out into the hallway.
And she said to me, you need to call your office.
Uh I didn’t have a phone and there was a pay phone on that campus and I found the pay phone and called my secretary at the church.
And she said, are you sitting down? I said, no, I’m in a pay phone booth can be sitting down.
She says, well, if you can’t sit down, hang on. And this is what she told me.
She said that the women down in the college mail room had been routinely opening mail and they came across a strange envelope.
It contained no letter, no letter at all, but it did have a check in it.
And the check was for a half a million dollars. I couldn’t believe it.
I know I should have because I had just asked God for it.
I went back into the meeting with my eyes filled with tears and everyone was anxious.
They wanted me to tell them who had died.
They thought had been called out because somebody in the church had died. I said, no one has died.
Let me tell you what has happened.
We’ve been sitting here in this room in the midst of a storm and we’ve been crying out to God for his help and he hurt us and he reached out to us in her trouble and brought us into a place of peace to say that we begin to praise God would be an understatement.
I’m glad you couldn’t see what we did when you come out of a storm in which all seems lost and God does something magnificent.
The worship is unforgettable. That’s known as a happy ending.
And I wonder if you still have doubts, that your story will have one.
Perhaps the storm is raging for you as you read these words and listen to me tell my story.
Perhaps you’re lost in the wilderness of shattered hope or shut away in a prison of debt.
Maybe you’re facing a hospital ward of health concerns or family problems and you feel you’ll be lost forever wherever you are, whatever the crisis may be, there is an important principle at work.
Here. It is. If you feel helpless, you have just become eligible for the assistance of God, you need to only cry out for his salvation and he will do the rest and he will do it well.
And when the storm is over, you’ll be a new person wiser stronger, ready to serve him.
The sea will be calm, the breeze will be soft and the silence will present itself as a sanctuary for you.
To exalt his name and sing his glorious praises if he can control the storm, what other wonderful works might he bring to pass in your life with that exciting thought.
You’ll cast off and launch out into the deep waters and watch God go to work in your life.
But you say Doctor Jeremiah, I don’t know God. I know about Him. I hear you talking about Him.
I’m, I watch sometimes and hear you talk about God, but I don’t know Him.
Well, that’s where the journey begins. Let me tell you what I do know.
You don’t want to go into a storm without God. You just don’t want to do that.
Some of you are trying to negotiate that right now and you would say a big amen if you could.
So let me tell you how you can bring God first of all into your life and then be assured that wherever you end up, if it’s in a storm, he’s with you and He will never forsake you.
The Bible says you come to God through Jesus Christ. His son.
John tells us that there’s no other way to God except through Jesus Christ.
He is the way the truth and the life.
So if you want to have God in your life, you have to accept Jesus Christ, his son as your savior.
And the Son of God. Jesus Christ came into this world for you and for me, went to the cross of Calvary.
There, he paid the debt for all of our sin by his incredible death, infinite death in an infinite God.
And because He paid the debt for our sin, we can be forgiven if we will just ask.
So, I’d like to lead you in a prayer at the end of this service whereby you can ask God to come into your life, Jesus Christ to be your savior.
When you make that decision, it will change your life.
You will look back on it as the most important thing you’ve ever done.
And I want to encourage you to do it now.
Dear God in Australia, in Ireland, in Brazil, in Great Britain.
In almost every state in the United States, there is gathered, a congregation cross the broad spectrum of this world.
People are gathered as we worship and there are some who have been brought into this moment so that they can encounter God through his son, Jesus Christ and Lord as you have brought them to that place, and they have this willingness to make this decision, help them with all of their hearts to seek your forgiveness and the hope that you bring.
So here’s what I want you to do. Just pray this prayer dear God.
I need you in my life. I can’t do the storm without you. I know.
And I believe that Jesus Christ is your son and that he came into this world to pay the penalty for my sin so that I could be forgiven and so that I could be saved and so that I could be born again and come to know Jesus as my own savior.
And Lord. So Lord Jesus come into my heart and forgive me of my sin.
Give me the gift of eternal life which you promise to all who will ask you, help me to live for you from this moment on help me to find those who believe in you and grow with them in community, in a church, in a Bible study.
Lord, I thank you for caring so much about me that you would give your life on my behalf.