Matthew 8:26-27 But He said to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. So the men marveled, saying, “Who can this be, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”
Imagine being one of the disciples in that boat, waves crashing all around, the boat rocking wildly. They were terrified, thinking this might be the end. But there was Yeshua (Jesus), asleep in the same boat! He was with them the whole time, waiting for them to trust Him.
Isn’t that just like our lives sometimes? We’re in the thick of it, storms raging, calling out, “Lord, do you not see what’s happening to me?!”
But yes, He sees! The same Yeshua who calmed the sea back then is with us today. He knows what we’re going through, and at His command, our fiercest storms can turn into peace so profound it leaves us in awe.
So let’s find our peace, our “shalom,” in your storm … for it’s in these storms we learn of God’s faithfulness and when He displays His awesome power. Let’s renew our trust in the Lord today — for God has great plans for those who will put their trust in Him. So relax … He’s got you!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Recently, I’ve been impressed by the Lord to address the anxieties many are feeling about the future– how to be strong in the face of the intense opposition we’ll be facing as believers. One of the founders of the modern state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion once said, “Courage is a special kind of knowledge, the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible with courage.”
For a season, I worked in Washington, D.C., for one of America’s largest Christian political organizations. Sometimes I saw how politics could get ugly and, more often than not, how it changed people — not for the better…but usually for the worse!
Have you ever felt uneasy, unsettled or unstable? Or maybe a better question is — who hasn’t? How do we overcome these feelings?
Is that a trend or something? I don’t know what it is but I’ve heard that phrase said quite a bit. We were even walking down the Wal-Mart isle to pick up a few things and my wife showed me a T-shirt with “I have issues” written across the front! I guess the world is coming to the sad reality that we really do have some issues.
It never ceases to amaze me, the way the devil uses our offenses and our “offendedness” to divide and conquer marriages, relationships, churches — even entire nations!
There’s an old adage, “Have the heart of a lion!” Hearing it, we think, “courage”. This recalls a quote I once heard; “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened”. I doubt there’s a single hero story in which the fearless leader fails to inspire the righteous determination of his army or people. The voice of the captain resounds through the ranks evoking the fierce cry of every warrior ready to face death or worse, for the cause. Courage truly is contagious.
The Hebrew word for “face” is “panim”, (the Hebrew letters, peh-nun-yud-mem), literally “faces”, a plural word. Normally, when we think about God, we focus only upon one of His “faces” at a time. God is “love” – or He is “holy”– or He is “just”— or He’s a God of “wrath”. Yet, of course, ALL these “faces” are His at once; and so the word “panim” accurately reflects the truth of God’s multifaceted being. As we get to know Him better we begin to appreciate the complexity of His nature and the fact that our focus on one “face” is a very limited view, since there’s so much more going on in His amazing “Personality”.