The storms of Oklahoma are no joke as my wife will tell you, but I thought it a little funny the first tornado experience we had together.
In Guymon, where I grew up, we were not yet married but had moved there and I started full time youth ministry while Ashly wrapped up nursing school. It was spring in OK and that means go-time for David Payne and Mike Morgan…aka it’s storm season!
The tornado sirens went off and we all headed outside to see. My little brother and I even got on the roof to get a better view and the rest of the folks hung in the yard chatting with our neighbors.
Ashly was nowhere to be found.
Being a good fiancé I was a little concerned so I went to look for her. I found her in the basement, all by herself, waiting out the imminent danger of a guaranteed deadly twister.
I invited her to join the rest of us outside but she wasn’t having any of it and didn’t appreciate my lack of concern for her well being, my own safety, and our future together!
In our movie for the week, Twisters, the main characters are fixated on one things, TORNADOES. They go looking for them, chase them, and find themselves intentionally in the middle of them, death just knocking on the door.
Tyler Owens, played by Glen Powell, is a storm chaser and one of the main characters is a handsome, wild man that has a saying, “If you FEEL it, CHASE it!” and a one liner that says, “You don’t FACE your fears, you RIDE ‘em!” His co-star, Kate Carter, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones,
Storms are their passion but their purpose revolves around “killing a tornado” as it would save thousands of lives.
This is what I want to focus on because there’s a story in Acts 27-28 where Paul is in a terrible storm. This thing lasts for two weeks and beats the pants off the ship he’s on (as a prisoner). In the midst of the chaos, he shares a word of encouragement and peace that he has heard from God about surviving this nightmare.
And, they do, they only lose the ship. No lives are lost and the prisoners are all delivered.
Here’s what occurs to me.
Storms suck. They are hard. They are destructive. They are scary. They are unpredictable and can be deadly. We know that Jesus has authority over storms as we’ve read how he has commanded a storm, and it’s ok to pray that way. But I think there is another side to this that makes a lot of sense practically speaking.
Kate and Tyler want to kill the storm much like we do. We experience all kinds of storms in life and our initial reaction is panic and hysteria (or sometimes foolishness like going out on the roof), but we frequently find ourselves praying like, “God, just make it stop.” We want to CONTROL the storms!
I want you to see everything in this story because I believe we find this in real life frequently.
Paul’s storms
- Paul is a prisoner - locked up, bound, stuck, oppressed, etc.
- Hurricane - threatened by mother nature, external forces beyond a person’s control.
- Starving - little to no food.
- Wrecked - ship crashes; fighting to survive.
- Pain/Sickness - bit by snake.
God DIDN’T remove these storms HOWEVER; brought about sweet redemption through them.
Sometimes, God calms the storms, sometimes God sits with them through them, and other times (more often it seems) God simply provides DURING the storms (Acts 27:3-5; 28:1-2, 10) uses the storms to “proclaim the kingdom of God and show the world Jesus.” (Acts 28:31)
So, ladies and gentleman, whatever your storm, don’t think, seek, and pray so much to CONTROL or KILL it, as pray that you would see God’s provision during it, and you wouldn’t just survive it but that the world would see and know Jesus through it.
“In this world you WILL have trouble, but take heart, I have OVERCOME the world.” - Jesus (John 16:33)
Hang in there, hold on, and we’ll get through this together!
#OhShipwrecked
#Twisters
#NowStreaming
#RestoringWholenessOfLife
Brett
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