Wednesday, July 25, 2012

they are unpredictable…

crises in your life are inevitable, they are variable, they are impartial and they are unpredictable.  they can come suddenly, unexpectedly. 

in the story of JESUS and the storm, the disciples got in the boat and went out on the lake of galilee and it says in matthew 8.24 (niv), without a warning a furious storm came up.

the mediterranean sea is relatively near and storms often sweep in real quickly into the lake of galilee.  there are some steep mountains there and storms can come up quickly. 

if you talk to pilots, they talk about clean air turbulence when they’re flying.  you can’t see it but, when you hit it, you feel it. 

a crisis is like that.  you can’t see it coming.  none of us can predict tragedy.  that’s what scares us about it.  you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.  you can’t predict it but when you hit it, it will hit you.

a fifth reality about a crisis is, i can choose my response to it.

in looking at verse 24 in its entirety we see two responses.  in verse 24a we have the response of the disciples.  in 24b we have the response of JESUS.  there are two options when you have a crisis.  have you noticed you can have two people, put them in the same crises and they react differently.  different responses.  the options you have when you face a crisis:  you can be filled with panic (like the disciples in 24a) or you will be filled with peace like JESUS. 

we’ll look in more detail at this tomorrow.

just a thought from the front porch…

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