Where Is God During the Storm?
By Joseph Parker
I know that all of us sometime in our lives have gone through really rough times and may have said, “God where are you during this storm that is going on in my life?” You might get very angry; like I have gotten during these storms and said to yourself life is just not fair. Well my friend you are right life is not fair and we have an enemy that hates us and desires to sift us, like a sack of wheat. But there is good news Jesus is before the father advocating on our behalf, praying for us to make it through the storm. Remember what Jesus told Peter in Luke 22:31-33 (KJV) And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
When the storms of life come try and remember that they will show us several things. They reveal to us the level of our faith, the strength of our commitment, the level of our maturity, how teachable we are and what kind of attitude that we have. I know that it is hard but we need to ask ourselves what lesson is there in the midst of this storm. I know that I have failed on many occasions to have a good attitude and to walk through the fire without getting burnt. I have given up many times and failed to learn any lessons and that has been costly to my level of maturity. What is meant by that is this; lessons must be learned while going through storms because they will provide the strength that is needed to make it through the next storm.
If we have bad attitudes and our teachability is nil then we fail to learn anything about the storm that we might be going through now. As a result we go through the same thing over and over again because we just don’t get the lesson that is to be learned. We get angry and maybe give up or even walk away from what God is trying to accomplish. God is there to show us a lesson that we need to learn, it builds character and helps us to stand up under the pressure that the enemy throws our way. God promises that he will not allow anything to come against us that will crush us without him being there to carry us through it. We just need to look for that lifeline that is waiting for us to grab onto.
Some of you might be saying to yourself right now, “if God really and truly loved me then he would not let me go through these storms of life.” I know that some of you are thinking that right now because you are human. Those very words have come out of my own mouth from time to time and I get angry about the storms I go through. Jesus loved each and every one of his disciples yet they had to go through storms. Remember the story of the disciples being out on the water and Jesus coming to them in the midst of the storm. (Matthew 14:22-33) Jesus was on the mountain when the storm rose up and the disciples were out on the sea. Jesus knew what they were going through and seen it.
Now the disciples, being only human, must have had many things running through their heads. One of them being, “God we are doing what you told us to do.” How many times have I thought that myself? But they were afraid and feared for their lives even though they were in the center of God’s will. You see God knows what we think and how we feel and when our faith is lacking and our attitudes are bad. However Jesus came to the disciples to rescue them from the storm. None of the disciples, when they see someone walking on the water knew it was Jesus and they became even more afraid. Yet Jesus came to them anyways.
Jesus spoke to them, and by the Holy Spirit God speaks to us in our storms if we will but only listen for that still small voice. Jesus told them, “do not be afraid, be of good cheer.” The disciples first of all had lack of faith, a bad attitude which was fear and unbelief, and still doubted it was Jesus even when he spoke to them. Peter questioned saying, “Lord if it is you then command me to come to you.” Jesus told Peter to come and Peter had a right attitude at first when he jumped over the side of the boat, however when he saw his circumstances he began to doubt and started sinking.
Now there are many lessons that we can learn from this story. The most important one I think shows where God truly is during the storms of our life and that is right there in the midst of them watching over us. God is there ready to reach out and help us overcome the storm. Jesus said that greater works then what he did we can do too, one of those works was commanding the storm to be silent, to cease and it obeyed him. God has given us the authority to speak to our storms and to overcome them, but we got to rely on him to do so. We have got to have the right attitude, our level of faith must be strong, we must be willing to be teachable, our commitment must be strong and lastly we must have a level of maturity to learn the lesson in the midst of the storm.
Storms come for many reasons so the next time you find yourself in the midst of a storm, look for and find out where God is during your storm.