Storms

What do you do with the storms in your life, when the enemy seems to come in like a flood?  Do you run or do you stand your ground?  Do you compromise and just go with the flow or do you bail out and pretend that everything is ok?  The Lord never promised an easy road or that our journey would be victorious without any battles.  But He did promise that He would go with us.  He said that He would never leave us or forsake us.

Let me relate a story that I just came across about the legend of a Cherokee Indian youth rite passage.  This is my version of the story, I did not write it, so it is not word for word.  In order for a Cherokee boy to be consider a man, His dad must take him out in the woods and sit him on a stump, blindfolded.  He must sit there all night without hollering for help or removing the blindfold.  He can never tell any of the other boys about his experience because they all have to go through the same experience to be considered a man.  While he is sitting there he hears all kinds of sounds, and if you have ever been in the woods at night by yourself you know that your imagination can seem to play tricks on you, and you can imagine things that are not even there and become very frightened thinking about all the different animals that may be in the woods, especially if you are a young boy.  Even the sound of the wind can send chills up your spine.  This boy may have been terrified waiting for the first signs of the morning when the sun came up and he could remove his blindfold.  When this finally took place, the boy was totally relieved when he removed his blindfold and saw his dad sitting there beside him, watching over him keeping him safe.

Now think about the Lord, when we go through the storms in our lives we don’t have to allow ourselves to be stressed and frightened, the Lord is right there with us, not allowing anything to take place that He and we can’t handle.  Just like the Indian boy in the story that went through a test and was victorious, so can we be victorious through tests that seem like floods that we face, don’t forget we have our heavenly Father watching over us.

Think about Job, he went through two enormous tests which came with such a shock that he couldn’t understand or comprehend what was happening to him.  Job was never forewarned that these things were going to take place in the blessed life that he was living at the time; he may have felt like he was in a storm bombarded with one wave after another.  

Just like Job, storms may seem to be unleashed in our lives when we least expect them, and sometimes we may feel so overwhelmed, feeling that we are drowning, but remember we are not given any more than we can handle with the Lord’s help.  First Corinthians 10:13 says this, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

If you find yourself in the middle of what you might call unexpected storms you may be tempted to curse God, run away and hide or bail out of the faith all together.  I hope you won’t resort to any of these things.  I hope you will hang on to the promises of God and react like Job and so many other saints have over the years and fight on knowing these things shall pass, and with God’s help you will be victorious, praise the Lord! 

Remember this, the difference between a loser and a winner is this, the loser goes down and stays down but if the winner goes down he gets back up and fights on, so don’t let the enemy knock you down permanently, get back up and fight on.  Something to think about!  May God bless you and yours and have a super day!!  PS don’t forget to thank and praise the Lord, because He is worthy.