Persevere through the storms of life
We continue in our series on discovering our destiny our theme is currently on Perseverance.
How we can endure, how we can press on, how we can spiritually mature as disciples of Jesus.
Today our focus is on how we can persevere through the storms of life.
We live in anxious times, across the US and Caribbean there have been terrible storms. With the situation in North Korea, the threat of military action. People from Myanmar, and Syria, and other countries too, are trekking for hundreds of miles in the hope of finding a place of refuge. And closer to home, here in the UK, there is Brexit, terrorists threats, rising food and fuel prices.
The list goes on and on and on.
People are experiencing all kinds of trials and tribulations, problems, situations and circumstances in their daily lives. With all that is going on in the world right now it is no surprise that many people are struggling with fear.
Maybe you know someone who is struggling right now, maybe you yourself are finding it difficult to persevere.
Maybe you even feel like you are caught up in the middle of one of the worst storms your life has ever experienced.
Listen to these verses from the Word of God:
Psalm 34:17 The Lord hears His people when they call to Him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles.
Psalm 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble.
Psalm 107:28-30 “Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress. He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves. What a blessing was that stillness as He brought them safely into harbour!”
God calls us His people to live trusting Him, He is our refuge and strength.
God will help us in all our trials, He alone is our strength and our shield.
Every trial and tribulation we go through in this life has a reason, a purpose, they can make us stronger in our faith and draw us closer to God. Don’t focus on the storm, don’t focus on what you can see, focus on God. God calls us to persevere through the storms of life, not in our own strength but in His.
So, how can we persevere in the midst of the storm?
The only way is to remember that the Lord has promised to strengthen, help, and uphold us, and God always keeps His Word.
Deuteronomy 31:6, “So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.”
When you’re in the hands of the almighty God, you can persevere in the storms of life because God is with you. When a problem comes out of the blue, God is with you. When bad stuff happens, redundancy, bereavement, health issues, God is with you.
At some point in my life and your lives we will all face these kinds of storms, but God is with us. To persevere, to endure, we turn to God for strength. In all of the storms of life, in the bad days and in the good days, we are to live lives worthy of our Lord.
The path of sin is wide and easy, but as disciples of Jesus we are called to persevere in pursuing the narrow way, the path of obedience to our Lord and our God. Trusting His timing, trusting His will, trusting His plan, trusting His purpose, trusting Him!
In Isaiah 41:10 God says,
Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.
Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you.
I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
When we are in the midst of a storm, sometimes we seem to forget who God is and what He is able to do.
God is the God of the impossible.
God is the God of miracles.
God is God.
In the storm we struggle and we forget how God answered prayer in the past. We forget how the Holy Spirit has led us through the storms before. We focus on this storm, this present trouble, it’s implications, and we forget how God was with us in previous situations and circumstances.
In our own strength, we lack sufficient resources and abilities to meet life’s challenges. Storms would never seem so bad if we remembered, in every situation, in every circumstance of life, in every time of difficulty, we not alone, God is with us.
The more we trust Him in this storm, the more we will know Him and be able to trust Him in the next storm. Our Lord knows everything we are going through. God provides what we need to weather the storm. God is our firm foundation and He will enable us to persevere in the storms of life.
To encourage each of us this evening, let’s consider a parable of Jesus, where His words give us insight into how we can persevere in the storms of life.
Matthew 7:24-27,“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. 26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. 27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”
This is a parable Jesus gave at the end of His Sermon on the Mount, recorded for us in Matthew Chapters 5 to 7.
Some of Jesus most well-known words and instructions His disciples, to us, are in this sermon.
“Turn the other cheek”,
“be like salt and light in the world”,
“avoid lust and anger”,
“don’t worry”,
“forgive or we will not be forgiven”,
“don’t judge others”,
“don’t do acts of righteousness to be praised by other people”,
then at the end of His sermon He speaks this parable.
Jesus is making a very important statement here: order to benefit from God’s wisdom, we must be like the man who built his house on the rock not like the man who built his house on the sand.
The illustration in this parable is simple, yet so profound - In a storm, the house built without the solid foundation will be knocked down. The one who does not have a firm foundation of faith in Jesus will crumble and fail.The one whose faith is firm in Jesus, and in Jesus alone, will persevere, will endure, will continue to stand firm on Christ their solid rock.
In this world, every person, each of us, can choose the foundation we build our lives upon. We can build our lives on the solid and deep foundation of Christ, or we can build on the shallow and weak foundation of the ways of the world.
Throughout the Sermon on the Mount there is a recurrent theme. In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus says there is a broad way with a broad gate and a narrow way leading to a narrow gate. The broad way ultimately leads to eternal destruction, the narrow way leads to eternal life. The truth is every person is following one road or the other.
In Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus says there are bad trees which yield bad fruit and good trees which yield good fruit. There are those who are living for Christ and those who are living for themselves.
And here in Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus says there are foundations that will persevere, that will withstand the storms and foundations that will not endure.
Jesus message in these parables is clear, there are those who choose to walk away from God, produce nothing of eternal value and are vulnerable to the storms of life that come their way.
And there are those who choose to walk God’s way, experience His transforming power in their life, and know God as their comfort, strength and refuge in the storms of life.
The two houses described in this parable may have looked identical on the outside. Maybe both the men had built houses that looked attractive on the outside, maybe both houses, were well-decorated and comfortable. Perhaps a modern estate agent (realtor) would describe them as well-appointed and in good decorative order.
Just looking at the outside of the houses, maybe we would not be able to tell them apart. Perhaps we would not know which house was built on the surface of the sand and which house was anchored on the firm foundation of rock. The difference in the houses was only revealed in the storm.
People are the same. There are many on the outside who seem stable and solid, yet the solid foundation of Christ is missing from their lives. When the storm comes, that is when the foundation of faith is tested. When the clouds come, when darkness descends, when the winds blow, when loss or disappointment comes, when things don’t go as expected, that is when our real foundation is revealed.
In the storm we can trust Christ, He is our cornerstone.
When life is perplexing we can trust God’s wisdom.
When we are weak, we can rely of God’s strength.
When our hearts are troubled with the storm, our Lord can speak a word of peace into our hearts and minds.
In the storm we can look to our Lord, we can look to our God, we can look to our Saviour and know, He has promised He will never leave us or forsake us.
We can look beyond the present storm, we can look beyond the situation, we can look beyond what is troubling our heart and our mind and know we are safe in our Lord.
We can look beyond the storm and know, God has a plan for us, God has a purpose for us, God has a destiny for us.
We can rely on His grace, we can rely on His mercy, we can rely on His guidance, we can rely on His love.
In the storm we are to turn to our Lord, Jesus is our firm foundation.
For most of us, faith is easy when life is good, perhaps some of us find it a little more difficult in the storms of life. Maybe that is when we need to say like the man in Mark 9:24 “Lord, I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”
So, how do we build a firm foundation of faith in Christ? Jesus said Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise. Romans 10:17 says, “faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.”
We need to hear from to God. How? By reading the Bible, by reading Christian books, by listening to sermons, by coming to church, by coming to Bible Studies, by meeting with other Christians who can teach and instruct us.
We hear but we also need to listen.
There is a difference between hearing and listening. The key to listening is interact with the one who is speaking.
The best listeners are often people who ask questions.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you saying . . . . “
“Can you explain that further?”
“What happened next?”
Questions show a person is listening.
We should ask questions when we hear the truth of God.
Have I understood this correctly?
Are there any other passages of scripture that teach the same thing?
Is God warning me about something?
Do I need to respond?
Is this a promise I can claim?
Is this a command I need to obey?
What can I learn from this?
How can I apply this truth to my life?
If we want a firm foundation, if we want to persevere through the storms of life, we must build on the truth of the Word of God.
We need to hear, we need to listen, we need to learn, and we need to apply the truth of God to our lives to build the firm foundation of our faith.
It is not enough to know about God.
It is not enough to know what God wants you to do. It is not enough to know how to apply His word.
If we are going to build on a firm foundation we must actually do what God has called us to do.
Knowing isn’t worth anything if we don’t act on what we know.
We can know all kinds of things about God, but it will not help us if we don’t do what He says.
We can know that God wants first place in our lives, but it is meaningless until we actually put God before everything else in our lives.
We can know that God want us to forgive, but we actually need to forgive others and even ourselves.
The sad reality is there are many people who are very knowledgeable about the Christian faith, but they are building on sand. They know the truth, they know how to act like a Christian around other believers, they look good, they sound good, and they appear wonderfully spiritual, but their foundation is sand.
If we are honest, none of us is perfect, probably each of has an areas of our life where we are not fully applying the truth of God. We know what God wants us to do, but we just don’t do it.
Friends, as disciples of Jesus, we need to be willing to work at eliminating those areas from our lives. Those things can weaken the foundation of our faith. Those things can weaken us in the storms of life.
When the storms come we need the firm foundation of faith. It is easy to come to church for an hour or two a week it requires more effort and commitment to build a firm spiritual foundation.
It is easier to talk about caring for others than it is to actually care.
It is easier to talk about sharing your faith than it is to actually build bridges with others.
It is easier to talk about commitment than to be committed.
As I draw to a close. The parable of the two houses is a simple parable that teaches: If you build your foundation solidly on the Lord, you will be able to persevere through the storms of life.
We will persevere in the storms of life if we build on the right foundation because our strength will not come from us but from the Lord.
Maybe you are in a storm right now. Maybe your foundation is not as firm as it could be. Trust God, your strength and refuge in the storm. Don’t focus on the storm, focus on the Lord. Let Him guide you through the storm. Be confident in His love for you, God is merciful and faithful. Build your life on Jesus, the rock solid firm foundation.
Make time to hear from God.
Sometimes, it is hard to see the blessings for the storm. Sometimes it is hard to imagine the Lord bringing any good out of what you are going through.
Finally, let me remind you of the words of 1 Peter 5:6-7, “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time He will lift you up in honour. Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you.”
I don’t know the nature of the storm you are facing this evening, but I know the One walks on the water, I know the One who can speak a word and still the storm. I know the one who is the firm foundation
Bring your worries and cares to God. He will hear you and He will help you to persevere through the storms of life.
Amen
