Where are you when the storms of life come? Are you still praising God or do you doubt God? We all go through the storms of life. God never said he would take the storms away but he did say he would be there with us through them.
We went through a bad storm last year July 1st, 2012 where it knocked our power out. We were out of power for 18 hours. Wow, what an experience that was. Granted, there are many people who still were without power when we got ours back on so I know it could have been worse for us. We are thankful that we only had to go 18 hours.
What do you do when the storms come but you don’t realize how bad they really are? Do you still stand with God or not? When things don’t seem bad but then you find out they are worse than what you anticipated?
Well it was 9 PM on July 1st when our power went out. I went outside in the middle of this storm since it was bad but without the rain. I was talking to many of the neighbors. We were watching an awesome lightning storm but we felt it wouldn’t be that bad.
Sandy called the power company and they said the power would be on at 12 AM. None of us really cared about that since that was a few hours. Then around 11 PM we called again and the company said it would be 6:45 AM before the power would come back on.
At this point we were a little frustrated because we had a newborn and weren’t sure if he would be ok sleeping in our place through the night. As time went we called again around 2 AM and this time it didn’t say anything about a time but had where we could report an outage. I thought oh no everyone else has power but us so that must mean our power box went out.
I drove around trying to see if any neighbors had power but every light was off and it was 2 AM so that was expected. So we did worry a bit then at 3 AM I found a neighbor outside and asked if they had power but they didn’t either. I felt relieved about that because I knew if everyone else had power then the storm did something to our place and that would not have been good.
Well we called again at 3 AM to the electric company and we got the news we did not want to hear. They said it would be 7:45 PM not AM before our power would come back on. So we were trying to figure out what we were to do for the next day.
We had a newborn and an inside cat so we knew we couldn’t stay at the house since it was supposed to get to around 100 degrees outside. Did we panic? Of course not, we knew God was still in control and we knew we would learn something from this. Were we frustrated though? Very much so. God never said we wouldn’t get frustrated when the storms come he just wants us to have the peace knowing he is with us through the storms.
Well it finally got too hot in our place by 12 PM then we went to my dad’s house and dropped off our cat there then went into town to pay a few bills, what fun I know but on the way back to my dad’s around 3 PM we called and found out we have POWER!!!! We were ecstatic.
Again, I want to say there were many people that went for days without power. We hope and pray that they didn’t suffer too much. We hope that they went somewhere out of that heat because it can kill people. We hope that their attitude didn’t get too bad through that.
We all have storms in our life. Some are worse than others but we still have to keep our eyes focused on God even when the bad times come. What are you doing during your storms? Where is your attitude? Is it on God or has satan taken care of your attitude for you?
No one ever said life would be smooth sailing as a Christian. We all know this. No one ever said that storms will never come once you are a Christian. In fact God clearly said that we will be persecuted while we are alive. He said that storms will come. Does he protect us from some? YES! But will he allow us to go through some too? YES!! But remember while you are in the middle of the storm, he is right beside you.
I hear many people say that God doesn’t allow more than you can handle to come your way. That is NOT true. If he only allowed what you can handle then you would not grow and you would not lean on him. He allows more than you can handle so that your only source will be him.
Think about it, when God is all you have, you then realize that he is all you need. You will never realize that he is all you need until some storms comes through and he is all you have. At that moment you realize he truly is all you need.
When everything is rockin’ and rollin’ in life then we can’t grow spiritually, mentally & emotionally. This isn’t to say that we should ask for storms to come. This is to say that when they do come if you use them as a learning experience then you will get more out of those experiences than just having a bad attitude about them or allowing your heart to become hardened because of the storms.
So when the storms come what will you do? I hope that you will go to your knees in the middle of them and ask God to help you. I hope that you will keep your ego in check and allow God to work the details out. I hope that you will humble yourself and get the help you need to get through the storm. The worst thing you can do is let your ego get in the way and then you lose more than you should have with the storm.
Ask God to help keep your ego in check. Ask him to help heal your heart from your past storms so that you can be free of them. Ask him to help you through the storm you are in right now or with the future storm than may come. Ask him for guidance so that you can maneuver through the storms in his ways.
Be Inspired or Be Left Behind!
Chris Benton