“The devil brings
storms into your life to intimidate you. You glorify God when you continue to
do what you know is right anyway.”
The lesson for the preschool class on Sunday was the story
of Jesus calming the storm. To make the story come alive for the kids my assistant
Delores was gracious enough to make us a pretend boat on the carpet of our
classroom. As the kids approached they began to wonder what it was that was
taped to the floor, to help stir their imagination I put paper fish around the
boat. “Oh yeah I see now,” was their reaction. As each kid sat in the boat with
my assistant I told the story from outside the boat. Short of actually throwing
water in their faces we acted it out the best we could.
Once the lesson was done Dugan decided to get back into the
boat and play some more. Acting like he was drowning he reminded me of how we
act a lot like the disciples in the boat that day screaming out to Jesus, “We’re
going to drown!” It is so true that Satan brings storms into our lives just to intimidate
us. Unfortunately it’s not that difficult of a job as we seem to be easily frightened
at times.
In order to glorify God we need to keep on doing what is
right and not let life’s storms affect us. For each person there are different
levels of storms just like storms in nature. The storms they have in Florida are
ones we will never see in Oregon. Well, I hope we never do. Ha Ha. No matter
what the degree of storm that hits our lives we can all be the same in the fact
we need to continue to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord in order to
glorify Him.
Doing what the disciples did and going into a panic attack
will not calm the storm. Trembling in fear of what will happen to us will not
make the storm go away. I have to admit when the storm of the news of my cancer
hit there were many times I wanted to curl up in a corner somewhere and cover
my head with a blanket and never come out. Although I never did it, in my heart
it was my way of dealing with this big storm.
Later I found the better way to handle it would be to go on
doing what is right and that is to trust God to see me through. I have always
relied on God for my strength to endure and this situation was no different. It
was a storm too big for me but not too big for God. I just needed to sit calmly
in my boat and allow Jesus to navigate me and my boat thru the rough waters
into calmer currents.
I could either act like Dugan was laying on the bottom of
the boat kicking my feet screaming out to God or I could sit upright in my seat
and continue to do what needed to be done. Something I learned about this storm
that seems like a simple “duh” kind of a thing but it’s a trick your mind likes
to play on you is the fact that I’m in this one for life. There will not be a
day in my life that I won’t have to deal with my breast and bone cancer and the
constant pain it creates in my body.
Getting scared won’t make it go away. Thrashing around in a frighten
mode won’t end it all. Jumping ship doesn’t solve any problems, only creates
more. Screaming out to Jesus, yelling “I’m going to drown” wasn’t going to cure
me. If that was the case it should have cured my cancer the night in the
emergency room when the doctor said those words, “You have bone cancer.” My
backache I was dealing with wasn’t a backache that was going to go away like
all my others did. This one was created by my bone cancer, it was here to stay
like it or not. The storm that hit was a storm that wasn’t going to go away.
The best way to ride it out would be to continue to do what
is right in the eyes of the Lord. It would start with trusting the Lord,
turning my fears over to Him, reading God’s word for navigational help and continuing
to be obedient to God’s commands and words. Allowing fear to overtake me wasn’t
the answer, my emotions were certainly not trustworthy they were wounded by the
shattering news.
What is right was to remain upright, living out the storm
being the best sailor I know how to be with God as my captain. Someday the
other sandy shore will come and the storm will finally cease until then I’m
sailing with Jesus, Him and me.
© 2013 Karen J Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes
Publishing In Udder Words Tuesday
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