When the Storm is a Storm

Yesterday morning I posted a short post called "Winds of Change", which you can find here. Yesterday I talked about when we seem to be experiencing the billowing, gusting, bending, wind of the Holy Spirit and mistake it for a storm instead of the Lord doing a changing work in our life.

Today, however, I want to talk about when the storm is a storm. There are storms in all of our lives. Storms that rock us, seemingly drowned us, swallow us, and block out the beauty, hope, and joy that the Light gives.

I have experienced a few such storm, some of my own doing and some that I have experienced due to what others have done. I have felt the pull beneath the surface to just give up, I have often forget the beauty and life of the Light, and I have cursed and yelled, blamed and resented in the midst of my storms. However, just because the storm is a storm doesn't mean that I am there alone. When my bones are weary, my eyes are wet, and my soul is done, the Hope holds onto me. When I have let go of the Hope, the Promise, the Truth...He has never let go of me. He has preserved me, led me, carried me, and sustained me. He has made every provision for me in the midst of the storm, as He does for all of those who place their hope in the great LIGHT OF HOPE.

You see, just as a storm came upon Noah and his family, God spoke to Him long before the storm was to come. He prepared Noah, gave him specific instruction and set him to task. When I think of Noah and the Ark, like many, I fast forward to the end, to the rainbow and dry ground, the offering and the new beginning, I skip the middle or at very least skim over it and most of the beginning of his story. I skip the part where it tells of how God preserved Noah in an Ark, provided for him, promised him, and delivered Him. I'm sure Noah's storm was wrought with stench, sea sickness, hunger, weariness, loneliness, hopelessness, worry, anxiety, irritation with his family, and the list could go on. My storms are not so different, they to are wrought with many of the same things, and like Noah, the Lord Almighty, has preserved me in an Ark. He has preserved me in His grace and mercy, in His presence, as HIS. Now I don't know what your Ark may be, but I promise that if you look where you yourself stand and not at the wind and waves that are about you, you will find yourself in the arms of a Loving Father who has placed your feet on the Rock.

Hebrews 10:23
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful."

Isaiah 43:1-3a

But now, this is what the Lord says—

    he who created you, Jacob,    he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;    I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters,    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,    they will not sweep over you.When you walk through the fire,    you will not be burned;    the flames will not set you ablaze. 
For I am the Lord your God,    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

Winds of Change

Last night I sat in my bedroom cleaning out a box with miscellaneous stuff in it. While cleaning and tossing and putting away all the little odds and ends that had found there place in this box I came across a piece of paper with some thoughts I had jotted down about this time last year and I wanted to share them here.


I sit here in a car rider line having just scrambled for a pen. It's as I sit here, waiting to pick up Big Sister from a day camp, the winds begin to pick up and an ominous cloud moves overhead. The winds are billowing down on the nearby crepe myrtle trees, the basketball goals in the parking lot are rattling against the gusts, and as I sit here I begin to ponder the similarity of the bowing wind to that of the Holy Spirit in my life at times.

I pray for a fresh wind of the Holy Spirit in my life...a refreshing, cleansing, life giving breath of the Holy Spirit. However, when those winds are stronger and pushing against my stubbornness, bowing me over, I have this tendency to view it as a storm and not the Lord answering my cry for healing and life through the cleansing life giving wind and rain.  

As I sit here, these crepe myrtles are being shaken about and blossoms are being loosed into the wind. How many times in my own life do I stand staunch, resistant to the wind, not allowing anything to be loosed from my heart, clinging desperately to what is mine and often times being forced into a position of surrender and submission. So the questions this morning is this is the storm a storm or the Lord answering our cries with winds of change and adding life giving rain?