Watch the video here! http://youthathopekop.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-storm.html
One of the annual
traditions in the Desilets’ household – at least for Tim and I (I’m not sure our children really care)
is watching the news coverage just before and during snowstorms. Since we both grew up in Vermont where, first
of all, there is no news and second of all, less than 12 inches of snow is not
considered a big deal AT ALL, we just think the “LIVE” reports and “eyewitness”
interviews are hysterical. We love
hearing reports from Home Depot that they’re out of shovels (what did you do with the one you bought for
the last storm?) and the grocery stores that they’re out of bread and milk
and canned goods because everyone for some reason thinks they aren’t going to
be leaving their houses for like two weeks.
And, of course, there are the random interviews with people as they walk
or drive by.
One of the things that I love
about the storm report news is how they can show you on the map exactly where
the storm is and where it’s going to hit.
I remember during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, we were all glued to the
television watching to see which way the storm was going to turn and where it
was going to hit near us. I love my handy dandy little weather app on my phone
where I can click on the map and actually watch a storm as it’s moving toward
our area.
This is the first week of
our series called THE STORM and we picked this topic because we’ve seen so many
of you going through crazy stuff over the past few months and it hasn’t been
fun. For some of it’s been one really
big thing and for some of you it’s been lots of little stuff all combined into
one big storm in your life.
We all have storms in our
lives that just wreck our peace. We all
have different size storms in different times of our lives, but every single
one of us in this room has a storm on our map.
Maybe it’s on its way out, maybe it’s hovering right over you right now,
or maybe it’s on its way – headed right for you. The
problem is that we don’t have “Doppler Radar” and most of the time we do NOT
see these storms coming. But we
absolutely believe in a God who can!
If you were around in the fall,
you heard me talk about this guy way back in the beginning of the Bible named Abraham
and how God chose Abraham to be the "Father" of this huge nation of
people who God would use to show Himself to the rest of the world through. Tonight
we’re going to talk about Jacob, Abraham's grandson, who has been charged with
carrying on this family and leading it and growing it into this nation.
Near the end of his life, Jacob said a phrase that I think perfectly
describes life in the storm. He said this in Genesis 42:36: “Everything is
going against me!” We’re going to come back to this, but I want you to think
about this phrase and this feeling that when you’re in a storm, it really does
feel like EVERYTHING is going against you. The
problem was that Jacob had a limited view of the storm. He didn’t see and he
couldn’t see the “Doppler Radar” – He couldn’t see God’s view of his storm.
We’re going to rewind time a few years and talk about Jacob's life. We
don't have time for the whole story, but here's what you need to know. You
might remember me talking about the importance in the culture of this time of
being the "first-born son" because the first-born son was the heir to
the "throne" of leadership in the family. Jacob was not the
first-born son in his family, but he desperately wanted to be, so he stole the
title from his brother. Now fast-forward to many years later and Jacob himself has
twelve sons. This was a big deal because God's prediction of this family
growing huge into a nation is starting to really come true and you can imagine
that Jacob was feeling the pressure of the responsibility of all of this!
Do you have siblings? Do you have a "favored" sibling in your
household?
The story of Jacob is that he absolutely had a favorite son,
Joseph. Joseph wasn’t Jacob’s
“first-born” son, but Jacob made it very clear that he was the favorite. And
the story of Joseph proved to be the biggest storm of Jacob’s life.
To make a really long story short, there were ten brothers older than
Joseph and one younger. As you can
guess, these older brothers were just a little bit jealous of Joseph – surely
there were many benefits of being the favored son. Then Joseph makes it even worse by telling
them about this dream he had that one day they would all bow down to him. So, they decide to get rid of him – they
could have killed him, but they decide to be a little bit nicer and instead
they sell him into slavery and just tell their dad that he’s dead.
When Jacob hears this news he is, of course, devastated and goes into
deep mourning. Genesis 37:35 says:
His family all tried to comfort him, but he refused to
be comforted. “I will go to my grave mourning for my son,” he would say, and
then he would weep.
Meanwhile, Joseph is still alive and he’s in Egypt. He started out as a slave but through some
crazy circumstances and storms of his own, God was with him, and he ended up
becoming second in command to Pharaoh – an incredibly powerful position. At the time there was this huge famine (meaning
no crops and no food) in the whole area, except for Egypt. Egypt had no crops, but because they had
Joseph, who was able to predict this famine, they had stored a bunch of food
and Egypt was saved from total destruction.
Now back to Jacob – the
famine has hit them, too, and they are facing the end. If they don’t find a way to get food soon,
they will all die and there goes the promise to Abraham about this “nation”
that he was going to be the father of.
But Jacob hears that
there’s food in Egypt, so he sends his ten oldest sons to go buy food from
them. Now that Joseph is “dead”, you can
guess that the baby of the family – Benjamin – had become the favorite
son. Genesis 42:4 says, “But Jacob wouldn’t let Joseph’s younger
brother, Benjamin, go with them for fear that some harm might come to him.”
The brothers go to Egypt
and it turns out that it’s actually Joseph that they are buying food from, but
they have NO idea it’s him and he doesn’t tell them. Instead, he accuses them of being spies! He puts one of them, Simeon, in prison and
makes them “prove” themselves by going back to get their youngest brother,
Benjamin, and bring him to Egypt.
So, they go back and break
this news to Jacob. And here’s how he
responds:
Jacob exclaimed, “You are robbing me of
my child! Joseph is gone! Simeon is gone! And now you want to take Benjamin, too. Everything
is going against me!”
Here’s that storm we were talking
about earlier. A storm is a disturbance to peace. A physical, earthly “storm” is a
disturbance in the atmosphere. Very warm
air and very cold air meet together and can’t coexist, so things just get all
tense and mixed up and as a result we get things like snow, strong rains, hail,
thunder, lightning, high speed winds.
Storms in our lives can
come in lots of different forms.
Sometimes it’s something as small as a bad grade or an annoying sibling
who won’t stay out of your business.
Sometimes storms are bigger – you make a bad decision and get grounded,
or maybe it’s a bad break-up or a fight with a friend that you can’t seem to
resolve. Sometimes storms are huge –
like a really big personal struggle or a death or bad sickness in your
family. Sometimes it’s a PERFECT storm,
which is when several of those storm conditions come together and happen at the
same time. Whatever it is, it can seem
like everything is just whirling all around you and pelting you with more and
more and leaving a trail of damage in its path.
The problem is that when
you’re in a storm, it might feel like
everything is against you, but if you are a follower of Jesus – you have
believed in Him and received Him into your life – you are part of God’s family
just like Jacob, and God is the ultimate Father. He never allows His children to go through a
storm without having a really good reason for it! When you zoom out and look at your storms
through “Storm Tracker: Jesus” you’ll
see two really important things:
First, storms always have an end. Jacob couldn’t
see an end to his storm because he had resigned himself, first of all, that he
was going stay mourning for Joseph until his own death. Second, it just seemed like things kept
getting worse – he kept losing more and more of his sons. How many times have you said, or heard
someone else say the phrase, “I just can’t win!” That’s probably about how Jacob felt!
But what Jacob couldn’t
see in that moment was that his storm was about to end. From his limited viewpoint down here, he had no
way to see that not only was Joseph actually alive, but Joseph was the one
holding the Simeon in prison and Joseph was the one who was requesting to see
Benjamin.
Here’s how Jacob’s storm
ended in Genesis 46:28-29:
As they neared their destination, Jacob
sent Judah ahead to meet Joseph and get directions to the region of Goshen. And
when they finally arrived there, Joseph prepared his chariot and traveled to
Goshen to meet his father, Jacob. When Joseph arrived, he embraced his father
and wept, holding him for a long time.
Whatever storm you’re in
now or will be in, it will have an end. There
may be damage and wreckage that needs to be repaired, but this storm in your
life – whatever it is – will pass through and go on its way. It will not always be what it is right
now. The feelings of chaos or pain or
fear that you have right now or will have in your next storm, will not last
forever. You can trust God that He is
with you and that He is going to carry you through it to the other side.
Isaiah 46:3-4
“Listen to me, descendants
of Jacob,
all you who remain in Israel. (That’s you, if you’ve received Christ into
your life)
I have cared for you since
you were born.
Yes, I carried you before you were born.
I will be your God
throughout your lifetime—
until your hair is white with age.
I made you, and I will
care for you.
I will carry you along and save you.
The second thing you will see when you look at storms
through “Storm Tracker: Jesus” is that our storms are actually a beautiful gift
from God. When Jacob said that phrase, “Everything is
going against me!” he didn’t realize that something much worse than losing
three of his sons was headed his way.
The famine they were in at that time was nowhere close to ending and if
things had continued on that path, he would have lost ALL of his sons, all of
their wives and children, his entire family and probably his own life as
well.
Listen to what Joseph said
to his brothers when he finally revealed to them who he was. Genesis 45:5-7:
But don’t be upset, and don’t be angry
with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead
of you to preserve your lives. This famine that has ravaged the land for two
years will last five more years, and there will be neither plowing nor
harvesting. God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive
and to preserve many survivors.
Jacob felt and believed that “Everything was going
against him” but in reality everything was going FOR him and for God’s plan,
which was much bigger than him.
If you are a believer in
Jesus and have received Him into your life, your storm, every storm, no matter
how ugly it is, is a BEAUTIFUL GIFT from your Heavenly Father. Listen to this verse from 1 Peter 5:10: “In his kindness God called you to share in
his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little
while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a
firm foundation.” Your storm is
actually His KINDNESS to you because He is using it to strengthen you. He is using it to shape you. He is using it to do the work He has promised
to do in you of changing you from the inside out.
How many of you lost power
in your house this week? Most of you
probably lost power because the storm on Tuesday night revealed some weaker
tree limbs which broke off and fell onto the power lines. If you could have zoomed out over this whole
area, you would see the white snowy ground just littered with branches and
limbs from trees. Those branches broke
off because they couldn’t handle the weight of the ice on them. Some whole trees couldn’t handle it and broke
under the pressure!
If you are a follower of
Jesus, every storm, little or big, that God allows to pass through your life is
there to show you your weak spots. And sometimes the damage, even though it
hurts, is God breaking away the areas of our lives where we aren’t surrendering
to Him. Things we’ve been trying to
hide from Him, hoping He won’t notice.
Things we don’t even realize about ourselves that He wants to point out
so we can truly understand how deeply He loves and cares for us and how huge
and wide His forgiveness and grace really is.
If you have not made a
decision to receive Jesus into your life,
God is probably using whatever storm is happening in your life to get your
attention so that you will realize that you can’t do life alone and you
desperately need Him – you need His love, His forgiveness, and His power in
your life. If that’s you, don’t ignore
Him on this – He is seeking you out because He wants you to know Him.
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