We are all sailing across the sea of life
Some of you are in a great storm right now
Listen closely. God didn't promise smooth sailing, but he did promise that you're going to reach the other side
Some of you have lost your job some of you are going through marriage crisis
Some of you are experiencing business failures or business reversals
Some of you are going through a time of family illness. Some of you have experienced unexpected tragedy that's stricken like
Lightning striking you out of a clear blue heaven, but what can we learn from chaos?
What can we do to survive the coming storm?
what to do
When you feel like you're going under when chaos reigns
When fear grabs you by the throat and tries to drown you what to do
Chaos doesn't mean that something is wrong with you
Chaos doesn't mean that God is angry with you. God doesn't love you or that God has rejected you
Chaos does not mean
That if you were in the perfect will of God
You wouldn't be in that storm
Let me tell you this very candidly
Chaos is a normal part of life and living
Struggle is the essence of growth and development a mighty oak
Begins with a little seed that is planted in the soil and fights its way up
Only to face the winds the rain the snow
The Blazing Sun and endless adversity year after year to become a beautiful
magnificent oak tree
Because it's only in the storm that your faith can grow
It's only when your faith is tested by fire
That you really know how pure your faith is
It's only when you are tested that your character can develop only in the storm
Can you discover the power of God to deliver you only in the storm
Do you call upon the Lord and find him to be the ever-present help in the time of trouble
the storm develops your confidence and as your
Confidences is so is your capacity
That means that God sent to David a lion to whip and then a bear to whip before
He sent the giant. God has you fighting the fight your fighting now
Because it's a fight designed to develop your confidence
And when you win this one
The next one will be a little bigger and you'll have the confidence
Because of your past victory and when you win that one
you'll win the next one and the next one and the next one because God is
Transforming you into a lion of God
Because God doesn't answer instantly doesn't mean he's not going to answer
Because God's delays are not God's denial
He's waiting for
persistence to overcome resistance
He's trying to develop in you the character of endurance for those who endure to the end
the same shall
Be saved
The resistance of water is necessary for ships to float
The resistance of air is necessary for a plane to fly. The resistance of gravity is
Necessary for you to walk. God puts you through a
Struggle to develop you into who you're going to be in the kingdom of God. God used
No one in the Bible until he put them through
the university of
Adversity before he allowed them to be a leader in the kingdom of God
You will have your adversity you will reach the other side
But God is going to make a champion of grace out of every one of you listen to me
When you focus on the threat
You will experience fear
When you focus on Jesus, you will experience faith
when you struggle
When you go through adversity
Think about the possibility that God is using your struggle and your adversity
Every opportunity
has difficulty and
every
Difficulty has opportunity
It's only when you come to grips with a difficulty that you will realize your potential
Stop looking at your circumstance and start looking at your opportunity
The things you trust in today
Will fail you
tomorrow. People will fail you
How many brides and grooms have walked the aisle of the wedding
chapel stood before God and made a covenant and they put the complete trust in another person and that
Person broke that covenant and broke their heart. How painful how chaotic
What oceans of anger flood the soul when that happens what madness
Where is God to allow something like that to happen?
Listen, it's not the end of the world in
time your heart will heal the sun will shine again
You will sing again you will love again
You may think there's no answer for me Oh, God. God has a thousand and one answers. You haven't thought of
Where do you go when the storms of life are greater than what you can endure?
When the storms
are great when the wind and the waves are crashing your dreams
Where you go?
You go to the one
Who winds and waves obey his name is Jesus. He is the rock
He is the Saviour