Storms of More Perfection

Storms of More Perfection

It was a beautiful spring morning, and I was teaching high school in a city about twenty miles west of where we lived and our boys attended high school.  Suddenly, we heard the tornado warning sirens.  Students were led into the hallways, put into storm protection mode, and we waited out the legendary Texas spring thunderstorm weather – black clouds turning green, hail the size of marbles, and horrific wind.

Suddenly, a teacher slipped into the hall from the office, found me, and whispered that there was a string of tornadoes headed for our small town, in line with the location of both the middle and high schools.  She offered to cover my class for me, as I climbed into the car and headed east.  Though it was the middle of the day, cars head on headlights, not for safety, but in order to see through the darkness.  Cars were headed in the opposite direction, as I fought the wind, listening to the radio and praying the tornadic line had broken and receded.  Instead, about ten minutes from town, I heard that the high school had been hit.

Damage and injury reports had not yet come in.  Destruction was everywhere, as I turned onto the road where the high school was located.  Trees were uprooted and strewn everywhere; the sports complex had areas ripped from the ground; then, I saw the roof missing from the back part of the high school.  As I pulled as close to the school as I could get, teachers recognized cars (it was a small town) and dismissed students.  Praise to the Father!  The students had all been in hallways in the front of the school, and there were only two slight injuries.  The tornadoes continued southeast from the school, with fatalities and total destruction. 

That is exactly how spiritual storms can feel in the life of the believer.  The dark ominous clouds of doubt seem to forecast hopelessness and destruction.  We long for the storm to pass over, and we wonder if the sun will ever shine again.  Often, we try to understand how we ever got into the storm in the first place.  What did we do wrong?  It feels as if God is punishing for something in His anger.  We lose sight of a couple of valuable spiritual truths.  One truth is that God only disciplines His children in love for the purpose of restoration of our fellowship with Him.  Occasionally, we do, indeed, experience a storm of correction as a result of direct disobedience of God’s Word for our lives, as we saw in the life of Jonah.  However, we may also experience a storm of perfection, as did the disciples in Matthew 8, as a direct result of following Jesus.

The purpose of a storm of perfection is beautifully unfolded in Matthew 14:22-33, following the feeding of the five thousand. Picture the setting:  Jesus had just multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish into enough food for five thousand men and their families, with enough leftovers to fill twelve baskets – one for each of the doubting disciples.  Jesus wanted to spend some time alone praying to God His Father.  So, He sent His disciples ahead of Him, across the Sea of Galilee, to Gennesaret on the northwestern shore.  Interestingly enough, the Bible says that Jesus constrained His disciples to get into the boat.  In other words, He put them in the boat, almost a picture of picking them up and setting them into the boat.  They left His presence reluctantly.

He told them to go on ahead to the other side, while He dealt with the crowd.  However, just as in Matthew 8, only six chapters earlier, a storm came up during the night as the disciples were sailing to the other side.  Can you imagine the conversation between the disciples?  Remember, in Matthew 8, they awakened Jesus and asked if He didn’t care if they perished.  I would have loved to have heard the conversation between Peter, James, and John.  It might have gone something like this:  'How could Jesus let this happen, again?  Where is He when we really need Him?  Bail harder, John.  Peter, you are not the boss of us.  Jesus, help us now.  We are perishing – AGAIN!'

Suddenly, during the fourth watch of 3 A.M. to 6 A.M., as the disciples despaired of living, they saw what appeared to be Jesus Himself walking on the water to come to them.  He was answering their call; yet, they thought He was a ghost.  They were asking Him to do the impossible to help them in their darkest hour; they doubted that He could or would show up, though.  Suddenly, Peter – oh, how I love Peter – shouted, “If it is you, Lord, call me to you on the water.”  Jesus said, “Come.”

Interestingly, He did not limit the call to Peter.  I believe that every apostle in the boat could have walked on the water to Jesus.  Only Peter tried.  Suddenly, the waves and storm caused Peter to talk his eyes off of Jesus, and he began to sink in the storm that was about to destroy him.  He prayed that eloquent prayer:  Help!  Jesus, kind, loving, and compassionate, did not choose to lecture Peter on doubt, struggle, or water-walking faith.  Instead, He, immediately, reached out His hand and caught Peter.  Together, they walked to the boat and climbed in.

Can you imagine their reception?  I can just hear Peter:  John, you should’ve been there.  Did you see what happened?  I walked on water, holding arms with Jesus! You should try it.  He is powerful.  He caught me, just as I went under.  He loves me!  The disciples responded:  You really are the Son of God.

Our application?  Sometimes, in the perfection of our faith, we experience storms of life.  It feels as if God Himself has picked us up and placed us in a boat which we would never choose – a boat of loss, of fear, of pain.  The boat may be the death of a precious loved one, a medical diagnosis we never wanted to hear, the loss of a job, a re-location – anyplace that we find ourselves without choosing.  One of my heroes, Elisabeth Elliot, describes suffering as having what you don’t want or wanting what you don’t have.

In the midst of that suffering, we find ourselves bailing for our very lives, as we struggle just to stay above water.  We feel abandoned and betrayed by the very God we love and Who loves us.

Yet, in the darkest hour before the dawn, as we look across our storm-tossed life, we will see Jesus as He comes to us in a way that we would never have known Him apart from the storm.  He gives us the opportunity to step out of what we know, what we believe to be our boat of safety, and to come closer to Him.  He gives us water-walking faith to come to Him, though, like Peter, we may feel swallowed by the tempest surrounding us.  He reaches out to us and takes us to safety, to rest, and to the other side of the storm.  The result of those storms of perfection experiences?  Others will see and say, “Truly, this Jesus is the Son of God, and she knows Him.”

© 2011 Gerry Sisk

(05/11/11)