Citywide Baptist Church
Peace in the storm
How do you cope when life gets difficult?
Locations & Times
Citywide Baptist Church (Mornington)
400 Cambridge Rd, Mornington TAS 7018, Australia
Sunday 10:00 AM
When life gets difficult – a crisis hits, things get out of control – what can you do? How can you cope?
Prayer is the foundation for our relationship with God, and the source of our strength
Prayer is the foundation for our relationship with God, and the source of our strength
When we spend time in prayer, God strengthens us with power through his Spirit in our inner being.
Following Jesus means accepting his authority and staying focussed on the tasks he gives us
Following Jesus doesn’t guarantee an easy, smooth, comfortable ride.
JESUS SAW THEM.
[When] the water stands between Jesus and those whom He loves: He walks it. So they are not alone in their storm.
He’ll break all the rules to reach us: the religious rules, the social rules, the rules we create in desperate self-preservation, and sometimes even the rules He’s set Himself: the fundamental laws of nature.
Liz Campbell, The Long Walk:
Following Jesus means seeing with eyes of faith, not fear
[When] the water stands between Jesus and those whom He loves: He walks it. So they are not alone in their storm.
He’ll break all the rules to reach us: the religious rules, the social rules, the rules we create in desperate self-preservation, and sometimes even the rules He’s set Himself: the fundamental laws of nature.
Liz Campbell, The Long Walk:
Following Jesus means seeing with eyes of faith, not fear
“Our fears know [that walking on the water] just doesn’t happen. Our fears tell us we are really alone and need to rely on our wits, to strain at our oars, to fight for our survival.”
“Only an author has the authority to change a manuscript, to rewrite the words that lay everything out plain, to put in a plot twist no one sees coming. If you are the Author of life (Acts 3:15), the forger of all that is real, the creator of all things (Colossians 1:14-16), if you formed reality with your breath (Psalm 33:6), with your word (Genesis 1:1-26), can you not re-form it?
Jesus rewrites the manuscript around His love and power. Because that is the point of the manuscript in the first place … to manifest God’s glory and to make Him known.”
If we’re honest, we often reinterpret what we experience and how we understand what is real and not real."
“There are days when my vision has been skewed by my past, whole seasons when I haven’t seen the world as it is at all, but as my eyes were, as I was. Fearful. Lost. Confused. Down. When all I could hear was my drumming heart and all I could feel was the whir in the pit of my stomach. When hope corroded day after day, blow after blow.
We humans, we edit our perceptions with our fears and feelings, we reinterpret reality around our scars, and then we live in this faulty manuscript rather than the reality just above our skin."
The storm was real. The waves were real. The winds were real.
Jesus walking on the waves was real …
But their eyes, their fear, rewrote reality so they could not see Him. They didn’t see hope coming to join them in the storm. Their scarred, scared view of reality transformed what was real into what was not.
They saw a ghost. Not God. Their expectations altered all they saw. Into a lie.
Liz Campbell, The Long Walk:
WE FEEL TO SEE, AND SO OFTEN FAIL TO SEE. CLEARLY.
“Only an author has the authority to change a manuscript, to rewrite the words that lay everything out plain, to put in a plot twist no one sees coming. If you are the Author of life (Acts 3:15), the forger of all that is real, the creator of all things (Colossians 1:14-16), if you formed reality with your breath (Psalm 33:6), with your word (Genesis 1:1-26), can you not re-form it?
Jesus rewrites the manuscript around His love and power. Because that is the point of the manuscript in the first place … to manifest God’s glory and to make Him known.”
If we’re honest, we often reinterpret what we experience and how we understand what is real and not real."
“There are days when my vision has been skewed by my past, whole seasons when I haven’t seen the world as it is at all, but as my eyes were, as I was. Fearful. Lost. Confused. Down. When all I could hear was my drumming heart and all I could feel was the whir in the pit of my stomach. When hope corroded day after day, blow after blow.
We humans, we edit our perceptions with our fears and feelings, we reinterpret reality around our scars, and then we live in this faulty manuscript rather than the reality just above our skin."
The storm was real. The waves were real. The winds were real.
Jesus walking on the waves was real …
But their eyes, their fear, rewrote reality so they could not see Him. They didn’t see hope coming to join them in the storm. Their scarred, scared view of reality transformed what was real into what was not.
They saw a ghost. Not God. Their expectations altered all they saw. Into a lie.
Liz Campbell, The Long Walk:
WE FEEL TO SEE, AND SO OFTEN FAIL TO SEE. CLEARLY.
What do we do about ‘little faith’ and doubt?
But Peter got distracted. He focussed on the realities associated with the storm instead of the reality of Jesus’ power and presence. His little amount of faith was a faith that panicked when faced with a crisis.
Doubts are those moments of practical hesitation – when we see the external realities and not the reality of Jesus with us.
Doubts are those moments of practical hesitation – when we see the external realities and not the reality of Jesus with us.
Peter took his eyes off Jesus, but Jesus never took his eyes off Peter. He kept coming to him; kept closing the distance between them so he could save him.
Jesus never takes his eyes off us either. He is always right there with us, no matter where we are and what we are experiencing. As with Peter, when we ask Jesus to sustain us, he IMMEDIATELY reaches out his hand to lift us up.
Jesus never takes his eyes off us either. He is always right there with us, no matter where we are and what we are experiencing. As with Peter, when we ask Jesus to sustain us, he IMMEDIATELY reaches out his hand to lift us up.
Being a follower of Jesus involves just one strategy: Keep your eyes on him. Then walk. Only ever in that order.
Liz Campbell, The Long Walk:
“Faith is seeing God’s presence with us in our storm. Faith is seeing, despite the storm, God at work in the circumstances around us. Faith isseeing that there is a bigger story at work than our human eyes can see.”
God is real. Jesus is present. We are not alone. He is with us.
Where are your eyes? What do you see?
Liz Campbell, The Long Walk:
“Faith is seeing God’s presence with us in our storm. Faith is seeing, despite the storm, God at work in the circumstances around us. Faith isseeing that there is a bigger story at work than our human eyes can see.”
God is real. Jesus is present. We are not alone. He is with us.
Where are your eyes? What do you see?
Small Group Questions:
1) Talk about some of the crisis' you have had in your life and how you coped.
2) How has prayer helped you in moments of crisis?
3) How often do you and me, like the disciples, find ourselves battling to keep going with the tasks God’s given us to do?
4) How do you feel about the idea that "If we’re honest, we often reinterpret what we experience and how we understand what is real and not real?"
5) Talk about the idea that "Being a follower of Jesus involves just one strategy: Keep your eyes on him. Then walk. Only ever in that order." How has that worked in your experience?
1) Talk about some of the crisis' you have had in your life and how you coped.
2) How has prayer helped you in moments of crisis?
3) How often do you and me, like the disciples, find ourselves battling to keep going with the tasks God’s given us to do?
4) How do you feel about the idea that "If we’re honest, we often reinterpret what we experience and how we understand what is real and not real?"
5) Talk about the idea that "Being a follower of Jesus involves just one strategy: Keep your eyes on him. Then walk. Only ever in that order." How has that worked in your experience?