Have you ever pre-recorded an important sports team’s game to watch it later? The city is buzzing with game fever. It’s the final game but you have a meeting you can’t get out of, so you record it to watch it the next evening.
Tomorrow comes and around the water cooler of the office, you happen to hear that your favorite team won! You block your ears and run to your office. But the ‘cat’s out of the bag’ so to speak. You know they win! So, you get home and put the game on. You know they’ve won, so how you watch the game is entirely different than if you didn’t know they’d won. If you don’t know who wins, you watch the game barking at the players, yelling at the referees and shaking your head. The score is 4 to 0 for the opposing team in the beginning of the third period. You almost want to turn it off. You’re sick to your stomach and you’re disappointed with the whole game. You sit there irritated and just shake your head over and over.
But if you know the final score while you’re watching the game, it’s entirely different! You’re relaxed and enjoy the game because you’re watching to see how they win, even while in the third period, it’s 4 to 0 for the other team. Your attitude is good, you’re calm and you sit with anticipation, knowing they’re going to win. You just don’t know how, but you know they win!
This is like the Christian life. We may be down by 4, but we know we win! God was asking me to keep my eyes on Him; to trust that He knows the whole situation. I was reminded of Abraham and Isaac up on Mount Mariah, the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, Joseph in prison for nothing he did, Paul & Silas in prison, Peter and the disciples in that great storm at sea, and even Jesus on the cross. I think the Bible is filled with impossible circumstances because God wants us to be crystal clear about the fact that He was with Abraham on mount Mariah. He was with the children of Israel at the Red Sea. He was with Paul & Silas in prison. He was with the disciples in that great storm at sea and that He is with Bev and I in this terrible storm as well. It says in Psalm 23, “yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.” God was trying to get me to focus on the fact that no matter what my circumstances are, He is always with us!
God is asking Bev and I to stand and watch with expectation at how He will work things out.
That sounds almost impossible when we’re in a great storm! It always will seem that way as long as our eyes are on the storm instead of on Him.