Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 27-28, focusing on Paul's journey through a storm and his unwavering faith in God's sovereignty. He emphasizes that storms in life reveal our true beliefs about God and encourages the congregation to trust in God's promises, even when circumstances seem dire. The practical application is to recognize that while we may face challenges, God uses these moments to strengthen our faith and open doors for ministry.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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Great job, young people. Thank you so much for that. If you have a young person, first grade and under, wants to go to Children's Church, that's available for them at this time. I think Ms. Carrie and Ms. Addie are taking them.
If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Acts chapter 17. I ask the young people to sing that song because it goes with sort of the passage that we're going to be at today, talking about Paul and the end of his life.
A couple of messages left here at the end of the chapter of Acts. And it really just shows Paul's willingness to surrender all, Paul's willingness to abandon everything and follow Christ.
And that's sort of where Paul is ending his life, as we've looked at the last couple of weeks, as Paul has been in prison for multiple years now and still trusting the Lord, still trusting in what he's doing.
And so I've entitled today, When God is in the Storm, and what that looks like when we go through storms of life. And so we're going to not read all this. We're going to read from 27 to chapter 28, verse 16.
Sort of like I did last week, we're going to pull out some key verses. But if you'll stand out of the honor of reading of God's word, we'll start, guys, at verse 9 in the back and read a couple of verses here and go through some key passages.
But verse 9, it says, By now much time had passed, and the voyage was already dangerous, and so they had already set sail to go to Rome.
Since the Day of Atonement was already over, Paul gave his advice and told them, Men, I came on this voyage and was heading toward disaster and heavy loss, not only the cargo, but the ship, but also our lives.
But the centurion paid attention to the captain and the owner of the ship rather than what Paul had said. Since the harbor was unsuitable for winter in that time, the majority decided to set sail from there, hoping somehow to reach Phoenix, to harbor at Crait, facing southwest and northwest in the winter there.
We'll skip down to verse 20. Verse says, For many days neither sun nor stars appeared, and there was severe storm kept raging. They were shipwrecked at this time. Finally, all hope was fading that anyone would be saved.
Verse 23 says, For last night an angel of God and I belonged to and served stood by me and said, Do not be afraid, Paul. It is necessary for you to appear before Caesar, and indeed God has graciously given you all those who are sailing with you. So take courage, men.
I believe in God, and it will be the way that he has told it to be.
Verse 26, But we have run aground on an island.
Verse 37 gives you the severity of where it's at. It says, In all there were 276 of us on the ship. Skip down to verse 44. The rest were to follow, some on planks and some on debris from the ship. In this way everyone safely reached the shore.
And then we'll read the last two verses of verse 28, verse 15 and 16. Now the brothers and sisters came from there, that they heard the news about us, and came to meet us as far as the Forum of Apias and three taverns. When Paul saw them, he thanked God and took courage.
And when we entered Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself with the soldier who guarded him. Let us pray. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. Thank you for the blessings that you've given us.
Paul's Example of Faith
We thank you for the example of Paul. Paul, his faithfulness to you over the trials that he went through, over the storms that he went through, over the difficulties that he went through in his life. And I thank you for his example that we get to look at today. In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated.
Today we're going to be looking at the sovereignty of God in all things. Oftentimes we go through difficult times.
And if you've lived in this world for any amount of time, you can attest that there are going to be hard times. There's going to be difficult times.
There's going to be times where you don't really know what the next chapter is going to be in life. You can sometimes be nervous or anxious or worried about where your life is going. But oftentimes, in those times, I don't want us to forget that God is there.
He's near to us. He is there beside us. He is there with us. He is never surprised at anything that happens in this world. He is never defeated, especially when the storms happen.
When storms come into our life, it truly reveals to us what we believe about God. It truly reveals to us what we think and what we believe, who and what God is. We were riding in the car yesterday, I believe it was. I love having young kids.
Young kids, I remember this as I was a kid. I remember asking my dad questions like, Dad, who is God's father? Right? Who created God?
Like, I remember asking my dad those questions. And now I think back and I'm like, man, how silly was I that asked that? But now I'm riding down the road and my own kids are asking me those same questions.
And it's exciting to know and it's exciting to follow through with that.
But yesterday, Jade, we were riding down the road and Jade said, Dad, she said, how? It was something about to the effect of situations happening. How does God know?
I think it was everyone's name. Does God know everyone's name in the world? And I said, yeah, God has no limits like we do. God has, he's abundantly greater than everything we can ask or think. And so God doesn't have a finite mind like we do. He doesn't forget things.
He doesn't ever have to remember something. He just always knows. And it's difficult for us to even understand that. But it's good for us to remember that God is over all things. Storms happen.
Difficult times are going to happen in our life. And we must ask ourselves, who is God in our life in those times?
The year before I was born in 1987, October of 87, a massive storm hit the coast of England. It became known as the Great Storm. This is an eyewitness account here. The weather forecasters underestimated it. Experienced sailors ignored the warning.
And by the time the winds reached hurricane force, it was too late to turn around. One man, a seasoned sailor, later gave an interview describing the night. And he said this, the waves were so high that I could not see the sky anymore. The instruments on my boat failed. Visibility was gone.
And he later went on to say, at one point, all we could do was hold on and wait to see if morning would even come. Now, I want you to understand and put yourself in that picture, right? The storm's here. It's raging. Things are going on. You don't know what's going to happen.
You're clinging to whatever life craft you can cling to to hopefully make it to morning.
19 people in that storm lost their lives. Hundreds of boats were destroyed. Investigators later concluded that many of the tragedies happened not because there was not a warning, but because the warnings were ignored.
And oftentimes in our life, we get to the point where we forget to even take heed of the warnings that are in our life. The storm never asked permission to come. The storm came no matter what.
The storm didn't check to see, is there experienced people here that are going to be able to handle the storm? It came no matter what. And it didn't care about anything that was going on. The storm was coming.
And oftentimes in our life, that's where it's at. And that's what's happening here in Acts 27 and 28. A ship full of people confident in their own plan.
They were going to go to Rome, dismissing everything that was around them. The counsel that was being given were sailing into this storm that they could not control. And oftentimes you can say in your life, we oftentimes are scaling into storms that we cannot control.
And I often want us to ask ourselves this question, what are we going to discover about ourselves when everything is failing and yet God is not? God is the one that is steady. He's the one that is the solid anchor point in our life. And he never changes. He's always the same. Amen.
How are we when God is sovereign and yet we are in the storm of chaos?
You see, God is not controlled by the storm, but yet controls the storm. We like when seas are calm. We like when everything is going well. The stock market's up. The 401k is looking good.
Challenges and God's Sovereignty
Gas prices are down. Health insurance is down. I don't think that's ever going to happen. We like when things are going good. But yet when things get difficult, it begins to remind us who God is in those situations.
And so Acts 27 and 28 shows us what this looks like when all control was gone, when the hope of life is beginning to fade, right?
They didn't know what was going to happen here and what it was going to cost them in this moment. God knows the storm and he knows what we're going through. And so we'll jump into this passage today.
We've got six points we're going to look at. And so the very first thing we're going to look at is God's wisdom in this situation is often ignored. Paul warns them plainly. He tells them, we are going to go through a storm, people.
This is going to happen. And like it or not, this is what's going to happen. And the experienced experts look at him and they say, nah, we're going to listen to the majority opinion. We don't, Paul, you're just a prisoner. You're in chains.
Why would we listen to you? Why would we care about what you have to say? We're going to overrule godly counsel with the experience. Now you say, Pastor James, how does this matter to us? God tells us to live our life a certain way.
He gives us lists of things to do and how we should be and how we should abide our life and what we should do in our life. And yet there are times when good experience counsel comes alongside of us that goes against the godly counsel that we have in our life.
Who are we going to listen to?
Are we going to listen to the godly counsel that is scripture and what God has told us? Or are we going to listen to the person that thinks they know what's best but goes against scripture?
And this is where we're at in this story where the voyage is going on and not many of these people were wise, but because it was popular, they followed that decision.
It was popular for them to listen to the decision of what was going on here. The Bible specifically says that the majority began to step forward and the majority told them to do this. And Paul was telling them to go the other way. Ignoring God's willsdom does not cancel his sovereignty.
Oftentimes we ignore what God is telling us to do, to do our own thing as we looked at this morning in Sunday school, because we're going to go our own route to do our own thing, to bypass what
God is having to do. And all of a sudden God's sovereignty is not taken out of the picture. It just invites more hardship to come into our life. It invites more difficult things to come into our life when we don't listen.
Oftentimes if you're driving through the mountains, you'll see warning signs that tell you up ahead there's going to be a five or seven or 10% grade. And you need to slow down.
You need to use a different gear because if not, you're going to lose your brakes and bad things are going to happen, right? Or the curves are coming up.
And just because the warning signs are there, it doesn't cause the crash to happen or not to happen. It's when people ignore the warning signs,
inevitably the bad things will begin to happen. We can ignore what is coming, but yet what is coming is still going to come.
And so we must be people who are not ignoring the wisdom of God and not ignoring what is around us. And we must press into the idea that God is over all and that God cares for us. And God is the maker of all things.
The question I want to ask us this morning is whose voice carries the most weight in your life? Whose voice is speaking to you that is directing your decision that is helping you make the right decisions in your life? Is it the voice of the Lord? Is it scripture?
Are you going to the scripture and saying, God, give me the wisdom that I need. I need wisdom right now in Good News Club. We're talking about Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel and Meshach, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
We're going to tell a vision that King Nebuchadnezzar was having. And in this moment, they said, we can't give you the answer, but we know a God who does.
And it said they went and they prayed and they fasted in Daniel chapter two for God to give them the wisdom that they needed.
And oftentimes we must go to the one who has the answers to help us when we're going through life and trust in him rather than the voices that can sometimes penetrate our minds and not ignore God's wisdom in our life.
As we continue on verses 13 through 20, God allows this storm to happen ultimately to remove false confidence.
The gentle winds were there and all of a sudden they began to turn violent. They become so violent.
If you read through this passage that the sailors on this ship said, the only way we're going to get through this is if we start taking our cargo and throwing it overboard. And so they take their luggage that they've got, they throw it overboard.
The ship is still about to sink. They take their food, they throw it overboard. They're taking everything they need to live and to supply life and they are getting rid of it to the point that scripture says all hope was taken away.
Every bit of hope in these sailors who were trained, experienced men were now to the point where there was no hope left.
God often will come into our life and will strip away what we trust so that we can turn and learn to trust in the one who has all the hope. You see, oftentimes if you're like me, you want to try to handle things yourself and fix things yourself.
I was telling someone just the other day, I don't like to have to ask for advice to fix something. I want to just figure out how to fix it. Even if it's me just going to YouTube and figuring it out.
And if I can't figure it out, then I've got to go to a mechanic and pay a mechanic a lot of extra money to fix the problem that I could have done myself.
And oftentimes we get the same way where we trust in ourselves and we forget to trust in the one who has everything taken care of. Storms don't create faith. Storms don't even remove faith. Storms reveal who our faith is truly in. When storms happen,
it begins to strip away everything that you believe down to the very core of who are you truly trusting in. It happens.
I've heard that happens more in Clingman, but oftentimes a breeze will blow by and you'll lose power in Clingman, right? It's gotten a little bit better, but when the power goes out, you truly remember to rely on things that you forget that works without electricity, right?
How many times has this happened to you? The power goes out. Your backup generator didn't come on or whatever. You walk into a room and by nature, you flip on the light switch, right?
Are you there with me? You know, like you were expecting the light to come on and you're like, ah, well, how dumb am I? There's no power.
However, the light switch isn't going to work, but it's such a habit that that's what happens in a life that begins to live that way. This is what storms happen. Storms come in our life.
We lose control of everything, but yet we still rely on what we've done mechanically to turn the power on, to turn the switch on so that we have light.
And God says when the storms come in, it begins to strip away everything that we have in control and begins to take away all of our control to remove our confidence in ourselves so that our confidence can turn
Standing on God's Promises
back to the one who is in control of everything. Number three, as we continue through this passage, verses 21 through 26, shows us that God's promises stand when hope collapses.
Imagine this story here. Imagine what's going on now. The storm is happening. The ship is going back and forth. Things are going crazy.
Paul tried giving counsel. They didn't listen. He's going back and forth. Now he stands up. Everyone doesn't know what to do. Everyone is silent, and he begins to speak. He begins to give them a promise from the Lord. He said that every life would be spared. Now imagine this.
You've got this crazy prisoner in the back of the boat. I'm sure he looks rough. He's got a beard that's probably longer than mine. He probably doesn't have an orange coat on, but he looks rough. He's got chains on.
Your job is to simply take him from Caesarea Maritime to take him to Rome.
About a three-day journey. Four-day journey. You're on this, and this crazy prisoner's in the back, and he's speaking, and he's giving this nonsense, and he's trying to give wisdom. And they're like, listen, you don't know what you're doing. Just be quiet back there, prisoner.
Everything is going crazy. They've gotten rid of everything. They know all hope is gone, and now he stands up, and he says, I've got a vision from the Lord. Everyone on this boat's going to live.
Who is this crazy guy back here? What are you thinking? What are you talking about? Everyone's going to be saved. Every life is going to be spared. Everyone's going to make it to Rome. He gets up, and he says, Rome is our destination.
I believe God, and God's promised me that I'm going to make it to Rome, and I'm going to make it to Rome, and everyone on this boat's going to make it to Rome.
He makes this statement, wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe in God.
Would that be our statement when problems come in our life, when difficult problems come in our life, when all hope is gone, when we don't know what's going to happen next? Would it be our statement to the world when we stand up? Would it be, I believe in God?
The circumstances don't change who God is. The circumstances are coming in. God's promises are still true. He is still faithful to us.
If we're faithful to him, if he still loves us, no matter what, then I'm just going to keep trusting in him, no matter what's going on.
God's promises is going to stand when all the hope of this world is taken away, when all the hope of my life is taken away. I'm going to stand on God's promises. This morning, church, what promises are you standing on?
Are you standing on God's promises, or are you standing on some man-made promise that we know is going to fail, that we know is going to collapse, that we know is going to go away, or are we
standing on the one true God who says that this is the word of the Lord, and this is what's going to happen, and I'm going to stand firm on what he says? Our life, it seems crazy when we do this.
It seems crazy when we stand on God's promises to the world. But I promise you, when you begin to live in the promises of the Lord and live into what he says, your life may not look the way the world says it should look. You may not drive the nicest car.
You may not have the nicest house. You may not have the biggest 401k. You may not have what the world says success looks like.
But when we stand before the Lord, when we stand before him, and we said, we've stood on your promises, we've stood on what you promised us, he begins to look at us and say, well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Well done for doing the things that I've promised you to do. Well done for staying faithful.
As we've looked at Paul over these last 20 chapters, over these last 20 sermons, as he has stayed faithful through thick and through thin, no matter what has happened, he has continued to stay faithful to the Lord. We continue on for verses 27 through 44.
We begin to see God's sovereignty at work and God's sovereignty never cancels human responsibility.
This is something that as you study scripture, as you study who God is and how God is sovereign, how he's in control over everything, how he is in control of everything, it never takes away our responsibility to live
our lives the way God wants us to live, right?
God is sovereign over all things. I gave the illustration this morning in Sunday school class. Abraham was promised to have a child and Sarah was like, I don't know if we're going to have a child. I'm really old. Take this other lady and start your family with her, right?
He was trying to go around the responsibilities that God had told him to do things his own way. The same thing here, the sailors are trying to escape. The sailors are trying to get away from these things. And Paul said, unless you abide in the ship, you won't be saved.
And so they had to stay, they had to eat, they had to pray, they had to be a part of the ship. They could not leave the ship or they would not be saved. God control does not excuse our obedience.
We are still commanded to obey the Lord in all things. We are still commanded to listen to the Lord even when he is in control.
We still have to have this active faith that is trusting, that is leading our life into a way that we are saying, Lord, I'm going to step out by faith. I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to trust in your sovereignty.
I'm going to trust in who you are in this area of my life.
We've got a lot of farmers in here. We've got a lot of people that work in the field that plant things. I have no green thumb. When I plant things, they die. I barely can grow grass in my yard.
Scottie was talking about this morning how one little seed of grass can get in your driveway or your concrete and it will bust up the concrete.
I leaned over to Allie and I said, I think I can grow grass better in my driveway than I can in my yard. I plant seed. I fertilize seed. There's no seed and all of a sudden grass pops up in the middle of my driveway. I'm like, this is the hardest ground ever?
I'm not a planter. I'm not a grower. I'm not a farmer. I wish I was. I wish I had a green thumb. I wish I could grow all the things, but no farmer sets out and prays for a harvest and never plants a seed, right?
In order to pray for the harvest, you've got to go out. You've got to put your feet to action and you've got to plant the seeds and do the hard work and do what you're supposed to do. And then you step back and say, God, I've planted the seed.
I've watered the seed. I've fertilized the seed. I've done everything that I'm supposed to do to the seed. The harvest is now up to you.
I've done what I'm supposed to do. God, I'm going to depend on you. This is what sovereignty of God looks like. God, I'm going to trust in you. I'm going to pray that you take what I have done and you turn it over for your glory. Are we living that way?
And are we waiting on the Lord? Or are we avoiding the obedience to do our own thing?
What steps of faith are we taking to truly trust in the Lord and say, God, I believe you're in control. God, I believe that you are the God of all creation. And I'm going to step out by faith. I'm going to trust you.
I'm going to plant my seed of faith and I'm going to say, God, this is my seed.
I'm putting it in the ground. I just need you to come alongside.
This is us as parents as we raise our children. We're saying, God, I'm raising them in your nurture and your admonition. I'm doing everything I can to raise them up right. Lord, will you go before them? Will you protect their mind? Will you protect their feet? Will you protect their actions?
Will you protect everything so that when they go out in this world, they're going to have the right head on their shoulders because I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. A good parent doesn't sit back in a recliner and say, do whatever you want, kids.
I'm just going to sit back here and not have any action.
And I'm just going to trust that the Lord's going to take care of it. No, a good parent steps up and a good parent loves their kid and directs their kid and disciplines their kid and does the things they're supposed to do so that their kid will grow up in that nurture and
God's Purpose in Adversity
admonition. There is steps of obedience that we must do so that the Lord can come alongside of that and continue to work in that. As we go into chapter 28, we begin to see verses 1 through 10, God uses this storm to open doors for ministry.
All of a sudden, this shipwreck that happens in Paul's life that he didn't want, he didn't pray for a shipwreck to come. He didn't say, God, please give me a shipwreck one day.
God, I really want to be stuck out in the middle of a lake or an ocean for multiple days on end without any water, without any food, with the ability to not know what's going on.
Lord, that would be a wonderful thing for me. He didn't pray for that. He didn't ask for this to come into his life. But this shipwreck became an opportunity for God to show out and to show up in this situation.
If you read through this story, you see when they're on the land and they made landfall, that they make a fire. And in the midst of this fire, a viper, a snake is in there.
And the snake jumps out and bites Paul in the hand and he gets poisoned and he shakes the snake off and he throws in the fire and he's healed. And this is a miraculous moment that happens here.
This viper, this snare that comes at him becomes a moment of testimony to these people that are around. They are shocked.
They don't know what's going on. Who is this guy that can control snakes? Who is this guy that has this authority from God? They don't realize what is going on.
But God used this moment, this situation, this healing to become a moment of opening people's hearts. Paul arrived wet, cold, bitten, but yet he arrived useful.
The question we have to ask ourselves as we begin to examine our lives is how are we arriving? Are we arriving useful when God puts us in a situation?
When God says, I'm going to give you this opportunity, are you arriving at the moment where God can use the greatest disruption in your life to be used in the greatest work of your life? None. We don't plan storms.
We don't plan for a flat tire to happen. We don't plan for accidents to happen. We don't plan for house fires to happen. We don't plan for these things.
But when they do happen and disruption happens in our life, maybe God's using it for a reason to be a blessing to show other people who you truly trust in and who you are truly saying this is here for a reason. Right, right. I'm on the road a lot.
There are times where I plan my schedule very, very diligently.
I try to be at places on time. There are times where I'll be driving and my GPS will say, you're going to have to detour your route.
The road you're on, there's a wreck or whatever it is, and you're going to have to take these back roads and you're going to arrive 30 minutes late. I don't like being late at all. I don't like being late for anything.
And all of a sudden these detours, we often can say they're a mistake. Why is this happening?
Why is this detour happening in my life? Why is this going on right now? And yet sometimes God uses these detours to put us in the right place at the right time that we never even knew was going to happen, to be on assignment for him.
If we would just open our lives and say, God, where are you taking me?
God, where do you, what's the path you're on? Why did I, why did I run into that friend that I haven't seen in 20 years? Why did I run into that person at that time, at that specific place? That's just seems odd that that would happen.
Maybe God ordained that to happen for a reason so that you could see them, so that you could interact with them, so that you could work in their life, so that maybe you could send them a text or a call and say, hey, we haven't connected in so long.
What's going on in your life? How can I work in your life? What are some things that I can do?
If there's one thing that I've learned in my life over the last 37 years is that people are watching everything we do. People are watching our actions. People are watching how you respond to storms.
Impacting Others Through Trials
People are watching how we go through life. And how we go through those things can truly reflect and reveal who we believe in and how we can reach others.
Because the storm you're going through is not the same storm that someone else is going to go through, but there are similarities to it.
And how we respond when those storms happen can give encouragement and help to other people's faith and maybe even bring them to the point where I don't trust in the same God that you trust in. How can I know that same God?
How can I have the peace that you have? As we sang, It Is Well With My Soul today. I did that on purpose because that song was written by a man who was traveling from England to America. And in the middle of this journey, his children died.
And he wrote the song, It Is Well With My Soul, when peace like a river.
He wrote all of these things because in the middle of the adversity of what he was going on, he is still trusting in the Lord. What is it when hardship comes into our life? Who are we continuing to trust on?
Or are we saying, God, I want to use this opportunity to see who's around me that maybe needs to hear about you. And then as we continue to close here, the last couple of verses, God in his sovereignty will always get his servant where he promised. Paul reaches Rome.
Paul was not a free man. Paul was still in chains. Paul is still a prisoner for his faith. He is still not comfortable.
I want you to understand this. Paul is showing up at Rome. God had ordained him to be there. He is showing up, but it is not how he wanted it to be.
You would not say, God, I want you to get me to Wilkes County. And when I get there, I want you to make sure I'm in chains. Make sure I went through three different shipwrecks.
Make sure that I was beaten a couple of times, almost to death. Make sure all these bad things happen to me.
This is not what Paul had envisioned, but it was exactly where God said he was going to be.
He got his servant to Rome where he told it was going to be at. And Paul shows up in this way, trusting in the promises of the Lord no matter what.
God's promises are fulfilled in God's way and in God's time. And this is difficult for us to understand. This is difficult for us to get our mind around because we like things to happen in our time, in our way, in the way we want it to happen, right?
We dictate a lot of things. We dictate our schedule. We dictate our vacations.
We can dictate a lot of things in our life. And yet in the situations and circumstances of our life, we can't control everything.
And God says that as long as you arrive at where I have told you to be at, it matters more than the ease of life that we try to go through.
If you're like me, you like the easy things of life, right? You like when a car messes up and all you have to do is change a spark plug. That's an easy fix, right?
You don't like when you take your car to the mechanic and they come out and say, Mr. Seyfried, you need a new transmission, you need a new motor. What?
I thought maybe it was just a transmission. I thought maybe it was just a spark plug or an oil change.
We don't like the difficulties. We like the easiness of life. That's how we have been programmed, right? We have these easiness.
And sometimes God says that life is not going to be easy. But yet I'm going to bring you to the place that I have determined for you to be at. I have this, they're talking about building the train rail from Charlotte to Georgia.
There are times where I go down there, I'll be driving down to Georgia in a couple of weeks. And my dad got on the train and went from Charlotte to Raleigh. And he got there and he's like, dude, you got to get on these trains. They're awesome.
And one thing that I've often learned when we study trains as a kid, I love trains, is that trains will go to their destination. But in order to get their destination, they've got to make multiple stops about the way.
They've got to stop here. They've got to stop there. It's not like getting in a car where you can just go or get in a plane where you just take off and you're there in a matter of minutes and hours, right? Trains take longer to get there.
Our life is like a train and our life is going on this track that God has ordained for us. And there are stops along the way that we necessarily not agree with. Why can't we just avoid this stop? Stop conductor. Can you just skip this next stop?
No, we've got to stop here. There's someone that's trying to get on.
These stops in our life are what God has ordained for us to stop and reevaluate and say, God, help me to work in this life. Help me to figure out what is in this moment of my life because I am in this train.
I'm on my track. I'm going down my journey. But who is around me on this journey that I can impact?
I'm going to reach the destination that God has called for me. I may have to take a detour.
Or the conductor may came on and say, hey, the train track is out up here and we're going to have to take a detour. You're going to be an hour late to your destination. And you're like, I don't like this.
But what is on this detour that I can see? And how can I begin to reach the people that are in that area of that destination? As Terry comes and begins to close us down today as he plays, do you trust God with the process that you're on? We're all on a journey.
We're all on a process. Are we trusting God that he is taking this process and he is ordaining each and every stop, each and every moment of, even when the train speeds up and goes faster than what we want?
Are we trusting that God is in that process? Or are we only trusting in the destination that's eventually going to happen, right?
The destination is heaven if you believe in Jesus. If you believe that he came into this world and died for our sins. We're one getting to stand before God and say, thank you for your blood. Thank you for your son.
Thank you for bringing your son in this world so that I can have salvation. That's the destination for every believer.
We're on this train of this life and we begin to ask ourselves, are we trusting God in each and every step of the way? And are you willing to arrive the way God wants you to arrive?
Paul, if you were to ask Paul, I guarantee you, Paul would not have said, this are the 17 things that I want in my life.
I want to make sure I'm shipwrecked a couple of times.
I want to make sure that I'm beaten to death at least a couple of times, not just once, a couple of times. I want to make sure that I'm in front of a trial multiple times where my faith is put on trial.
I want to make sure that one day I am on a beach side and a viper jumps out of the fire and latches onto my hand and I get snake bit. And I hope that happens one day.
Paul would not have done that, but he's willing to trust the Lord as he's going through this life. Are you willing to trust the Lord the same way in your life? The storm didn't stop Paul.
The storm only motivated Paul to continue on. He carried him to Rome and God was sovereign when he warned the ignored.
God's Sovereignty in Difficulties
He warned the ignored that this was going to happen and yet they didn't trust him. God was sovereign when all hope was lost. God was sovereign when obedience was required and God was sovereign when the ship broke apart.
I read this final question this week and it challenged me more this week than probably any other question I had read in my study. It was this, and I'm going to close with this question. If God kept his word, if God saved lives,
if God advanced the gospel and advanced the kingdom and God strengthened the faith of Paul and those who are around him, was the storm really the enemy?
Was the storm really the bad part here or was the storm what God used to wake people up? And I want to ask you in your own personal reflection, are the storms that you're going through the enemy
or are they what God is using to bring us and to bring him into his will and to bring us into what God has ordained for our lives?
Oftentimes, if you're like me, we look at the storms and the difficulties and the distractions or the detours of life and we say, God, that must be the devil. The devil's working in my life. The devil's working in trying to ruin my family. But maybe it's God trying to get our attention.
And maybe it's God trying to get the attention of those that are around us to turn their eyes to Jesus as Terry's playing. Turn your eyes to Jesus this morning so that in everything we do, we can trust in him.
Father, we love you this morning. We thank you for what you've done. Lord, help us not to look at the storms often as difficulties.
Lord, they're difficult. We know that. Help us to look at these storms of life and to know that you're still in control. Lord, you are allowing the storms to happen.
Lord, my mind is going to the storm that the disciples were on in the sea when Jesus is walking on water and they don't know what's going on. And yet Jesus in the middle of the storm is walking on the water because the storm didn't affect him.
God, help us to have our faith in the one that the storm doesn't affect. Help us have our faith in you and everything that we do. We love you. In your name we pray. Amen.
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