Monday 17 July 2017

THROUGH THE STORMS



I was sitting on the bus to work the other day, and whilst I was people watching at the traffic lights, I thought about how different everybody's lives are. You look at someone and you notice their image and what they look like, but you will never truly understand somebody's life by just looking at them. 

Everybody goes through struggles in their life time, and experiences storms which they think they may not get through. I, like other people, have experienced this and thought that I would never see the light at the end of the tunnel- but I can guarantee that it is there. I never saw it until the day that I found Jesus again, and I decided to instil trust in to God for Him to help me. Although God promises us a joyous life, He also promises us struggles- however He will guide us through them with the ability to gain strength.

Jonah and the Whale
When thinking of going through storms with the help of the Lord, I thought about the story of Jonah and the Whale. In Jonah 1-4, God sent Jonah to Nineveh to preach against it due to it being full of wickedness. Jonah didn't want to go because he knew that Nineveh was against God and he felt under threat if he was to go there. Jonah tried to escape and travel somewhere else using a ship, however there was a great storm. Jonah knew that God would have sent the storm because he did not carry out what God had asked him to do, so Jonah asked God to throw him in to the sea. God did it, but Jonah didn't drown because God sent a large whale to swallow him whole. Jonah was in the stomach of the whale for 3 days, but then he prayed to God and said that he would do what God wanted him to do. Jonah went to Nineveh and spoke of God's word. The people confessed their evil deeds to God, meaning that He didn't destroy Nineveh.

Caterpillar to Butterfly
Another theory that came to mind when thinking about storms was that of a caterpillar to a butterfly. In order for a caterpillar to turn in to a butterfly, it needs to go through the cocooning process. At the end of the time in the cocoon, the caterpillar has to struggle out of it in order to gain strength in their wings and to be exposed to the outside world. If the caterpillar got help and the cocoon was torn apart, then the caterpillar would not have the strength of the wings to hold it through flight. It would not have had to learn how to gain strength if it didn't go through the struggle in the first place.

The moral of this post is to just show how instilling our trust in God through the hard and difficult times in life, allows us to find strength to make us grow and keep us strong. Like I stated earlier in the post, God promises us a joyous life but He also promises us troubles. This doesn't mean that God isn't good... Because He very much is. He sends us storms to teach us how to deal with those situations, and to make sure we are strong enough to face them head-to-head with the power of the Lord. 

Philippians 4:13
"I can do all this through Him who gives me strength."

Isaiah 40:29
"He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak."

Psalm 46:1
"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble."

1 comment: