God is more than a Crisis Manager

In some season of your life, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Supposedly the phrase dates back to early Greece where Hippocrates, one of the most famous worldly healers in history, used it to describe methods of healing when traditional routes had failed.

When I think of my faith journey, I think of the phrase having a different meaning. It seems to me that during my most stressful or disjointed periods, I tended to focus more on the extreme devotion to my faith. Instead of making my faith a continual high-point of my life, I would wait until I was at the end of my rope to seek God.

I don’t believe I’m unique in that regard. I believe that many of us seek God when the times are at their worst. We’re way more open to asking for help from God after we’ve exhausted all the normal avenues we know and understand. God for many of us is the last resort. He’s the desperate measure we’ve been avoiding rather than the first counselor we call on.

In the past two years, I’ve seen my relationship with God morph into something entirely different than it was in my mid-to-late-20s. With the help of my wife, and the encouragement of a new church family, I’ve begun to think about God as a first resort rather than a last resort. I’ve begun to thank God much more than ever before, because I’m asking more of God than ever before. And I’m finding out that God is faithful to the person that seeks him first, and he still performs miracles even today.

It’s funny how easy it is to minimize the importance of God in your daily routine. Often with a simple statement like, “Oh that’s not a big enough problem to pray about,” you’ve immediately taken the issue out of God’s hands and put it in your own. Sometimes that works out fine. You solve daily problems in your job, or your house, or your own life quite adeptly. In fact, many people trust themselves so much in the day-to-day management of their own lives that they rarely ask God for anything except, “The Big Stuff.”

The Big Stuff is all those problems we know for a fact are completely outside our own control. We leave those items for sick friends and family, natural disasters, or maybe your favorite sports team winning. But that’s not really all true. Many more things are outside of our control, even if we’re trying to control them. Many of us make multiple contingency plans because we believe we can control the outcome of any situation. We try to control our image on our social media accounts. We try to control our health, or our fitness. In many ways we live under the mistaken illusion that we’re in control of our lives.

Then something happens. A loss. A mistake. A tragedy. An unexpected event or series of events shakes the foundations of that illusion of control, and suddenly we’re looking for answers. Why did this happen? What can I do to fix it? What if I don’t even actually know what went wrong? Why me?

Those questions can send us running into the hands of an all-powerful and all-knowing God. Like the Prodigal Son, we return from our prideful lives with our heads bowed in supplication looking for God to fix whatever went wrong. It seems selfish doesn’t it? And in many cases the Devil would convince you that you’re not worthy of such return to God, which is one of his many lies. Make no mistake, God would rather you come running to him, than never come to him at all.

But you’ll notice something as you develop in your relationship with God beyond simply using him as a crisis manager. God becomes more than that. Through the Holy Spirit and your covenant with Jesus Christ, God becomes your trusted advisor, your constant companion, your encourager, and your loving friend.

The idea that the creator of the entire universe actually wants to be your friend is something that gets lost on many Christians including my earlier self. In John 15 we get explicit messages from Jesus about how to be a friend of God:

¹² “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ No longer do I call you servants,^[a] for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

When we follow what God commands, we are his friends. When we listen to what the Master is saying, and know what he is doing, we are friends of God, not just servants. We are meant to love one another with the same love that God has for all of us, and that means not just those we’re close to but those that can drive us crazy at times.

I found peace in the crazy times by focusing on God as a friend who holds me in the palm of his hand. It’s not easy and there are times where I wander away and seem to get lost. But it’s much easier to return when you remember that God is in control of everything, and you’re not. When you can clear the mental hurdle that you must manage everything to make it better, and instead put all your issues in God’s hands, you can then truly see and witness the wonder of God’s ability to love, heal, and work miracles.

Then, once you witness that miracle, share your testimony. Don’t just accept the things God does for you and do nothing. Praise him and tell others! Proclaim his greatness! It’s easy to ask and then receive, but forget to give God the glory. Our true purpose on this earth is to glorify God. These things he does for you aren’t just for you, they are for God to show his power and glory throughout the earth.

Be sure to share every story, even if they seem small. As an example, yesterday my wife and I prayed for a friend whose son was running a 104 degree fever, and it looked like he was also going to owe $7000 to fix his AC right at the beginning of summer. We prayed that the fever would leave the child and that God would provide for him a much lower cost to fix his AC, or the money to come to him so that his debt wouldn’t be increased.

Today he came in and told me that his son’s fever left last night, and that another repairman came out to look at the AC and fixed it for $180 instead of $7000. That’s an amazing testimony and I thanked God on the spot. It’s just one case, but you begin to see them daily if you’re willing to ask God for help in all things. 

Try it yourself and watch your life and your faith completely change.

Matthew 14: Jesus Walks on Water

Jesus just got some terrible news. His friend John the Baptist was beheaded by the tyrannical Herod the Tetrarch, and Jesus needed a place to escape the masses to grieve. However, upon taking a boat across the lake away from all the people, they simply chased Jesus and surrounded him on the far side of the lake.

Max Lucado wrote an entire book on this one chapter of the Bible, so if you'd really like to dig into the details of these events, it's a perfect book to read called, "In the Eye of the Storm." When I read it I was going through some tough times in my life, after getting some really bad news about my job. It looked like the company might go out of business due to some bad moves made by prior executives. I was under immense pressure to solve those issues and work with the bankers to find common ground that would keep our business alive.

Going through great pains alone is almost impossible for most human beings. We can withdraw and hide, trying to get away from the pain and responsibility of our grief. We often forget that in our solitude, God is with us. In fact, solitude and communing with God is often the best solution to massive problems. In my issue it was only when I gave my burden to God in prayer and quiet time that I became fully at peace with the outcomes of my business. Whatever happened, God was going to use it for good, even if that meant the business had to close. Fortunately for me, God chose to keep the business open and running.

Even Jesus chose to withdraw several times in this very chapter, choosing to commune with God rather than trying to deal with the day to day issues of the people. But on this day, Jesus could not escape the mob. They were desperate for healing and followed him as he tried to find solitude. Many of us would have simply turned them away, told them to go home, and used the excuse of our massive problems not to deal with their issues. Jesus didn't do that. Instead he showed them mercy. He healed them for hours, and then had the disciples feed them with a miracle of turning five loaves of bread and two fish into a meal that fed 5,000 souls.

I want to focus on the one set of verses near the end which describes what Jesus did after they fed the 5,000 people.

²² Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd.  
²³ After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone,  
²⁴ and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
²⁵ Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.  
²⁶ When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
²⁷ But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
²⁸ “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
²⁹ “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.  
³⁰ But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
³¹ Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

 Notice that the first verse says "Immediately" right to start. Jesus was totally exhausted and done with crowds for the day. He was done. I'm sure you know the feeling when you're completely exhausted at a major party or event, and all you can think of is getting in the car and getting out of there as fast as possible. That was Jesus on this day. He was a man like all of us, and subject to the same frustrations and needs as we are.

Secondly, Jesus leaves them all to go to the mountains and pray. This is an important lesson for all of us after we get extremely bad news or have had extremely tough days. Jesus did what God wants us to do, and that's to retreat to his side and pray to God. When we remove ourselves from the earthly concerns of work, phones, TV, computers, and other people, we can find a clarity of purpose and refreshing in the presence of the Lord.

Thirdly, the boat has left Jesus behind because there's a storm brewing and they couldn't stay close to shore. Because Jesus is the son of God, he wanted to make a point to the disciples. He wanted to show them how God is not only master of the storm, he's in the storm, he can walk through the storm, and the storm has no effect on him. It's a perfect example of how Jesus emerged from his grief and time with God in a powerful image of refreshed glory.

And lastly, of course the disciples don't fully understand what they see. We're very used to being a people that observe the same things over and over again. We're familiar with routine. When something really outstanding happens, often we're skeptical and question the source. Even Peter questions Jesus and then later doubts as the storm rages.

After all, we've likely been burned before and hate to look stupid or scared. The disciples were no different. They didn't expect Jesus to walk on water, so instead of believing their eyes, they fell back on silly superstitions about ghosts. And then after that Peter fell back on his fears of the raging water. How often today do we hear or see a true miracle of God, but instead we fall back on our silly superstitions or "facts" that make us rationalize the miracle away to circumstance? Miracles are supposed to oppose facts or they wouldn't be miracles at all!

God still wants to be with us, commune with us, and work miracles with us today. The covenant that Jesus made with the disciples is the same covenant the holy spirit completes in us today when we invite Jesus into our hearts. God lives within us, and all the power of God is for us. How easy that is to forget when times are tough? And how easy should it be to remember that we can call upon a wonderful loving God to save us when we're in the middle of our storms?

Remember next time you face the storm to seek God in the quiet places of our life. And don't be surprised when he reaches his had out for you in return.