How's That Working Out For You?

Text: Mark 4:35-41
Focus: Trusting God
Function: To help people rely on God instead of themselves.
Form: Story Telling

Intro:

In this story, the great power of the Lord is evident as Jesus calms a storm.

Storms in life are inevitable.

The worse thing about the storm is that we have no control. Nature works beyond our ability to stop it.

(SHOW) Life is out of control but… …Jesus is in Control!

In this story, it was obvious to the apostles that their lives were in peril.
When our lives are in peril, and we can see the danger, we oftentimes think about how much we need the Lord.

But we often forget that we need Him all the time.

We are not aware of how much he cares for us.
I spent my week of vacation with my son and his wife. They just bought their first home, and decided to get a puppy the same week.

They got a tenacious German-shepherd pup.

Dogs have this instinct to bring down prey much larger than them by biting the prey’s Achilles tendon, crippling it and then going for the throat.

This puppy, acting on instinct, was always under our feet trying to bring us down. I can’t tell you how funny that was, but also, the dog, in its naiveté got stepped on several times.

One time, Kathy said, it cried quite a while after Kathy stepped on it.

Sooner or later, it is going to learn.

And since it was too small to be kept in the fence, they tied it up in the backyard. They have a fish pond, with rocks around it. The leash gets tangled in the rocks and the dog gets stuck in the water and in its innocence, it could easily drown.

It needs constant attention.

It needed its master to protect it from harm and most the time, it didn’t even know when it was in trouble.

We have this same relationship with God.

That is why Jesus, in the Lord ’s Prayer said: deliver us from the evil one.
(SHOW) We need Jesus all the time, not just during the times of trouble.

How do we act toward Him in times of trouble?

I think it is very important in our relationship with God to be honest with Him.

When we are happy and at peace, we praise and worship Him.

What happens when we are upset, or bothered about the way the direction of our life is going?

And why do we have problems?

Most often, the problems are problems we have created for ourselves, and it isn’t fair to God to blame Him.

But sometimes, on top of the problems we created for ourselves, circumstances just go all the way wrong and you are thinking, Lord just give me a break!

In this story, the problem the disciples were facing had nothing to do with something they did themselves.

God wanted to teach them He could be trusted. And to do that, He allowed them to be at great risk.

As I said, those who are willing to serve Him don’t do so from the comfort of their living rooms giving money to others to do the work. Serving God can involve genuine risk.

And when they were in trouble, they got upset with God.

I have found this in prayer, it is important to be honest with God about what we are feeling. Some people are afraid to do that because they think it might be irreverent. Just as a child addresses a parent, it should be respectful, but God knows better how we are feeling and knows if we are lying to either Him or ourselves.

So the disciples are angry with the Lord for sleeping in the midst of this storm.

Now think about it, they should have taken their clue about their safety from the way that Jesus wasn’t concerned about the storm.

But instead, they allowed fear to dominate their thinking.

Healthy fear is important in order to protect us from real danger. I wish that puppy feared getting stepped on more than its instinct to bite my ankle. It had sharp teeth!

But this fear is the kind of fear that denies the possibility of faith and what God can do.

So, what did the disciples do when the boat was sinking?

What we all would have done, they started bailing out the boat.

And here they are, more and more water is pouring into the boat and they keep bailing harder and harder.

Let me break down the nature of a crisis. The problem causes a certain reaction. Although it doesn’t solve the problem, they keep trying harder at what doesn’t work.

I counseled one couple several years ago, she smoked and he drank. They both said, “as long as the other either drinks or smokes, I am going to keep up my behavior.”

So, in order to “fix” their marriage, he was destroying his liver, she was destroying her lungs.

I wanted to ask them: “How’s that working out for you?”

Back to the disciples: One could commend them for doing something.

But what they did wasn’t the right thing.

Isn’t that the way we live our own lives?

(SHOW) We keep facing the same problem, time and time again and we keep reacting the same way, even though it doesn’t work.

They needed to change their action. At this time, it meant they needed to wake up the Lord and ask Him for help.

They needed to place their lives into the care and protection of God.

(SHOW) If you keep having the same problem, and your solution doesn’t work, it is time to consider a different response… …It is time to call on the Lord for help!

So here they are bailing out the boat, and they are upset that Jesus isn’t bailing with them.
Imagine their thinking: “Okay, we got 12 people bailing and that isn’t working, maybe if we add a 13th person it’ll be enough!”

It didn’t occur to them that maybe Jesus had a better plan.

(SHOW) Jesus has a better plan.

In the boat, Jesus was asleep, because no matter how it looked, He was in control

(SHOW) No matter how it looks, Jesus is in control.

Go back to Abraham for a minute.

God told him that he would have descendants as numerous as the sands on the seashore.

And yet, his wife was barren.
So, he did his own thing, took on a second wife because he figured God needed help with God’s promises.

He invested his hope and future in that boy and when that boy was 12 years old, God told him that another child was coming, through his wife Sarah.
Sarah was 89 years old, had been through the change and it would take a miracle for him to get her pregnant.

But God, when we are in line with His plans, is the God of miracles.

Sure enough, Isaac was born.

13 years after that, God told him to sacrifice Isaac on the altar.

By this time, Abraham had finally learned the lesson of faith that nothing is impossible for God.

Even if Isaac was dead, he knew God could give him grandchildren through Isaac.

Death is a pretty absolute thing, but his hope was in the genuine and real power of God.

Abraham rested in God, not in the circumstances.

(SHOW) Rest in God, not the circumstances.

God may be calling us to do something different.
A pastor friend of mine was having marriage difficulties.

He went to a marriage retreat where the speaker told them, if what you are doing isn’t working, then try doing something different.

For the Seinfeld fans, it was kind of like “opposite George.”

There was a particular event that recurred a few times in their marriage that was pretty drastic. It was big enough to end most marriages.

And this friend of mine decided to do something different. When this event occurred, instead of reacting himself in anger, he choose to embrace her and give her unconditional love.

And it worked! She melted, repented and now they are have a strong marriage with a story to tell about the power of unconditional love.
Now, it doesn’t’ always work because God doesn’t’ violate the free will of anyone.

So why mention it? The Pastor’s choice to be obedient to Christ no matter what she did opened the door for the work of the Holy Spirit in her and she choose to obey God.

He told us this: “as long has he kept reacting the same way, he was getting nowhere.”

The disciples kept bailing the boat and wanted Jesus to bail with them instead of looking for another solution.

(SHOW) If you are doing something in your own strength and it isn’t working out for you, will doing it harder make it work out?

It is the same in the Church as it is in life.

Did you hear about the 3 bear hunters?
• They were flown into a remote lake in Alaska for a week of hunting.
• They each bagged a bear.
• The pilot returned to take them out and they wanted to take their bears with them.
• There wasn’t room, or lift enough on the plane but they convinced the pilot to let them tie the bears to the wings.
• They told the pilot they did it the year before by going to a certain spot on the lake the provided the longest stretch of water for the plane to build up speed.
• And they justified it by telling him that the year before there were 4 of them instead of 3.
• They were traveling across the lake and got a little lift, just enough to clear the trees on the edge of the lake, but after 200 yards, they hit some taller trees and crashed into the woods.
• The pilot was furious and started yelling at them.
• And they said, “well, we got 100 yards farther than last year.”

You want to ask those guys, “How’s that working out for you?”

Why keep doing what doesn’t work?

I know that changing the way we do things is unsettling. The older I get, the more I hate change. I hate having things out of control. My reaction more often is: “I like it just the way it was, thank you.”

But the Lord was showing the disciples a new way, and He was inviting them to walk with Him in new ways.

(SHOW) God is always making things new for us… … and He is always protecting us.

These battles we face are spiritual, not physical.

I don’t know what it means exactly that when Jesus did wake up, He rebuked the winds and seas.

It is the same word used when He talked of rebuking Satan Himself.

Brothers and sisters, we are not without an enemy to our souls.

Satan will do everything he can to bring us down and destroy us.

We need to resist him just as Jesus did.

He keeps us in bondage to bitterness, resentment, revengefulness, gossip, unforgiveness and shame.

What would happen if we let those things go?

What would happen, if instead of reacting with bitterness, pettiness, gossip and unforgiveness we choose to love and forgive?

Those things don’t work, but sometimes we keep doing it harder and harder, don’t we?

Now I want to end with a story about how it is a spiritual battle and how if we choose to be obedient to Christ, regardless of the other person, we open the door for God to move on our behalf.

I got permission from one of my former deacons to tell you this story.

He was raised as a plain-dressed Mennonite. They weren’t horse and buggy, but they were black-bumper Mennonites.

He married a Methodist. When he married her, his own brother condemned him for marrying outside the faith. His brother called him a sinner for doing that.

He told me he quit loving his brother and carried terrible bitterness toward him for over 12 years.

Then, we had a ceremony at the church, where we asked people to write the name of someone they were carrying unforgiveness for on a slip of paper and nail it to the cross as a symbol of giving it up.

He forgave his brother and wouldn’t you know it? Two weeks later, after 12 years his brother came to him and asked for his forgiveness.

He knew that the Holy Spirit worked on his behalf after he forgave his brother.

(SHOW) When we choose to do things God’s way, we open up the possibility for a miracle to happen.

If we refuse to do it God’s way, then we are stuck bailing out the boat ourselves.

And it is spiritual warfare we are fighting. Satan wants you bound in unforgiveness, pettiness, bitterness and revenge.

Satan wants you bound by fear, or bound by tradition so much that you refuse to trust God to build a new future for you.

And if you feel bound that way, it is time to let it go and let God quiet the storm. It is time to surrender control back to Him.

CONCL:

Will you come to Jesus to be free?