What To Do When You Are Beaten By the Waves

Mike Hosey, An Elder

If you’ve ever done a serious study of Job, you know that he was inundated by wave after wave of troubles.  He lost his children, he lost his wealth, and he was inflicted with a painful disease. In the midst of these waves, his wife told him to curse God and die. Even his friends became a wave of anxiety and trouble as they pummeled him with their well-meaning – but wrong – opinions that he was somehow responsible for the rough seas in which he found himself. These waves were rocked by Satan (Job 1:6-12). His intent was to show that Job was not loyal to God.  He was trying to push Job off course.  And he probably came close a number of times.

But Job was able to withstand wave, after wave.  And in the end he triumphed over Satan because he deliberately, intentionally, on purpose refused to see God as anything but good and in charge.  In that moment when his wife told him to curse God and die (Job 2:9-10), he replied, “Shall we receive good from God and not Evil.”  In that statement, he recognized both the control of God, and God’s right to allow any circumstance in the universe. His faith in the goodness of God kept him from the sin of charging God with any wrong.  Job succeeded in withstanding the waves where Peter, who had actually walked with Jesus, failed (Matthew 14:22-23).

In the Peter story, the disciples are in a boat on the sea being beaten by wave after wave, and they observe Jesus walking toward them on the water.  Peter, in his enthusiasm steps out of the boat and begins to walk toward Jesus. But as soon as he notices the wind, he begins to sink.  Jesus famously lifts him out of the water and asks him why he doubted.  Peter had lost sight of the power of God, as well as the decisive control of God.  Job, who had never physically walked with God, and could not even see God, recognized that God was both good, and in control of everything, even his torment. Peter, miraculously walking on water just a few feet from the very God he had lived with face to face for quite some time, forgot that fact.  He saw the wind and the waves instead of the God who loved him.

When a boat is in the dark night of the storm, and is being tossed by the waves, it must keep itself pointed at the light house.  When you are in the midst of those waves, always remember, like Job did, that God has you covered, and that he has a reason, even if you don’t understand it.   

Three Ways to look at "The Way."

Mike Hosey an Elder

Jesus uses words and metaphors with great mastery! Consider how he told his disciples that he was “the way” (Matthew 14:5-7). In using that particular word he opened up a lot of different meanings to explore. Like God himself, the depths of the words of Jesus are very, very deep.  So what did he mean when he said he was “the way?”

1) He meant that he was the only way:  In that passage, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them, and that he will take them there.  Thomas asks him how they can get to that place since they don’t know the way.  Jesus explains that HE IS the way, and that no one gets to that place unless they go through him. The standard translation for the Greek word, “way,” is a road, a path, or a journey.  Because he said “the” way, and not “a” way, he limited himself as the only path. It’s very exclusionary language.

2) He probably meant for us to follow his example:  The word “way” has a metaphorical meaning in addition to its standard literal meaning. Metaphorically, it means “a course of conduct.”  For instance, the way one should behave oneself. If you walk in the way of Jesus, it means that you live the kind of life that he lived.  Ultimately, it means you submit to the will of God – just like Jesus did – and you live a sacrificial life with Jesus as your example. If you live the way a thug lives, you will live a violent, crime ridden life. If you live the way Jesus lived, you will live a life marked by sacrifice, love, communion with God, and communion with people.

By Matthias Via Wikimedia Commons

3) He might mean that he is a journey:  If you ever have a chance to go on a real journey, you will find that you are a different person at the end of the journey, than you were at the beginning of the journey.  When you walk the path of Jesus, that is when you follow his example, live a life of ministry to others, you will be changed by the work you do, the sites you see, the battles you win (and lose), and the many experiences along the way.  This journey of Jesus is part of the way that you are made into a new creature, and part of the way that your old, sinful self dies.

Jesus is not a Zombie Maker!

Mike Hosey, An Elder

We tend to think of the resurrection as an event that happens in the future.  Most of us think of it as something distant – something that is far away in time and in space.  In our minds it is something that happens long after we have already died.  We tend to think of it simply as a dead body being brought back to life.  In fact, it’s that idea of the simple restoration of a dead body that has led many atheists to make fun of the idea of Jesus’ resurrection. It is all the rage now for atheists to depict Jesus as a zombie, or make jokes about a “zombie Easter!"

In reality, Jesus rose from the dead to prove that he had authority to do something miraculous. He wanted to prove that he could change us. Resurrection for people who follow Christ is something so much different than a dead body being reanimated. Resurrection is the process of bringing to life the parts of us that have died to sin. These resurrected parts of us are the true parts of us – the way that God meant for us to be. Encapsulated in that process, is the resurrection of our true physical bodies as well.

Humanity, as it was meant to be, died, and our bodies were ruined with that death, and followed in a death of their own, when sin entered the world through Adam.  But when we submit to Jesus, he does not simply raise an old dead body.  He restores our spirits and gives us a new heart! This is something he promised to the Israelites (Ezekiel 36:26-27), and something that he promises to us as well (2 Corinthians 5:17)! Notice in that 2 Corinthians 5:17 verse that when we are in Christ, we ARE a NEW creation!  It is present tense! And it's not the restoration of the old rotting corpse that we once occupied. It's a NEW body we are given. Ironically, before our resurrection is when we were more like zombies. When we place Jesus at the center of our life, the process of resurrection and restoration begins. The resurrection isn’t a future event, it’s a NOW event that is ongoing.  A process begins the moment we recognize Jesus as lord!   And the more we act on that recognition, the faster and more powerful our resurrection becomes.

Jesus told his followers that he was the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). When we put Jesus at our center, he is the source of our resurrection, but he is also the source of a real life of love, and relationship with God.  The way life is meant to be.

Producing Fruit with Rocket Fuel

Mike Hosey, An Elder

When the Saturn V rocket was built in the 1960s to take Americans to the moon, it was the most powerful rocket in the world.  It still holds that record in 2016.  If you are within a few hundred feet of it at blast off, the heat from the exhaust will kill you. And if you are just out of range of that deadly heat, the sound from it alone has the power to melt concrete and will easily kill you. The reason that the nearest unprotected observation points are over 3 miles away, is that if some catastrophic failure causes all the fuel to explode at once, then one Saturn V rocket has the same explosive power as the first atom bombs.  It took that much power for men to escape the gravity of earth and to live life in space. The fuel on that rocket was liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.  At launch time, those fuels are so cold that it causes ice to form on the skin of the rocket.  That same skin expands, contracts and groans from the temperature differences. The whole thing smokes and puffs like your breath on a cold winter day.  When the scientists and engineers who designed it, and the astronauts who flew it, first saw it fueled up, they commonly described it as a living thing.

Saturn V Rocket

But separate that rocket from that fuel, it becomes dead, powerless, and useless – just a hunk of expensive metal.

And that’s the kind of power that Jesus is talking about in John 15:1-8.  It is there that Jesus describes himself as the vine, and charges his followers to stay “in him.”  If they do, he says, they will produce much fruit, but if they don’t they will become brittle, dead branches that must be trimmed and thrown in the fire.  This is because Jesus, like the vine of a fruit bearing plant supplies them with the nutrition -- the fuel -- they need to live a good and God pleasing life.  It takes a great deal of power to escape the pull of the sinful and inferior life of the world.  If you want to escape that world, and produce the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23) then you must stay connected to your source of fuel.

Have You Got a Jesus Gate?

Mike Hosey, An Elder

Gates are everywhere in the world. They're on roads, they're in buildings, they're even in your walls. The electric switch that turns on your light is a gate that regulates the flow of electricity to your appliances. There are even gates in the millions of nerve endings that spiderweb throughout the deepest parts of your body. The gates in those nerve endings let some chemicals freely flow a certain way, and block others from flowing at all.

All these gates exist for the same reason – to keep some things in, or to keep other things out.

Think about the door of your house. That 80 inch by 36 inch portal is the gateway to your home. In fact, you probably keep it locked so that only people who will submit to your authority can enter your house. If someone who is not already a member of your household enters your house through any other “gate” besides the front door, then you have a significant security problem. Imagine, for a moment, that some young man wants to become a part of my family through his relationship with my beautiful daughter, Emily. But instead of coming through my front door, he comes through my daughter's bed room window. It would be safe to assume that such a young man has nefarious intentions – intentions other than a peaceful melding with my family. His entry method is evidence that he plans to steal something that does not belong to him.

Jesus spoke of this in John 10:1-9. Jesus explains that any one who wishes to enter the sheepfold, which in this case is a metaphor for the family of God, must enter through him. And he adds that anyone who enters through some other way is a thief or a robber! What this means on a collective level, is that anyone who tries to meld themselves to the church who has not made Jesus the center of their lives, is someone who is not a shepherd. In fact, this person is someone who is a wolf who wishes to devour the sheep.

But this is also true at an individual level. If anything tries to get into your life that doesn't come through Jesus first, or that is not submitted to Jesus, that thing, or that person, or that whatever, is NOT something that will serve you well. So be sure to check and see if you've got a Jesus gate.