Telling the Truth for Women

Guest (Male): Where is your faith?

Jill Briscoe: Well, we're going to address that subject right now from Mark's Gospel, Chapter 4. We're going to talk about what happens when we're hit with the storms and squalls of life. How well do we do? Do we meet them with faith and fortitude, or do we meet them with doubt and unbelief?

Now, life is full of many squalls. There are squalls of debt, unemployment, sickness, opposition. Squalls come in our relationships. We get discouraged. We get squalls of fear drowning us, swamping us, squalls of sorrow, misunderstanding, failure.

I don't know about you, but I have a learning disability in this regard. Even though I've been a Christian a long, long time, I'm still working on my faith response to trouble when it comes. Storms and squalls are different. A storm you can see it coming. The sky gets darker, and you can batten down the hatches and get a little bit of support from people and say, "I need to get some supplies in, and I need to be ready." You get some warning.

But a squall is something that comes out of nowhere. It's unexpected, unannounced, unacceptable, and unfair, so we think so often. You say, "Why this? Why now? Why here? Where are you, God?" God asks us for a faith response to storms. It's good to ask the text questions and to find out what's happening here. So we're just going to ask: Where was this? When was this? Why was this? And who was this?

That day, when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, it was evening, it was getting dark. Things always seem worse in the dark, don't they? It was after the crowd control, the exhaustion of dealing with people, and crowds are exhausting. If your job was to control those crowds for Jesus and to line up all the sick people and care for all the babies and mothers and all the things that needed doing as Jesus became so popular so quickly, you'd be exhausted.

They were exhausted. You have to look a little bit before and a little bit after to see that squall after squall after squall, a line of squalls was in the plan of God for the disciples. Squalls are in the plan of God. We live in a period called life after the fall with a sinful nature.

Jesus deliberately prayed in the upper room in John 17, "Leave them here, Lord. Leave them here. Can't come home yet out of the squalls. No squalls in heaven, not yet. But keep them from the evil one. Keep them from doubt. Keep them from drowning in unbelief. Keep them from the evil one because the evil one, the devil, wants to take us down. He wants to drown us. He wants to swamp us with the things that happen in life, the events that bring with them squalls of fear, panic, and anxiety so that you are so emotionally strung up you can hardly breathe."

That's what happens when you're hit broadside, and you say, "Where was that from? Everything was fine." Suddenly, there is this event that's happened in your life. The disciples had been under prolonged stress. They'd only just begun. Jesus had picked his team. You know how neat it is when you get picked and how horrible it is when you don't, or you get unpicked and moved off a team and somebody else gets your place. That's hard.

Twelve ordinary men—fishermen, tax collectors, ordinary people—had been picked for Jesus' team. They were up about that. As the kids say, they were pumped about that. But around the corner of that choosing, as Jesus picked those twelve men to be his helpers and his disciples and his apostles, came the first squall.

As Jesus began his ministry and the crowds began to hear that if they had somebody dying of some terrible disease or they had somebody that was a leper living outside the city walls and they could get their loved one close to this holy man, he might get healed, you can imagine what happened.

The Pharisees heard about it, and the Pharisees' team from Jerusalem came to face off with Jesus' team. When they watched and saw what was happening, even the miracles, they said, "He's possessed. He's doing this by the power of Satan." That was a terrible thing for the disciples. These were their leaders. These were the big boys from Jerusalem. They didn't think that following Jesus was going to mean that they'd be in trouble with the big boys.

Now they're calling Jesus Satan, the Great Satan. It didn't feel good. They began to think that following Jesus isn't all fun and games. It isn't going to be a garden of roses. So behind them, they had that experience, and then on the heels of that, they didn't have time to eat, it says. They didn't have time to sleep. They didn't have time to do anything. They were hungry, and they were tired.

On the heels of that, Jesus' mother, Mary, and his brothers came and said, "You better come home, Jesus. We heard about what you're doing to yourself. No time to eat, no time to look after yourself." They tried to take him home, it says, by force and put him in constraints. That's what you do for mad people. You tie them up and take them home until they're well again. "He's unbalanced," they said.

Suddenly the disciples are saying, "Wait a minute. Our families aren't understanding." All of them had left perhaps children. Probably they were all married with wives and children. Here their families began to object to the fact that they were with Jesus. That's a squall.

Some of the kids have told me that once they put their trust in Christ and tried to share it with their wonderful family, their family didn't really understand. They tried to take them back by force, as it were, and say, "This isn't the way you grew up. This isn't what we taught you." That's a squall.

We have to face these things as they come in life. Not only were the squalls behind them, there were squalls ahead of them. Of course, they didn't know that. I've come to Christ asking questions, and I still do it. But one of my questions is, did we know forwards before the fall? We know backwards, don't we? We all know the past, but none of us know the future.

My question is this, which is unanswerable because the scripture doesn't say it: Did we know forwards? And did in grace God say, "I'd better cut that off from them now they've fallen. How could they live if they knew what was ahead?" I don't know. I have a personal theory that we did know forwards because sometimes some people have little glimpses of the forward things. Maybe that's why.

Enough to say that Jesus knew. Jesus knew around the corner of this event, this squall, there was a madman waiting, possessed by legions of demons. The disciples would be in Gentile pig-eating country in a culture—that's a storm—going into another culture, trying to adjust, trying to understand, trying to deal with your prejudices. They would be met by a madman chained in a graveyard who would snap chains by the power of the devil.

They would come face to face with evil as they had never known it. That's a squall. If you read a little further on, you'll see squall after squall after squall. In the middle, there were miracles, but there were squalls. You know something? That's life.

You can waste the energy you need to deal with the present squall by praying, "Don't let there be another squall," which is what most of us spend our time and energy in prayer doing. That's a waste of your time and energy because that's life. Jesus has said, "In the world, you will have squalls. In the world, you will have troubles. But be of good cheer, I've overcome the world."

So where was this? It was in a familiar place. They were feeling sort of homesick. Peter was back on his beloved lake. That was good. But he knew that through the storm, even though it was dark, his little house was waiting and maybe his children. He'd been used to going fishing and going home at night and having their little arms round his neck and his wife and his family gather round.

Now they were so near and yet so far, and they couldn't go home. Homesickness is a squall. All sorts of squalls in life. I was thinking about the kids when their boyfriend drops them and goes out with their best friend. That's a squall. When they don't get picked for the team, when they fail the exam, or when their parents stop loving each other, that's a squall.

We big people, the devil doesn't get to us when we've lost weight, when we've had a good night's sleep, or when we're up on our Bible reading and we've prayed up. He waits until we're exhausted, fit to be tied, under huge duress, and in a job change, which is where they were with all the stress that's involved. He says, "Aha, now," and he kicks us when we're down.

So when was this? It was at the start of their relationship with Jesus. It was after a period of intense stress in a familiar place. It was feeling inadequate, homesick, and panicked. It was late in the evening. It was getting dark and would be darker. But what is this? A very dangerous situation, a grave situation if you wish. Excuse the pun.

They came to Jesus and they said, "Don't you care? We're drowning." Listen to that. It wasn't that they didn't believe he was there. They could see him sleeping on a pillow. That's what blew them away. What's he doing sleeping on a pillow? Doesn't he know we're in trouble? Doesn't he know we're petrified? Doesn't he know we're frightened? Doesn't he know we're in danger? Doesn't he care?

It isn't that people don't believe he isn't there. It's that they don't believe he cares. "If he doesn't stop the storm, he doesn't care," our reasoning goes. "If he cared, he'd get up and stop the storm." So what's he doing sleeping on a pillow? I have found as the squalls hit my life and I'm swamped and I'm drowning, that I have to be very careful and disciplined with what I am thinking about God at that point.

I have to affirm on my knees, "I know you're aware and I know you care." Otherwise, I might be like the disciples and say, "Don't you care?" The theory is if he stopped the storm, I'd know he cared, and if he doesn't stop the storm, he doesn't care. That is not true.

What is this? It's a test. It's only a test. It's the sudden, unexpected, unannounced, unexplained, unfair "not here, not now, not this" that hits us from the side. It's a furious squall, and it is carried by an event. In this case, it was a natural event. It was a wind. It was a squall on a lake that was typical of Galilee. It came out of nowhere.

Sometimes people experience a flood or an earthquake or a natural disaster. Along with that comes the squall of fear and apprehension of anger at God. "Why did he let this hit my house? Doesn't he care? Doesn't he know I love him? Doesn't he know I serve him? So why did the tornado jump over that man's house and hit mine?"

It reminds me of Job. I wrote a book about Job once called *Out of the Storm and into His Arms*. In the first chapter of Job, he has a day of squalls. It had to be a Monday. That's what the book was called originally because it all happened on a day. What happened? He lost his wealth. He lost his health in the next chapter. He lost his sheep and his goats and his servants who were murdered by Sabeans, cattle thieves.

Then he lost his ten children. He lost his goats and his sheep and his camels because thieves stole them. That he could understand for the sinfulness of man does that stuff. He lost his servants to the sword because the gorilla people came and killed them all and carried off his wealth. That he could understand. In our fallenness, people do terrible things to each other. Tell me about it. Tell me what human beings are capable of doing to human beings.

That's understandable, but listen, his ten kids were in a house having a party. How did they die? An act of God. A tornado came out of the wilderness, collapsed the house, and they were all killed. That's the dilemma of Job. That's what the book's all about: this incoherent suffering that hit him. All his children gone, not by a cruel, evil man but by an act of God.

"Don't you care? Are you there?" he did ask that as well. It isn't fair. All those things happened to Job, and he was nearly swamped. He was drowning. His faith was drowning. But at the end of those squalls and at the end of his experience, he said, "You know something? I heard all about God, but now I see him and know him, and know him in a way I never knew him before. And my faith is strengthened."

So why is this? To strengthen our faith. Don't you hate that? I hate that. Something happens and you know and people come up to me and say, "You're going to write about this." "I don't want to write about it," I say, "I just want it to stop." "You're going to speak about this." "I don't want to speak about it. I just want the storm to stop."

But I know that what I learn can be a help to others. For the comfort that I receive, as Corinthians says, is intended to comfort others. You notice in this passage that there were also other little boats with them. When Jesus calmed the storm and said, "Stop it," and it stopped, it was calm for all the other people around in the other little boats.

That's what's intended. What happens in our vessel, in our boat, as Jesus calms us down and helps us accept the unacceptable sometimes and says, "Now you respond rightly to me, where is your faith?" As we tremblingly say, "Help thou mine unbelief," and try to trust him, then the other little boats are the recipients of the blessing that we are receiving from God.

So why does it happen? To strengthen our faith certainly. James tells us that. Unbelievers cannot cope with the whole intellectual exercise of figuring out suffering. It makes absolutely no sense to them. I have talked to people that do not believe in Christ, and suffering in the world makes no sense to the unbeliever. But to the believer, as James says, we understand a little tiny bit of the "why" of suffering.

We understand creation was creation and good, and then the fall came and it affected everything. It affected the creation. It affected the creatures. It affected the people that should love God so that they hate God. We understand the theology of it. We also understand, as James says, that when little troubles or squalls come knocking at our door, we are to accept them as friends and not resist them as enemies.

For the Christian, there's a "because." This is going to help us endure. What we learn in one squall will help us for the next if we'd quit using all our prayer time for "Don't let there be another squall. Don't let my children ever have a squall. Don't let them ever suffer." If we could instead say, "Help us to learn the building blocks of faith," then what we learn in this squall is going to make us strong for that one.

God can even use the storm to prepare us and bless us and save us, in a sense, from the next one. We have many grandchildren, and one of them, Drew, who is our daughter's first child and lives in Chicago, was starting school years ago. He called me up and he said, "Nana, I'm really scared about going to school. Would you pray that nothing happens to me tomorrow? I start school, big school, and I'm really nervous."

I said I'd love to. So I prayed a typical Nana prayer: "Lord, keep Drew safe and make him have a lovely day at school and give him friends. Thank you, Jesus." Put the phone down. So Drew goes to school first day. He's very nervous. He's standing in this long line of all these children. He only knows a couple of them from the neighborhood. There's a very strange person who's going to be his teacher at the front with a little bell.

Suddenly, a bee from a nest that hadn't been attended to stings him. Now, what Drew didn't know and what we didn't know is he is highly allergic to bee stings. Because it was his first day at school, he didn't like to step out of the line and say, "I've been stung," even though he was beginning to feel really sick. He just stood there until he collapsed on the floor.

By the time the teacher walked down the row and found him, he looked like the elephant man and he couldn't breathe. She picked him up and with another teacher ran across and up the street where Oak Park Hospital happened, in the grace of God, to be. He was all right. He was helped.

About a month later, he came to stay. All the cousins were together, and David and Drew have sort of grown up together. They're the same age, and they took the canoe on this little fishing lake we have at the back of us. Off they went and they got tangled up among the reeds at the end of the lake. We were inside and we were cooking a barbecue and everything. We didn't even notice they were lost until everybody had to go out and look for them.

Where he had got was literally bee heaven. There was nothing but ants' nests and bee nests and all of these things. When Drew walked in after we eventually found them and rescued them, he simply said to me, "Nana, if the bee hadn't stung me then and the bee had stung me now, I'd be dead." Very discerning.

I was saying when I heard from my grandson, actually I didn't know what to say to him when he rang me up: "Nana, I got stung by a bee and swelled up and went to hospital and you prayed nothing would happen to me." I had to answer that. My immediate response in hearing from my daughter was, "Lord, I'm offended. That was your bee did that." It's his storm. It's his bee. But what he learned from that helped him.