Jen’s Gem:  Take authority over the storms of life.

This week, my son had two wisdom teeth removed. Less than twelve hours into the healing process, his bed broke. A neighbor came by to help me fix it, but we were not successful. It now awaits its new home either in the dump or to a handy person who can likely repair it.

When he called me into his room to tell me that his bed had broken, I stood there in disbelief. Already a bit frazzled trying to care for him and managing the boatload of medications and b-zillion rules for his post-surgical care, and oh yeah… losing a month’s worth of content on my website…I was like…great. Just what I needed.

I realize that a broken bed is not catastrophic yet when troubles come on top of troubles, it sure seems like it, doesn’t it?  You get through one storm and then bam…another comes. What are we to do? How do we handle the storms of life?

I’ve learned that there are three steps we can take when going through a storm (and yes, you will go through them.)

First, take a deep breath. Get some oxygen into your brain so it can function properly.

Second, assess the situation fully before doing anything rash. Knee jerk reactions almost always get you into trouble.

Third, ask for help. Despite my efforts to put “Humpty Dumpty back together again,” I could not fix the bed myself nor could my son help, given his compromised state.

Multiple times in the Bible, we see Jesus dealing with storms, from both the physical elements and people. He did not panic. He did not shout “What are we gonna do?” He did not pull His hair out in frustration. He was calm a cucumber.  

Let’s look at a few examples:

The woman caught in adultery. The religious people were trying to trap Jesus as to how this situation should be handled. What did He do? He calmly ran His finger in the sand, thought about His response and uttered words that stopped them all in their tracks. (Read more in John 8:1-11)

Another time, Jesus was in a boat with His disciples and a whopper hurricane arose. His peeps were panicking, yet Jesus was asleep on a pillow. When they woke Him up, He calmed the storm with three words. (Read more in Mark 4:35-41)

How was Jesus able to do this? How was He able to never be frazzled, never have a sleepless night, never panic? The answer is in the first few sentences of the Bible:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:26 NKJV).

The key word here is “dominion.” God gave us dominion (authority) over the fish, birds, cattle, creeping things…everything. In short, these things cannot boss us around. We boss THEM around. How? We declare God’s Word – Truth – over every storm that tries to come against us.

That’s what Jesus did. He knew His authority. He knew He had dominion over people, places, and things that tried to steal His peace. 

This doesn’t mean we ignore or deny reality. But we speak victory over it. Not in our own power, but the delegated power God has given to all of us through His Son. This is how we get through the storms of life. This is how we remain calm through the chaos. This is how we can lay our heads down and sleep peacefully even on a broken bed.

Don’t let the storms of life boss you around. Show them WHO is boss.