Devotions for 14th Jan 2017

Mark 4: 41

Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!

I have planted several fruit trees in the house compound and where we are the wind is particularly strong and sometimes for days on end the wind keeps blowing especially from the South Pole. The wind would be cold and strong and it can cause a lot of damages. Sometimes the roofs of some older houses get blown off.

Another time there was a construction site where the developer had demolished an old building but leaving the façade of the old front wall standing. This was just beside a main road and the developer wanted to use this old wall as a feature wall to the new building. This wall was located along the route to a university and on that day, a brother and a sister were walking along the way to attend classes at the university and just as they were passing the old wall, the strong wind brought the wall down on both of them. Sadly, both died under the collapse of the wall.

The effects of the strong winds also affect the plants that are around our neighbourhood. Many of the smaller trees snapped when the wind blew hard. My fruit trees were also threatened. I have to put up support around the trees and anchored them to it. After a couple of months the fruit trees around my compound because stronger as a result of the support I put up.

In a few months the plants have grown stronger and bigger and they are growing in the direction and shape that I had tied them. What do we learn from this? When the trees are young and tender they can be shaped and directed to whichever directions we want them to grow. They can also be turned into any shape that we want them. In the process of the training we would be able to shape and grow the plants to our plan and requirements for them to be shaped. A good example would be the floral culture of ‘bongzai’

In today’s text we read that Jesus was sound asleep on the boat when the storm blew. Jesus is God and surely He knew that there would be a storm that would blow on that day and He could not be such a sound sleeper that he did not notice the storm.

The truth is, Jesus intentionally allowed the storm to blow on them so that He could use it to teach His disciples to build up their faith and be able to similarly perform miracles that are unimaginable when He has left them.

This again reminds us that as we also encounter storms in our lives, Jesus is using these to teach us to be stronger and help us to set our spiritual roots deeper so that we would not be blown down and also that our lives would not break like weaker branches of the young trees. Through all these life experiences of storms we will be able to grow like strong trees that would not up destroyed but we would be tall and sturdy like the cedar trees and that would bring forth much fruits in season.

Every believer would have to face their own storms in life, the more matured we are the more severe testing would come our way as Jesus would want to truly make us a strong warrior for His use in the days ahead. There is a great revival that would come into the world soon, God is building His army for this revival now, if we want to be used by Jesus Christ, and then be ready to be tested through many storms. Remember the eagle, it flies straight into the storm and then it soars above the storm. Are we eagles or sparrows?