A Kansas-sized Storm

I recently heard a story that I want to relay to you and the rest of my friends.  It is a story about a storm, a Kansas storm.  Those storms are big.  

A little girl was playing outside on a Kansas farm*. Mama was inside cooking dinner.  You know what it looks like, a big white two-story house, wrap-around front porch, a giant maple tree that stands in the front like a sentinel, guarding the house (a little too closely!) A swing hangs on its lower branch. Bikes and skates are strewn about and an above ground pool is in the yard.  Sun flowers, gladiolas, and hollyhocks are growing in three neat rows. The land is so flat that you can see the sky for miles in all directions.

The wind.  You can hear that gale beginning to whine through the corn field and around the corners of the house, whispering its warning.

“Mama, I want to come inside. The wind is blowing.”

Unable to hear the whispering wind, Mama said, “Stay outside Sugar, I am cooking supper.”

The tree.  You can picture those big floppy maple leaves holding onto the branches for dear life as the wind blows harder. A small branch bounces of the eave as it falls to the ground.  

“Mama!”  She pounded on the screen door.  “I want to come inside.”  

Unable to see the flapping Maple leaves, Mama said, “Darling, I am cooking supper, stay outside.”

The Sky.  

(I remember driving with Lisa across the prairie states.  We were about 2 hours from her grandmother’s house in Illinois.  I was driving, and I noticed that Lisa was getting nervous.  She said, “Look at the sky, it does not look good.“  Being from California, I had no idea. But the sky had an almost gray-green color and it was mottled and in some places the clouds were low and some of the clouds looked like they were reaching down from the sky towards the flat earth.  “This is tornado weather”, Lisa said.)  

“Mama!  A big storm is coming, I want to go inside.”  The pitch of her voice had raised and it broke as she said the word “want”. 

“Honey, I am almost done, just stay outside a little longer. Don’t be afraid!”

“I am trying not to be afraid, but Mama, the wind is so strong and the tree ain’t happy and the sky is getting so dark.   It is getting hard to stand up. Mama let me come in!”

Mama did not see the gray-green angry sky,  “But Honey, you are ok.  Jesus will take care of you.”  

 “But Mama, I don’t know Jesus too much!”

My dear friends, many of us are in the middle of a Kansas-sized storm in our life.  Others are aware that there might be those green-gray clouds angrily reaching down and out across the corn fields.  For some of us it is the daily flare ups of anxiety, anger, or lust that we fight as we go through the normal routine of our day.  Still others of us watch the storms’ affects on the lives of friends and wonder if the storm will roll through our field.  And we wonder, we fear, will we be able to stand it outside?

And are we trembling outside because we “don’t know Jesus too much?”

How much do you know Jesus?

Oh, I know, you met Him when you were “saved” from your sins.  And you have faithfully “gone to church” ever since.  Maybe you remember, with some sentimentality,  those Sunday school flannel graph stories about a great man that lived so long ago. I am sure you have heard hundreds of good sermons by good men that taught you so much about Jesus.  Maybe you even went to a good Bible school and could explain the hypostatic union (how Jesus is both God and man) with some reasonable accuracy.  And oh, you read through the entire Bible...back...in...1987! But, DO YOU KNOW JESUS MUCH?  

I fear that many of us know a lot about Jesus like we know a lot about George Washington, but do we know Jesus like we know our best friend?  This is what it means to really know someone.  

We like to throw terms around like “personal relationship with Jesus”, or “saving knowledge of Christ.”  But when it comes to “saving” us from the storms of this life or the trials of my every day, we say with our little farm girl friend from Kansas, “I don’t know Jesus too much.”  After all, “he left the earth some time ago”...And “I can’t see Him or hear Him like I can hear someone I know is standing right next to me.”  And so when we need to, we cannot rely on Jesus, no matter how hard we try. We have little or no confidence in Him in the trials of our Tuesday evening or Thursday afternoon.

Recently, a dear friend told me that he keeps getting angry with his client, although he is trying very hard not to.  Another is trying not to get anxious (that is the one that gets me) and yet another trying to not lust (ok, maybe that one too!).  Friends, that is the daily storm we were warned about:  Trying. (Having begun in the Spirit, why do you seek to be perfected by the flesh?) I would like to encourage you to think very differently.  I would encourage you to stop trying to do all of this or not do all of that.  But just try one thing:  KNOW JESUS MUCH.

So, firstly, what does knowing Jesus look like and, secondly, how can we know  Him so well that we could stand firm in a Kansas-sized (or California Beach) storm?

Jesus told us “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”   We must be familiar with His voice.  No, I have not heard an audible sound that I claim came from Christ.  He most frequently does not do it that way.  He normally speaks through out thoughts.  And the source of our thoughts can be very recognizable.  His thoughts are always marked by peace, re-assurance of His love for us, and confidence in His control of our welfare. Jesus puts ideas into our minds.  He gives us thoughts like, “pray like this...”, “This person needs you to call them”, “Go encourage your friend”, “I am in control.” “Things will be ok even though the storm clouds are dark.”  We will have peace when we recognize that Jesus is around.  But we must be “ready” to hear Him.

Perhaps you say, “I don’t know how to recognize His voice in my mind.”  Or “I often feel fear of negative consequences if I don’t control a situation myself, with anger.”  Or “Look, things are getting pretty bad, will Jesus ever show up?”  No guilt for doubting!  But a absence of peace or the presence of negative thoughts may be an indicator, not that Jesus is absent, but that I have left the conversation.  

I think this is where the  appropriate trying comes in. The goal is not to try to not get angry or not get anxious. (Triple negatives never work!)  The goal is to use great effort to get to know Jesus (2 Peter1).  And this kind of knowing is intimate and close. We joke about “knowing someone in a Biblical way.”  But that is the idea.  We get intimate with Jesus, the one who lives inside each of us.  We start this by studying His words.  Read the book of John or any of John’s writings.  Read them as letters to you.  Read them and pray them.  Stop frequently. For example, when Jesus says “If you don’t love your brother...” ask, “Jesus, who is the brother that I am not loving, show me Jesus.”  Within a few days a name or face will probably come into your view.  Where did that come from?  Ask Him how to love that person and for the power to do so. You are now getting to know Jesus.  You can expect this more and more.  Read how Jesus calmed the storm.  Read it again.  Paint a mental picture of the details or go online and see Rembrandt's great rendering of the event.  Feel the spray of the sea.  Shake Jesus awake.  Live the stories of life with Jesus as if you were a participant in them.  Because you are!  

Wouldn’t you agree that the most important response to a storm or trial in life would be to depend on the goodness of God?  But we must train ourselves to do this.  This is the way our mind and our emotional habits work.  We cannot expect our emotions and our thoughts to automatically be confident in the goodness of God when the pressure is on if we have not trained ourselves to do so when the pressure is off.  This would be like bolting the house to the foundation in the middle of an earthquake.  Bolt it down now! Memorize parts of the sermon on the mount. And overlay that with prayer that Jesus will use your mind and teach you to hear Him. Read conversationally. And soon within a year or so, you will find yourself thinking the thoughts of Jesus.  You will find yourself less anxious.  You will see there is no need for anger, since you are not expected to control things anyway (Be patient with yourself, it’s gradual!). You will find that your big white house with a wrap-around front porch (your life) is built on a foundation of Rock. You are being transformed from the inside out.  But the best part is that you now know Jesus much.  And it is not that the storm goes away.  It is in the face of Jesus, the Wonderful friend-God, that the storm becomes almost irrelevant.  Many followers of Christ have discovered this truth.  Will you help me get to know Jesus?  I need you to know Him so well.  Will you point Him out to me when the clouds cause me to fear?  “There He is, everything is fine!” Soon you will hear Him speaking to you about your work, your spouse, your kids and how to extend His Kingdom, maybe even how to fix the leaky plumbing.  Delight in His friendship! By the way, we can be assured that Jesus will hear the wind, see the gray-green sky and notice the quaking Maple leaves.  Whether or not He calms the weather, He will give us an inner calm, and inner strength that will help us stand in the biggest of storms.  

Many come to Jesus because they want “eternal life” after they die.  Well, Jesus spoke about this “eternal life” in John 17:3 “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”  Friends, how foolish to think that “eternal life” starts after we die! We have access to that life now, here.