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Well, I left my soul out in the rain,
Lord, what a price I’ve had to pay.
The storms of life are washin’ me away.” - Randy Travis


Currently our church is doing a series on the gospel of Mark. Our pastor is basically taking us through Mark verse by verse - the series started in January and ends in August. Last week he preached on the last seven verses of chapter 4, where Jesus calms the storm.

One point that our pastor made really struck me and is something I’ve thought about often since becoming a Christian. When I’ve struggled with sin or something else that I’ve been dealing with for years, there’s a part of me that thinks, “Hey wait a minute. This isn’t right. I’m a Christian and I shouldn’t have to deal with this anymore.” He tried to make it clear to all of us that we’re not exempt from the storms of life as Christians. “We seem to reason that, if God is in this, then this ‘bad’ would not be happening right now,” said our pastor. The thing is that, I’m not sure that I think of it that way. I
know God is in all of this. I just look inward and wonder what I’ve done to bring on this storm and why I’m failing at that moment.

The storms of life are not washing us away. They are brought about so that when God brings us through them, His Glory is put on display. There may be times when we become like the disciples in the boat and ask, as in Mark 4:38 (NIV), “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown ?”. Our pastor gently reminded us last Sunday that the answer to that question can be found in Romans 5:8 (ESV):

“But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”