The first podcast is "Suspicious Characters". It is a short, funny story about how my eyes were opened to how we focus on our fear instead of God. I hope you enjoy it! For those of you that do not have iTunes I'm sharing the draft for this podcast.
The cops were called on us! Two of my friends, Jackie and Jennifer, and I had gone to a Tuesday night movie. When it was over, we were not ready to go home. There was plenty left to talk about still and we had not finished solving the world’s problems.
We decided to sit on the patio of a local fast food restaurant to finish our conversations. About an hour later a cop drives by really slow penetrating us with her looks. We thought it was odd, but just waved and smiled as she drove by. She pulls into the parking lot next to us and continues to keep a close eye out.
We did what all girls do when we have free time away from our husbands and kids, we continued to gab. A few minutes later we hear two employees in a panic.
“I told the police these people won’t leave! They are totally freaking me out!”
As I look around to see who the mischievous delinquents are I realize it’s us. We are the only ones there. The three of us with our Christian t-shirts, yoga pants, and our running-out-the-door hair are the cause of the cops and total terror of these two employees. I admit, I was not wearing make up and that can be scary. However, invoking enough fear that they called the cops seemed a little much.
It turns out they were closed and wanted us to leave. We had no idea. They never asked us to leave or mentioned they were closing. As a matter of fact, the conversation about them calling the police was the first we had heard anything from them.
Obviously, we left, but not without a good laugh! As funny as it was, I couldn’t believe that we intimidated anyone that much. I felt a little bad. We would have left immediately if we would have known. All they had to do was tell us they were closing and we needed to leave. Instead, they chose not to speak up and let their fear that we were there to harm them take over.
As I thought about this later I realized we all do this entirely to often. In times where we could quickly and simply call on our heavenly Father for help in a situation or ask Him to guide us we wait until we are desperate. We try to figure it out ourselves, handle the problem on our own, until fear is guiding us more than God. When we are finally desperate enough we call out to Him. More times than not, He brings swift peace and takes control.
You know, we are not that much different than Jesus’s first disciples. Luke 8:22-25 tells us the story of Jesus calming the storm. As a kid hearing this story I solely focused on the coolness that Jesus told the storm to be still and it did. That was enough to make it great. However, as I’ve gotten older and really look at the full story I see too much of myself in the disciples. I see the two employees from my story in the disciples. You will probably see yourself in them too.
At this point, the disciples have seen Jesus heal many, teach, forgive, and even raise a man from the dead. Jesus told the disciples to get in the boat and cross to the other side of the lake. He was tired and fell asleep. That’s when the storm came. It was bad and they did all the could to keep control of the boat and keep it from sinking, all while Jesus slept on the front even with all the waves crashing in on them. They are terrified! They forget that Jesus told them to go this way. They forget all the miracles they have already seen Him perform. They don’t even try to wake Him up to help until they are certain they are going to sink. Then they wake Him in a panic!
“Master, Master, we're going to drown!”
Jesus gets up, tells the wind and waves to be still, and they stop. All is calm. It was that easy! All they had to do was ask Him for help. If they would have done it at the beginning they would not have been full of fear.
It's easy to look at the disciples in this situation and think, DUH! They had seen Jesus do all these amazing things, but they let fear tell them He would let Himself and them drown. How could they be so naive? How could we be so judgemental studying them when we do the same so often.
We have seen as much or more of Jesus and all He can do than the disciples did. Yet we still wait to call on Him until the fear has taken over us. We tend to look at situations in our lives and let everything but God tells us what is going on. This is the kind of thinking that makes us fear three moms in their Christian t-shirts and yoga pants talking on a public patio on a Tuesday evening. This is what makes us wait until we are about to drown in the storm before asking Jesus for help.
This may not be your everyday response to things. I hope not. I hope that most of the time you are talking to God, asking Him for guidance and help even before the storms arise. I know we all have times that we fail at this. Sometimes it's because we have been too comfortable and forget God has been in control of our situations. That tends to make us complacent. Sometimes it's because we are blindsided by something so big we just start trying to shovel the water out of the boat first. It really doesn’t matter what the reason is. All that matters is when these commas, or storms, start to blow we call on Jesus. With big faith!
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