We rejoice in that. I'm thrilled that Brother Ronnie Barefield could be with us all the way down in Mississippi. We appreciate him coming. He's got a wonderful church and a sweet wife. We're thrilled that he's part of this. He and I serve on the Board of Directors of the Gospel Preachers Association as well. We're just so blessed to have Brother Ronnie Barefield with us. Last year was his first time. I said, just put it down and be with us every time that you can. We're thrilled you could come, buddy. All you got to do is push the button until it turns green, and you're ready to go. There you go. Amen, brother. Thank you, brother. God bless you. Amen. I heard about a fellow. He was sitting there at the table. He was just ordered and about to eat his meal. And he'd got a hamburger, and he was kind of fixing it up. And he said, one of these women with a mustache walked by and stopped and looked at him and said, you know that red meat is not good for you. And he said, well, my granddaddy lived to be 96 years old. She said, I guess you're going to tell me that he ate red meat. He said, no. I want to tell you he minded his own business. Well, I appreciate Brother Bob getting in our business tonight. That was good, Brother Bob. Thank you. Amen. Just right out of the Word of God and just laid it out there where we could us simple folk and could grasp a hold of that. And I'll tell you, that was rich. And then all this good singing. I've enjoyed the choir and all the special music tonight. My brother and sister there, thank y'all. That was really, really good. So thank you, Brother Brad. Also, you got all these great preachers here tonight and all around you here. And so to allow me to come up here and join in with this, I certainly enjoyed it last year and was excited about coming back. So I flew up here last year and I flew up here today, but I did it in my car. today and you get to see more scenery and I love this part of the world. We have a few hills where I live, y'all wouldn't call them hills, but I enjoy the mountain scenery and when you start getting into that. Anyway, it's so beautiful up here and it's just a joy to be here. There was a great spirit here last year and a great spirit here tonight. And I got to see two or three preachers here last year that I had known from years ago. Brother Jerry, who I had mentioned last year, I heard him preach over 40 years ago. He and I both look the same as we did back then. And first time I had seen him was here last year after 40 years. That just, wow. And then Brother Phipps, good to see him tonight. And others here, Brother John Reynolds I saw, met him years ago, and others. So I'm blessed to be here. I'm really honored to be here. Brother Josh, I heard him, I was going across, I think it was Arkansas. Late one night coming in from a meeting, and I was needing somebody to help get me home. And I was scanning the radio, and the fellowship, the south side came on, and you and the gentleman were discussing somebody's book. Now, in and out of my nap, I can't remember now what the book was, but it was great. I'll never forget that moment. I forgot the book, but I'll never forget that. Thank you, brother. And God bless you and your work. So it's all good. Mark. Chapter numbers chapter 4 if you have your Bible, I want to kind of go along with what brother Bob has said tonight and We'll look at it from the this purview of the storm and every preacher here tonight has preached out of this chapter and various chapters out of the Gospels that deal with these matter of storms and I want to emphasize, I guess, a couple of things. At least for a moment, they were kind of stuck in a storm. Now, it's one thing if you can just move right through the storm. But, boy, if you get stuck in a storm, you're going to need some help. You're going to cry out for help. And my granddaddy was a farmer when I was growing up, and he was a storm watcher. And boy, he could see them coming over the horizon. He knew better than the weathermen back then could tell and predict storms, weather and stuff. And so I watched him and it's paid off because being in the ministry, I've discovered us preachers are kind of like storm chasers. And sometimes not with the intent of doing that, but it just kind of falls on us. And if we're not storm chasers, storms are chasing us. And they're always chasing our people. And we see people, I heard somebody say one time, and they just said it, and then I found some scripture for it. In fact, in Mark chapter three, now we'll read from chapter four in a minute, you'll find in chapter three, basically what we could say is going into a storm. Then chapter four, they are in the storm and chapter five, they have come out of the storm. Also in chapter five, you'll see them going into another storm. Chapter six, they are in a storm and chapter seven coming out of a storm. And so somebody says, boy, that's depressing. Well, I want to preach on not just the subject of being stuck in a storm, but at the same time, blessings from the storms. And I have to preach this occasionally and to myself. I need to get me a mirror. This just occurred to me after all these years. I need to get a mirror and lay it in my pulpit. and see myself while I'm preaching. Much of what we preach, I find myself even preaching to myself because I, too, experience these storms just like all of us do tonight. I'm certainly not just preaching to preachers, but I'm preaching, thank God, to some normal people also. And so, we're glad you're here. You know, if you just got a house full of preachers, there'll be more preachers tomorrow, I guess. We'll be limited in the presence of God. But here tonight, with all these normal people here with us, there's just an abundance and an overflow of the presence of God tonight. So whether it is going into a storm, in a storm, or coming out. So all of us can identify with that, and everybody's kind of in that situation. So let's try to find out something about a blessing. Really, can there be a blessing in a storm? Well, boy, I hope so. And I'm glad to report to you from the Word of God, there is a blessing in the storm. Now, we're gonna have to have something to balance, Brother Bob, balance this thing out in life. I mean, if it's all battles, we're in trouble. And I know we're soldiers, but even soldiers need a little R&R sometimes, don't they? And so we, We are aware of the reality of these storms, but if, I said years ago, and somebody said it, I just picked it up, you know, if we're battling, we can seem to handle it if the Lord is blessing. Now, if you get in a situation, and you as a pastor know this, you missionaries know this, and you normal people know this, if it's just all a battle or a burden, And after a while, you're going to get weary. I mean, you're going to wear out. And you're going to be tempted to throw the towel in and just give up. But along the way, if in those battles are those burdens, there's some blessings. I'll tell you, it's kept me going. And I haven't been 56 years. Where's our brother? Said he'd been there 56 years. That's tremendous. Now, I've been where I'm at 45 years. Of course, I'm not near as old as you, brother, so that's understandable. No, I'm kidding about that. But just celebrated 45 years there at Unity Baptist Church this past year. So, you know, it's, so as a pastor, we wanna, we wanna help our people get through these things. You know? And so we are searching constantly for truth, for scripture, for Bible, for the word of God that will help them dealing with their storms, or if you want to call it the valleys, or their trials, or whatever. So are there some blessings? Well, let's look at the power of the storm. In Mark 4, verse 35, let's read there. And the same day when the evening was come, he saith unto them, let us pass over unto the other side. When they had sent away the multitude, they took him, even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow. And they awake him, and saying to him, Master, Now, in the other gospels, they say, master, master, carest thou not that we perish? And he arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, peace be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith? They feared exceedingly and said one to another, what manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? Well, what is the power of the storm? The power of the storm is seen in that it says in verse number 37, there arose a great storm of wind. And they tell us that word there, great, is the original word is the word from which we get our word mega. You've heard of mega churches. Well, this is a mega storm. It is a great storm and great in its power. This Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater lake or sea on the planet Earth. Now just down below it a few miles, and Brother John just recently, Brother Reynolds got back from Israel, and I had a group going in about two weeks, but mine got canceled. I don't have the influence that he does, but anyway, God bless you, Brother John. It's tremendous. So down the road from the Sea of Galilee, Highway 90, and down the Jordan River, is the Dead Sea, which is the lowest body of water on the globe, we're told. But it's salt, 33% salt. I've been in it, and I could just sit down and float in it. That's amazing. And I just sat down like I was sitting in a recliner, and I just sat there and floated like a big old cork, floating around on the water. I wasn't worried about a fish biting me, that's for sure. But that's the Dead Sea on down the road. Go back to the north and you come to the Sea of Galilee. And it's laying down in that valley and it's basically circled extremely so on two sides and really basically three sides on the mountain. And the storm can come in there And it seemed like every time we read about the disciples of the Lord in the Gospels and they get on the sea, there's a storm. So it's not unusual for the storm to arise. First time maybe that I was over there and we were staying right there on the edge in one of those big hotels there on the side of the Sea of Galilee, and a storm arose. And it reminded me of what I see here and the suddenness of the storm. But we had just come in from where we had been that day, got in our rooms, and everything had been pretty nice and pretty calm all day. And then just all of a sudden, the storm came. And I mean, it was raging. And I was glad I was in the hotel room instead of out in the dark on the Sea of Galilee. Well, these men had experience of being in the dark on the Sea of Galilee when there were storms and so the suddenness, the suddenness of the storm located between mountains and the eastern side or the western side and the wind would just whip down over that mountain and sweep down into the Sea of Galilee and then those waves would rise up and there they were in a storm suddenly. Have you ever thought about how sudden storms can come? I mean, it's one thing if you know ahead of time, you can kind of prepare. Sometimes we do, but sometimes we don't know. And especially when it comes to real-life storms, sometimes they can come so suddenly. We didn't see them coming. We didn't realize. Even with real storms in life, the rain and all of that, sometimes the weather people will tell us. But then sometimes they miss it. They tell us, could get up to two inches. Next thing you know, you've got four inches. The winds could be up to gusting to 30 or 40 mile an hour. Next thing you know, they're 50 mile an hour. That's a pretty big gust of waves. So life can be that way, can't it? You might have some people that could kind of help you detect and see. And it's good if we could all be weather forecasters. And we need to be that. We need to be watching and helping our people see, helping one another see when we see storms on the horizon. But some of these storms can't be seen, and especially in real-life drama, real-life situations. We've had some come up like that recently in our church. I had a man in my church in his 40s. Just a few weeks ago, he got up from work, or got up from bed, and he and his wife and daughter had their bite of breakfast. His car was headed to Memphis. We live about an hour out of Memphis, and he's a car dealer. He goes up there, wholesales cars, headed, and he was five minutes from the house. And we don't know if he fell off asleep. We don't know if he was on his phone. We don't know what happened, but he crossed the road on that little back country road and hit a truck coming his way. Killed him instantly. Killed him, I'm talking about instantly. And his family was notified. I was notified. We went over there. Well, you can imagine. It just threw their world and our world upside down. And their world is still upside down. Sometimes these sudden situations where we weren't expecting. I don't think the disciples were expecting this storm. Whether they were or not, they were in a pretty helpless condition. And sometimes you get in situations that are kind of helpless. And you realize your limitations and my limitations, and we can't stop it. You can't fix it. And sometimes you're stuck in the storm. And it may not be but a day, but that day seems like a year. It may not be but a week, but that week seems like a decade. And so this family, this little wife and a teenage daughter and a son, they're still experiencing. some of the dashing of the waves and the wind and feeling the experience of that. My mother died two years ago, and we found out two weeks before she died, she had a tumor in her colon. Had no idea. She had been just pretty healthy, brother Brad, 86 years old and never really seen. And then she got to hurt, found out that tumor was there, and in two weeks, she passed away. That was sudden for us. That was pretty sudden. My wife, my daughter, and my daughter-in-law both worked for a dentist there in our town. Three weeks ago, he was going from room to room working as a dentist, treating his patients. We buried him Saturday. He got double pneumonia with complications and died. Just died. Suddenly, and it's turned a lot of people's world upside down. Any of y'all ever had any experiences like that? Huh? Help me out here. Yeah. Shake your head like this. Look real intelligent. Huh? Well, hang around. Hang around. They're coming. If you haven't had something like that, and it can, uh, we had, uh, heard somebody saying it might've been yesterday at our church. Yeah, it was yesterday, that church. And she sang this song about being overwhelmed. And sometimes we can get overwhelmed by the world. And we better get balanced out so we can be overwhelmed by the Lord. And by the time this is over, they were overwhelmed by the Lord. For a little while, they were overwhelmed by the storm. But by the time it's over, what? manner of man is this. And so the suddenness of the storms can be very devastating. Is there a blessing in that? Well, let's see. Then of course the severity of the storm. We've already told you that it was called a great storm, meaning that it was a mega storm. It says that the waves beat into the ship. The idea of that word beat means to throw or to cast upon. It was used in that day of seizing a prisoner, seizing them, throwing yourself and leading them off to prison. And that's kind of what the devil wants to do in our story. He wants the waves to beat up against us so that he can take us captive. and just lead us off as prisoners of war, taken captive by Him at His will. I mean, He wants you to surrender to Him. He wants you to give in to Him. He wants you to throw the towel in. Say, it's too much. It's too hard. I can't do this. That's what He wants you to do. The waves were beating. It said that one of them, maybe it was in, this is also, of course, in Matthew 8 and Luke 8, one of the texts said that they were covered, which meant literally, as the waves, the wind come in, they were literally covered, it said, which means hidden. They were hidden. They probably had gotten so bad, they couldn't hardly even see each other. I've been in a few storms like that, brother, where I couldn't hardly even see the brethren. I couldn't hardly see. You're covered with the storm, it's raging, and the winds are gusting. And I could go on and really elaborate on this if I had a couple hours, but I don't, so I won't. You can do that for yourself, but you can see if you'll study this, that terms are used here. The tempest. Matthew 8 says a shaking, like an earthquake. You imagine being on the sea and you're being shaken like you was on an earthquake? I was in an earthquake one time. And I was in an airport in Santiago, Chile. And I was sitting there in that airport and my glass got to moving and the water or whatever it was, it was non-alcoholic anyway. And it got to moving. It got to moving. And we knew something. Well, then we found out later that that big airport was built because they have earthquakes down in that part of the world, quite often. It wasn't but a few minutes, and we were getting phone calls from home telling us that we were in an earthquake. The news had done got back to America. And they called, are y'all in the earthquake? Well, you know, it's not all that bad. But I have had that experience. If you want to know what it's like to go through an earthquake, I'll be giving interviews tomorrow morning. I'll tell you about it. Woo, wow. I'll work on my exaggeration a little bit tonight, so we'll make it really sound good. So here it is. The power of the storm is seen in its suddenness and in its severity. Moving on. The problem of the storm, the problem of the storm is this. The greatest storm was not what was going on in the waters. even though the waves were no doubt high and the winds were blowing fiercely. But the real storm was what going on in the hearts of those disciples. And that's what it is and I find that true in my own life and in the lives of my people when I have to sit down with somebody. Maybe this little lady that's way too young to be a widow. Way too young to be a widow. And she's really searching for some guidance and direction and she's disturbed right now because when she comes back to our church and she says, I see Ron everywhere. Now she's struggling as to what she's gonna, is she gonna stay at Unity? Or is she gonna go somewhere else where she doesn't have to have his remembrance? So, So she's struggling with that. That's where the greatest storms are, aren't they? It's in our hearts. And as Brother Bob talked to us about already tonight there from Psalms, and Satan, it seems the enemy has access to our body, to our soul, and even come against our spirits. Get in the heart. I mean, he can come against your heart. And so that's where the real storm is. raging and we'll see that. Notice their first act, their first act in the storm. It says that he was at the hinder part of the ship in verse 38, asleep on a pillow and they await him and saying to him, master cares not that we perish. I'm sure if somebody could have sung that song we just saw a while ago, oh yes, he care. Oh yes, he cares. If they could have heard that in that moment, it certainly would have helped them and encouraged them. I wonder how many times that song has encouraged somebody who was sitting in a service like this, maybe even here tonight, and you come in and you're in the midst of the storm. Nobody else can see it or realize it, but you know it's real. You know it's real, but you came over to the house of God anyway, and God gave you a song. Oh yes, He cares. What was their first act? Their first act was to wake Him up. I think this is the only time in the Gospels we find Jesus asleep. So here He is, asleep on a pillow, and they awake Him. So that's pretty smart on their part. That's pretty smart, is to get His attention. Brother Bob dealt with this tonight, even about hearing. We want the Lord to hear us. I like that where those disciples, right after Peter and John was released from prison over there in Acts 4, and they went back to their own company. And so they praised God, and then they began to pray, and they said, Lord, behold. And they directed the Lord's attentions to the threatenings of their enemies. Lord, behold, I feel like they do sometimes. I just want to make sure the Lord sees it. Lord, you do know what's going on. Hello! Yeah, it's me! Hello! Behold, Lord! Behold, Lord! He was out of songs tonight. I heard one preacher say, and I love the songs. He said, I really love those songs where David is praying, God! kill my enemies, please kill my enemies. He prayed a few like that. Yeah, well, that's the Old Testament. Yeah, we can't do that today, can we? No, no, we can't do that, no. We're under grace, we can't. If you're under the law, you can do that. How do you know? Well, I've heard some that are still under the law do that. Dang, we just say, Lord, save us, Lord, save us. Now, Lord, if it'd be easier to, anyway, Moving on. So they awake him and get the Lord's attention. Their first act. What was their foolish act? Was to doubt him. I mean, that's the implication here. Master, carest thou not that we perish? There's a hint of doubt in that. There's more than a hint. There's a real suggestion there to the Lord that, Lord, you don't care. You don't care. Carest thou not? And then that song reminded us again tonight. Oh yes, oh yes he cares. So this was a foolish act on their part to deny or to doubt the Lord. But here we are, this is what the devil wants. It's what he wants you to do. Number one, to doubt the goodness of God. to doubt the goodness of God. In other words, Lord, why would you let this happen? And especially, why would you let this happen to me or to us? It's amazing how we can accept it when the storms come and the troubles come to someone else. But when it comes home to us, If you're going to doubt the goodness of God, why would you not doubt it at somebody else's house? Some other preacher's church. But when it comes to us, but that's exactly what the devil wants you to do. That's why the Bible makes clear and reiterates that the Lord is good. The Lord is good. Now we all know that he's great. We all know that. Now, you'd have to be a real imbecile to deny the greatness of God. I mean, you can't even read the first book of the Bible, the first verse, without recognizing the greatness of God in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. He's pretty great. If the Bible starts off telling us anything, it's telling us that He is, and that he is great. And so don't be an idiot and deny the greatness of God. But he's not only great, thank God he's good. And there'll be times in your life before it's over that you will appreciate the goodness of God possibly more than you do greatness of God. There have been a lot of people through history that have been identified as great, but they weren't good. But God is great and thank God he's good, hallelujah. And he's good to you and he's good to me. And even when the circumstances don't look like it, he's still good. Amen. And you're gonna need your faith to kick in sometimes because the circumstances are gonna say this ain't good. And if this ain't good and he's in control, then it's God good. So that's when your faith must kick in and rise above your flesh. And there's that battle again, constantly in the Christian life, with the flesh, which sees everything negative, or your faith, which sees even the negative in a positive, can see something positive. That's what we're gonna see here in just a moment. That out of that which seems to be negative, something positive is going to be experienced. And we better look at life that way, I mean it would help the attitude of the average Baptist church on Sunday morning if people would come in acknowledging the Lord is good. Because then the Bible teaches us that we should and then we would come in with thanksgiving. Now give me a house full of people that are thankful and we will have church. We will have church. Their singing will be different. Their praying will be different. Their worship will be different. If you've got a thankful people, but if you've got an ungrateful, bitter people that are not so sure God's good after all, then you've got your work cut out for you, preacher, trying to help them. Amen. Amen. So don't doubt the goodness of God. Then of course, the devil's going to want you to doubt the grace of God. I mean, not only why did this happen and certainly why did it happen to me, but God, why don't you just fix it? Because we all know he can fix it. You believe that? Yeah, our faith is always good enough to believe that he could. Our problem is we don't know if he would or not. Wow. And so we'll doubt the grace of God. Lord, I need some grace right now. And then our interpretation of his grace for that moment is, fix it. Fix this, Lord. Yeah, I've done that, I'm sorry. You don't have to apologize. The apostle Paul had a thorn in his flesh. And he said, Lord, fix this. Lord, fix this. Lord, fix this. Basically, it's what he's saying. Lord says, I'm going to fix this, but not the way you want it. And he used the very word grace. My grace is sufficient. Sometimes our vision and view is so limited we get tunnel vision. And the only way we think we can see the grace of God is for Him to answer our prayers exactly the way we want them answered. And if He doesn't answer them exactly the way we want them answered, then we didn't get any grace. But God says to Paul, no, I'm not going to remove this thorn, but I'm going to give you grace. I'm actually going to give you something better than if I remove the thorn. How do you know? Well, later in the text in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul said, this is better. What I've got now, the grace is better than being a thornless preacher. So the devil wants you to doubt God's goodness and God's grace and God's guarantee. Because, I mean, the Lord has told them in verse 35, let's pass over to the other side. Now, in that command is a guarantee. We're going to the other side. If the Lord says we're going to the other side, we're going to the other side. But they forgot all about this guarantee. We forget the promises of God, don't we? We forget the guarantees of God that he's going to get us to the other side. Could I tell you that for whatever reason, and you could make an argument for chapter five and the old demoniac of Gadara, the Lord is wanting to get there and help us, old boy. But the Lord is trying to get them from here to here. Now while he's probably already looking across the sea and seeing this demoniac of Gadara, and he's going to help him, and this man's going to become a missionary and turn Decapolis upside down. Ten cities upside down for the glory of God. So the Lord sees that. But meanwhile, he wants his disciples to see something. So he's got to move them. And sometimes God moves us geographically, just like he is them here. And 45 years ago, God moved me geographically from the county I was living in to the county I now live in. I did not know what that move would consist of. Oh, but a million times now I want to thank him and praise him for that move. Oh, my soul. I would have never worked that out. I would have never figured that out. But God was working a move in my life. Some of you, where you are today, had no idea 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30, 40 years ago, 56 years ago that you would be. But God knew. He knows how to move us geographically. He knows how to move us spiritually. I mean, He's trying to get us all somewhere. He's trying to get us to a particular place in our lives. And so I look at that geographical move, oh my, as I look back over life, I see so many moves spiritually that God has made in my life to grow me or to mature me or to bless me or to teach me something. And so God, the Lord, had a plan. And that plan consisted of moving them from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other side. Might not look like a big move, but it was the move He wanted to make. Sometimes our moves are almost overwhelming. Sometimes they're underwhelming. But if it's the Lord's move in your life, You gotta go with the Lord. And the guarantee, the devil wants us to doubt or deny his guarantees. Amen. The problem of the storm. The power, let me wind this up. The purpose of the storm. What is the purpose of the storm? Well, there's a lot of things, and obviously you preachers have preached this and had a much better outline and a lot better substance. This storm could be serving multiple purposes. The storm itself, not just the move, not just from one side of the sea to the other side, though that is going to be significant and important. But what's going on in between point A and point B is also significant. I mean, this storm, how can a storm be a blessing? Well, for one thing, they're going to get to see Jesus in certain aspects of his life and ministry that otherwise they're not going to see. For instance, right here, this storm, they're going to see him asleep in a storm. That's one thing to see him asleep when they're trying to make it between, you know, Nazareth and Capernaum and so maybe they stop halfway and they spend the night and they saw him go over there and lay down and go to sleep but they've never seen as far we know seen him asleep in a store that's not a place where you normally go to sleep but but they need to see this I mean I mean I mean look even Even in the Psalms, the psalmist said, I laid me down and slept. I awaked, for the Lord sustained me. Why, in Psalms four, the psalmist said, I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou, Lord, only, makest me dwell in safety. In Proverbs 3, 24, when thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid. Yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet. Now they're gonna see the Lord sleep, a restful sleep, in spite of a dangerous storm. The Lord must be trusting in God. They're going to see him put his preaching into practice. Sometimes you and I, preachers, pastors, will go through some things. And it may be that our people need to see us put to practice what we have preached. Hello. Help me out. I've told our people, I said, my wife Donna and I, good to see your dear wife tonight, bless you sister. My wife and I, folks as y'all know, we lived in a parsonage for 40 years right beside the church. Right beside the church. Now it was a wonderful existence. Our people didn't bother us, we had all the privacy you could want, most of the time. And so what we decided, we built a house. We moved, oh my goodness, we moved one mile down the road and built a house. But I told our people every once in a while, I'd say, y'all know, by the way, we don't live on another planet. And they look at me like, oh, here we go again. I said, no, we live in the same community, same world you do. I said, we don't just zoom in here on Sunday morning. And we've been off on some paradise planet. And we come in here, y'all all mully grub. What's wrong with y'all? We've been in paradise all week. Well, we're going to spend the day with you. And then after service tonight, we're going to fly back to paradise planet. Well, there's no problems. You get all the buttermilk you want. And I get all the fried chicken I want. Fried chicken. They said a McDonald's had a sign up, and it was right across the road from Chick-fil-A. And they said, we serve chicken seven days a week. So Chick-fil-A put a sign up and said, yeah, and our ice cream machine works every day of the week. They know we live in the same world. And my wife and I have raised two children. And they're both grown now. And in church and serving God. And in many ways serving their community. My son just got elected to the local school board and some other great things that I could tell you a lot of wonderful stories. But I'm saying sometimes the people They need to see us practicing what we preach. They saw Jesus practice what he had preached. If he told them to have faith in God, and he did, they saw him. And there's a lot of experiences that they saw him. They saw him cleansing the temple. They saw him angry. Yeah, they saw that. They saw him touch a woman at the well who'd been rejected, whose life had been debased. She was at the bottom of life, but she discovered that there was a rock at the bottom. They saw him deal with a woman caught in adultery. How do you deal with somebody It's a rumor. No, that's not a rumor. This is a real deal. How's he gonna deal with her? He showed him. He showed him how you have compassion. He showed him how you love sinners. He showed them in so many ways. See, I even love it that, was it Philip that asked the question when the Lord told him that he was going away? And he said, Lord, how do we know? We don't know the way. And Jesus said, I am the way. Thank you for that good question, sir. The Lord responded, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. I mean, even out of some dumb situations, the Lord will come through and give us what we need. part of this storm as far as the purpose, the reasoning, they needed to see Jesus in all these different aspects and learn about trusting him and learn about handling situations. As Brother Bob said earlier, if I'm going to learn from somebody, if I'm going to get advice or information from somebody, let me get it from somebody who's done it, somebody who's expert at it. Well, he's the expert. He's the expert. You want to know how to do it? Right there it is. Right there it is. But there's another purpose in this story, and that was the wind and the waves and the necessity. I read a story about a man who got a tree doctor in his yard to come to his house and check out his tree. He was really concerned about it because it wasn't growing. And so the tree doctor looked at it and he said, you've got a sapling, it's obvious. And he says, it's not anything wrong with being a sapling, but he said, you're going to have to get these ropes off of it. And he said, until you get these ropes off of it, he said, the tree can't sway. And now we all know what it is. I've done that before with a little tree, because the wind can just, boy, But after a while, you've got to get the ropes off it. And so this is what the tree doctor said. You've got to get the ropes off it so it can sway. Now, I heard that story, and I thought, is that true? So I went to Dr. Google. And I got me some information from the Michigan State University and the University of Connecticut and two or three other places. Listen to this. Swaying is a tree's natural method for the dissipation of the energy exerted upon it by wind. Now, there exists a possibility of achieving an amplitude of sway greater than the tree's elastic capacity to return upright. That's when trees fall down. Too much sway. Do storms make trees take deeper roots? Listen to this. Take a break from your busy day. Think about this quite literally. The more adversity a young tree must contend with, the deeper and more expansive its roots will be. If the tree survives, it is very likely to thrive. Well, a little more. When the trees grew to be a certain height, these were trees that had been put in like a nursery type situation. But after they got so, they would topple over. It baffled the scientists until they realized they forgot to include the natural element of wind. Trees need wind to blow against them because it causes their root systems to grow deeper, which supports the tree as it grows taller. In addition, when wind blowing on a small seedling or newly emerged spring plant helps the plant create a stronger stem, each time a plant is pushed by the wind, it releases a hormone called an auxin that stimulates the growth of supporting cells. Can a storm be a blessing? Not only can it be a blessing, it would almost appear to be essential to the growth of us believers. I'm telling you, and I hate to say it out loud, but it's in my storms, when the winds were blowing, that I not only felt a presence but experienced, I think, some growth, some understanding, and through those experiences in life. And a lot of you are like me tonight. You're gray-haired. You get phone calls from young preachers just like I do. And they'll call and they'll say, Brother Ronnie, I know you've been through this. And sometime I have, and then sometimes I just have to act like I have. So I can give them a real matured wisdom answer. But when you've been there, you've done that. And potentially, you've helped somebody else. And when you've swayed, but you didn't fall. And maybe the next day, the wind blew another direction. And maybe the gust would let up. And then it comes back. And you sway a little more. All the time. We didn't realize it. I didn't know when I was in my 20's and my 30's and 40's and hell was raging. We was fighting the devil by the half acre trying to build a church. Do something for God. And sometimes men old enough to be my dad or my granddad were fighting that because we were changing the way things had always been. And we were bringing in missionaries right and left and a lot of other things. Little did I know that roots were going down deeper. Don't give up, preacher. child of God, that when you may feel it only as working against you, but it's working for you. And you're going to, as one of those statements said, if it survives, it likely will thrive. And some of you men are thriving. Some of you ladies are thriving. I've got some friends, and you have too, some Christian people. I pastor some people who are today thriving, but I was there with them 30 and 40 years ago when the wind was blowing against them. But they withstood it. They withstood it. And now, They're thriving. You can thrive. But you're going to have to face the wind. And the waves may beat up against you. Well, I have gone a few minutes longer than I thought, so let me give you this other thought here. The purpose was so they could see Jesus in a way maybe they'd never seen before. So they could experience the wind, the opposition, even though they're in the will of God. I mean, they're just, all they're doing is what the Lord told them to do. Get in the ship, go to the other side. Don't look at somebody that's hell's raging against them and think, boy, they must not be right with God. There was a place for you in the book of Job. Some of their cousins are still alive in Baptist churches. I guarantee you. This guy, I knew that was coming. I've been watching him. And I knew, I knew he was gonna get in trouble with God, I knew. So, but might wanna be careful about that. Because these boys are just doing what God told them to do. And that's the best you can do. I mean, that's the best you can do, folks. And if you're doing what God told you to do, and the winds are blowing, just smile and say, thank you, Lord. And keep on going. But another thing they did, they called on him. And maybe they noticed that obviously the storm had not awakened him. But when they cried to him, he awoke. It's kind of like the preacher, the story I heard, it was about a preacher who had come in from church or somewhere, maybe a meeting. And he come in late. So he gets to his house, and he didn't have his keys. He forgot his keys. So he comes to the house, knocks on the door, couldn't get in. And nobody answers. So he knocks a little louder. Hello. And his wife's supposed to be in there. And so nobody comes to the door. He comes around and he looks through a window. And he sees her on the far side of the room over there laying on the couch, sofa. And so he kind of bangs on the window a little bit. She's still there. And he lived in a house where they had, it was kind of up on stilts. He even told her later, he said, I went under there and picked up a hoe handle and pounded the floor. And still didn't get you. So he goes across the road to a neighbor, gets them to call her. This was before cell phones, apparently. It's an old story. So he calls her, doesn't answer the phone. So he finally goes back over and he's about to pound on the door again and all of a sudden he sees her as he looks through and he sees her get up and run upstairs. And then she comes back down and he's pounding and she sees him and she walks over and opens the door and says, honey, how long you been standing here? He said, you don't even want to know. I've been trying to get you, I've been pounding on, and you just like, then all of a sudden you get up. What made you get up? She said, I heard the baby cry. The storm didn't wake him, but when his babies cried, when his children cried, he woke up. I'll just tell you this in close, what the storm didn't do was take him out of control. When he got up, he said, Wade, y'all lay down. There's a little redneck here. Y'all lay down and don't get up again until I tell you. Wins, I mean right now. Hush. And they stopped. Then he looked at them and he said, What? What? What did you say? And therein all, what mattereth, is this. You're going to see Jesus in your storm in a way you never dreamed. Thank you, Lord, for your word. Thank you for this service, for all that we've experienced and felt tonight. God, get glory, honor for yourself.