The disciples were sitting on the floor for the meal, when Jesus stood up and took the towel to wash their feet. The feet of travelers were normally dirty from walking on roads littered with dung, left behind by passing flocks of sheep and other animals. At meals people would recline on the floor around the food, their feet not far from the other guest’s noses. I can imagine trying to fellowship with Jesus and the brothers, but all you can think about is your bad smelling feet near your closest table guest. You hope nobody notices but you are a little embarrassed.

The disciple’s feet may have been washed already, but either way Jesus is making a point. I am washing your feet, so you can forget about where you have been and enjoy where you are. I’m washing away the effects and any shame you feel abut your past walk. I want you to be Son conscious not sin conscious. While you are conscious of the past, you’re not able to hear what I’m saying to you now.

Friend, our acceptance with God is not based upon our performance but His, and our fellowship is entirely the result of what He has done, not what we have done. Why not turn our eyes upon Jesus and let everything we are and everything we aren’t, grow dim in the light of His wonderful face.

Two weeks ago I took our boat out first time this year. We got away from the ramp and out towards the beautiful islands in the Gulf.  Anneke said that she smelt petrol and when I looked the bilge was awash with petrol somehow. I thought that doesn't look good, so I asking the Father to get us back to the boat ramp without blowing up my wife and me. Fortunately we got back to the boat ramp to our desired Haven. It reminded me of Psalm 107:29  “Those in great storm in life  call out to God in their distress  He calms the storm, So that its waves are still. Then they are glad because they are quiet; So He guides them to their desired haven.”  God has a desired haven for us and it is always Him.

Once when the disciples were on a lake in the midst of gale, Jesus walked on the water toward them, Peter wanted to walk on water too but once he got on the water he began to sink. Jesus held him up and they got back into boat, “And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. Then those who were in the boat came and worshiped Him, saying, "Truly You are the Son of God.” ( Mat 14:32-33) .

It wasn’t about faith or Peter water walking or the wind would have stopped when Peter sank. The wind kept blowing until Jesus was in the boat with them. He brought the calm, they worship Him and the lesson is over. He is the Haven. When we have met Him, God has had His way in the storm.

Sometimes He is not taking us anywhere but He is showing us something. There are some things about God you’ll never know until He shows up in your storm and He speaks to us in the midst of a storm. We can only know more of Gods ability in a situation that is beyond your ability and in which we have never been before. In a flood we can come to experience him as a rock higher  than us.

It doesn’t matter what storm you are going though in matters who is with you in the boat. It is not what we go through that counts but who we are going through it with. God used the storm to reveal himself and His power to the disciples.  The title is from the verse in Nahum 3:2 ”God has His way in the Storm.”

Friend you might be in a storm right now or maybe there are storms coming your way in 2022. It may feel powerful but remember, there is someone more powerful with you in your boat and God always has His way in the storm!

 As David lay back in the grass he became so aware of the feelings in his heart. He sought to find words that could express the sense of destiny and security that He felt in the hand of His God…. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life…” Divinely inspired words that mean today, tomorrow and next week there will not be one moment when God’s goodness and His mercy is not following us as well. That means right now, the goodness and the mercy of God is following you. The word actually means to pursue relentlessly and run someone down. 

We have to ask why God would cause His goodness and His mercy to follow us, rather than go in front of us and “fix” thing for us, before we walk into situations in life?

He never stopped Adam (or us) from sinning, but after he sinned, His goodness and His mercy moved to restore Adam again to himself. (Adam now understood how good and how merciful God is). He didn’t stop Abraham from abandoning his wife, but three days later His goodness and His mercy caught up with Abraham and Sarah was delivered from Abimelech, who sent Abraham out with many flocks. (Abraham was now humbler and understood the graciousness of God). Of course God goes before us as well but if He changed every difficult thing before we got there, we would never get to see His power and amazing love.

Even when God give us a promise, it usually takes time to manifest. We have to wait for His promise to catch up to you. Moses had been told by God to lead the people out of Egypt into the Promised Land.  When he got to the Red sea, it seemed impossible to cross but God said stand still.  As Moses waited, he looked back and saw the Egyptians hordes following him, but that was not all.  The goodness and the mercy of God were following Moses too, and it soon caught up with them. The whole nation was delivered as Gods power moved.

Friend, if it seems to be a hard time in your life, stand still, stand in faith and wait for Gods goodness and His mercy to catch up to you, because it will.

Israel stood on the edge of Canaan and although they saw and heard of the beautiful fruit of the land, they could not rise to the opportunity God gave them. They still saw themselves as slaves from their previous identity and they could not take the Promised Land with the mindset of a slave. We also can see a Promised Land before us but if we do not see ourselves as one who is able to enter it, we won’t.  Corinthians tells us that we are new creatures in Christ; a brand-new species and our potential is totally different from all of our family members before us. It’s not your haircut or clothes or address that changed, but you, your potential, your future and even the impact of your past.  You see differently at every level now as all of your life is new. Your perception of God has changed and how you see yourself must change too because how you see yourself is more important than how you see your future.

People do not necessarily grow into their potential; they only grow into what they think they deserve or what they think they are capable of.  The most important vision is not what you see ahead of you but what you see inside yourself. Israel had trouble in their thinking. They saw themselves as small and incapable. When we see ourselves correctly, we know we are more than able to drive out our enemies.

The problem is not with God. He can do exceedingly abundantly above what we can think, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,” (Ephesians 3:19-20).    The problem is with us.   Can we think about ourselves differently and about what God can do in us differently?   Have we neglected opportunities provided by God or left ministry dreams and ideas to somebody else because we never saw ourselves as able? Have we allowed enemies to be thorn in our side or vex us day after day?  

Friend, the fact is that if you see yourself rightly a new future, authority and freedom will appear.  God is able to make us able and if we want to inherit the future He plans, we need to see ourselves correctly.

During the Viet Nam war the phrase “The Eye of the Tiger” was coined– which referred to the fierce gaze of a soldier once wounded in battle who later comes back to fight. They were different. The fierceness of a recovered soldier is phenomenal. Perhaps you have been wounded in the battle. 

“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Colossians 1:13). 

Although we have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness, the devil still tries to attack us, intimidate us and bring his darkness around our heart and mind.

The reason Paul says that we wrestle against our enemies (Ephesians 6) and not box or kickbox is that wrestling is the only form of combat where you never lose physical contact with the adversary. And it is the only one that strengthens you as you fight. Have you seen the All-Black rugby team do this in training?  While they are trying to wrestle each other to the ground, they are getting stronger.  Our wrestle against darkness is creating in us the strength and spirit of a warrior. When Satan attacks you, he is unwittingly developing your fierceness and strength in God.  Satan may think he has your measure now, but he doesn’t reckon on who you are going to be in the future. 

 Perhaps the greatest threat to Christianity is not attacks from the enemy but a time of ease - when everything is quiet and there is no need for weapons or strength. The Philistines closed all the blacksmith shops in Israel to weaken them and stop them making weapons. A blacksmith shop may seem a dark place where Someone is stoking the flames. It might even look like hell but the sound of hammers hitting and striking are forming weapons in the fires of adversity. If the “blacksmith shop experiences” were taken from the church, we would have fewer weapons. 

If we have never been attacked, we cannot gain the “eye of a tiger.”  We develop “the eye” when we go through and grow through his attacks. 

Friend, the enemy has tried to intimidate you. Wrestle through the heat of the battle and you will soon find that you have a new strength and weapons that will intimidate him.  

When Job heard the news of the death of his children he collapsed in shock and felt unbearable waves of pain. Later, after losing everything he was afflicted with ugly boils. He picked up a piece of pottery and scraped his sores.  This pottery piece symbolized Job’s life once alive and full but now shattered and dry. “And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself with; and he sat down among the ashes” (Job 2:8). 

It seemed to Job that his life (earthen vessel) was dashed in pieces but actually rather than his life ending, God was about to make Jobs life fuller than ever.   Jobs restoration was not accomplished when God doubled the number of his children or his bank account but when Job was able to process his mounting grief and see himself and God a lot clearer. “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself And repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6)

Humans are designed to grieve yet grief is something we need to choose to enter into and not suppress. Grief is the one feeling that can heal all the other emotions we feel from loss, betrayal, abandonment and hurt. Part of grief is being able to embrace the mysteries in our life and be able to say “I am bewildered and have no idea what God is doing”. Or “Yes I’m hurt; I’m disappointed, even angry that God seems to have forsaken me”.  Embracing the fact of our limitations means we accept that we have limited knowledge and spiritual understanding.  Jobs friends and some of us still today, too easily overestimate our grasp of a situation, as we look at the difficult times in our friend’s lives or ours and wrongly judge people and God.  We need to assume the humble position of bowing before God instead of trying to be Him. It’s healing. In times of emotional pain, I have walked the streets of my neighbourhood in tears crying out to Father. I went out looking for understanding and came back only with peace.

If you feel today like a dry potsherd (broken fragment) embrace it.  Cry your tears and groan your groans before the Lord.  Coming to the end of our wisdom and control over life is something we experience so that the One we are designed to need can be found and the one we are designed to reveal, can be seen.

Friend, embrace your limitations and bow before Loving Wisdom. Don’t doubt God but doubt your understanding.  The trouble with being unbroken is that nobody ever sees Who lives within.

As the boat slipped effortlessly out into the harbour from the bustling docks at Joppa, Jonah sat down on a coil of rope. He felt pleased to be on board. His plan was working but in spite of the relief he felt, there was also a slight foreboding with in his heart. Jonah was running from the presence of the Lord.

Thankfully God prepared a great storm and a great fish to help Jonah succeed in his ministry. In 2 Tim 4.7 Paul said “I have finished my course..” (A sailing term) Paul the great pattern man and apostle, completed his course not because he had a perfect knowledge of God’s will but because circumstances beyond his control (storms) but completely within the control of God, blew him to the mark.  In Nahum 1.3, it says that God has His way in the storm. Many of the circumstances that came into Paul’s life were uninvited and unpleasant.

Mostly we don’t volunteer to go to the places where the growth and stretching of our faith takes place, but Gods faithfully blows us there in His storms.  In His storms, even people like the sailors who threw Jonah over, are unwittingly part of Gods plan to help us stay on course. Our difficult circumstances are all conspiring for our success. Most of all, God wants to reveal Himself to us in a way that He never could without the storm. The disciples in Mark 4.35-41 learned of Gods sovereignty over all and Jonah found out just how much God loves sinners. So right now in the midst of your storm, hold on because there is something more of God that He wants to reveal to you, that you can only see by going through the storm and you should know that when God planned the storm for Paul, he had already prepared a people for harvest and when he planned a storm for Jonah he had already prepared a fish to help Jonah end up a success.
Friend, I have found that God is at work in us and in our storms and He is preparing some thing great for you. (Phil 2.12)

Can you remember when your father told you to drive carefully?  He seemed to think that you didn’t have the experience or the skill to drive safely.  Well, it turns out he was probably right.  When I was sixteen I crashed my father’s car by driving it unsafely. I slid off the road and ended up submerged in a river along with my friend who came along for the ride.  The wisdom and understanding that older people have, comes from having perspective?  They have had a chance to see life over a longer period and they have a bigger frame of reference.  In one picture a father may seem to be aiming a gun at a child but a bigger frame of reference we see a snake behind the child. That bigger frame of reference can be visual or for a longer time period.

When a student says “if only I’d done something or not done something”, they are having a moment of perspective.   When that student gets their first job and thinks either, it has been worth it all, they are having a moment of perspective.

In prison, Joseph no doubt wondered if his dream was ever going to come to pass.   It is hard to know what he was thinking when he was betrayed by brothers, accused by a woman and forgotten for years in prison. Even after sitting on the second throne of Egypt, his dream made no sense till one day his family turned up.   He then had a perspective on all his troubles and his unusual life. When life is difficult, we usually just need time to gain perspective.

Perspective also comes from living with the knowledge of the future.  Jesus washed the disciple’s feet knowing that the father had given all things to him (Jn13.33).   Jesus had perspective and it empowered him to serve without the need for the position. He was not insecure.   He knew his future was one of oneness with Father and accomplishing His will.  Knowing the joy set before Him, gave even the cruel cross perspective. If you know the future ahead of you, it changes the way you go through life. Having a true perspective of the past and the future changes everything.

Friend, the things Father asks us to do and anything we don’t understand will make sense with time and perspective.  But we don’t have to wait until the end of our life to get some perspective. Father has told us everything we need to know about our future with Him.    We can live boldly in difficult times or times of significant personal cost and know that in the future when we look back we will know “it was worth it all.”