Storms

 

I spent the last 5 severe weather seasons of my life telling people to be ready for storms.  To have the things necessary so that when a storm hits your home or place of business, you are prepared for them.  

In our part of the country, tornado outbreaks like the one last night that took lives in Oklahoma are a normal occurrence and we should be ready for them.  As we were coming back from storm chasing last night I was thinking about two people who were killed or injured by the storm and realized that storms come in all of our lives.  The storm may be a disease, a job loss, a loss of a friend or family member.  It could be external or self-inflicted, physical, emotional, or spiritual, but we all go through storms from time to time.  Since we all will go through storms, we need to be ready.  We need to be prepared for those storms.  

When I think about the story in Matthew 7:24-27 so many times I think about the foundation but not the storms.  We need to be prepared for the storm.  We need a spiritual ready kit to go along with our natural ready kit (you do have one of those, don’t you?) and we need to keep it fresh just like our natural kit.  Are you spending time hearing Jesus’ words and more importantly, are you doing them.  That’s how you prepare for a storm: by hearing Jesus and doing what He says.  We do tornado drills at home and when we have a tornado warning for our area, my kids know what to do because they’ve acted on it.  You’ve got to put action to your knowledge in order to be ready for the storm because when we act on it is the only time we will use it during a storm.