pWe’re going back to Acts 27. Go read, and look out particularly for how Paul’s sailor buds deal with disaster. In March, we looked at how God spoke through Paul. Now we’re returning, to think about reactions. A quick recap: Paul’s been taken captive by the Roman Empire, and they’re sailing him to Italy. On the way Paul prophesies that the ship will go down in a storm. But the sailors don’t listen, and so their ship quickly gets properly wrecked.br /
Usually we react to a crisis just like the sailors on Paul’s ship: ‘The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind; so we gave way to it and were driven along.’ The first thing life’s storms do is make us drift. Because they didn’t have compasses and the stars were blocked by the storm, the sailors were totally in the dark. Sometimes it’s just when the stars go out and our compass breaks that we start to feel how strong life’s storms are. So, we drift too. We go where the waves carry us. We let our problems toss us back and forth. We’re staggered by our problems instead of being staggered by the God we have. But that’s exactly the time to do the opposite. It’s what Paul did. He stayed in awe of God, knowing He’d get him through this crisis, just as He’d done dozens of times before./p
pWhat now?br /
Now away from W4U and back to your Bible. Read verses 25 and 26. You’re gonna take Paul’s faith in his staggering, all-powerful God, and speak it to yourself. What crisis are you facing right now? Keep it in mind, write out verse 25, and put your name in place of ‘men’./p