What is up with the weather lately? There have been clouds and rain almost every day for at least 2 weeks!

I’ve been hearing from tons of students and friends how disappointed they are with their summer so far due to the weather. No sunshine, too humid, bad beach days, canceled events and so on. The rain. The bad weather. It seems to be putting all good things on hold.

Have you ever felt that way in life? As if you’re going through a prolonged storm and it won’t ever stop raining?

Jesus gives us an example of a man who builds his house on sand and a man who builds it on a rock. He says when the storm comes against the house built on sand, the house ends up being knocked down due to a weak foundation. But, He says the house built on the rock will withstand the storm when it comes.

So normally we would read this and say, “Great! I will make Jesus my foundation then and everything will be just fine.” Except we forget one thing… not even the house built on the rock was exempt from the storm. 

The storm is coming. In this life, it rains. We experience pain, failure, betrayal, sickness, and grief. There are times of joy but their are also times of suffering. The storms will come, the question is how do we endure the storms of life? How do we suffer well? Paul gives us the following words as words of encouragement in the midst of suffering:

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. – Romans 5:3 

In my opinion, in this scripture the key word is simply this: ”knowing.” In the midst of suffering there are a lot of things we don’t know. When we are faced with a million things we don’t know, scripture tells us to cling to the one thing we do know; that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. And because of that we can endure, our character can continue to be produced into His likeness, and we have a hope that never fails.

This scripture gives us a glimpse of light in the midst of the storm. There is so much we can learn in the season of suffering. God is perhaps more at work in our hearts during seasons of suffering than even in seasons of joy.

This weekend we will learn to embrace the season we are in to reap the harvest of where we are going. The storm is coming… lets embrace it!

Looking for a church in Mercer County  and the surrounding Hamilton area (Lawrenceville, East Windsor, Pennington, Chesterfield, Bordentown, Heightstown, Trenton, Ewing, Princeton, West Windsor, Langhorne, Newtown, Yardley, Washington Crossing)?  Join us this Sunday at the AMC 24 in Hamilton NJ at 9:30 or 11:00 am.  Learn more about 217church and our vision here! 

Pastor Kevin