“When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.”
Samuel Rutherford
Storms always come. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus used the coming storms to illustrate the difference between those who followed his teachings and those who did not lay such a foundation in their life. Here is the familiar passage:
24“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27)
The winds blew and beat against that house. The rain, the floods, and the winds all served to illustrate the strength of the foundation, which is, the hearing and the doing of the teachings of Jesus. I recently read about the value of the wind (the shaking of a young tree) in an article by an arborist. The author notes:
A number of years ago, researchers in Illinois (as I recall) placed a number of young trees in a greenhouse. One group was supported by (tied to) a stake. A second group was left to grow unstaked. And a third group was left unstaked but manually waved back and forth for several minutes every day. At the end of several months, the three groups of trees were measured for growth in height and trunk diameter. The staked trees were the tallest and weakest (small trunk diameter), the unstaked trees were intermediate in height and trunk diameter, and many were not growing straight. The unstaked trees that were waved back and forth each day were the shortest but had the greatest trunk diameter, thus were the strongest.
The illustration applies itself. When the hand of God shakes your life, he is not trying to destroy you. He is rather helping you, through affliction, to deepen your roots in him. May this week be a week of deepening for you. Have a blessed week.
Love in Christ,
Pastor Dale
PS. Parents, please do not forget about Promotion Sunday, September 15th. Please pick up the D-Group Material for your youth group member (6th through 12th grade). Thank you.
