An Umbrella In The Storm

This last Sunday, our Chaplain was preaching on Acts 27 and 28. He finished up a series and one point stuck between my ears. Since there isn’t much else up there, it rattled around for a while. I am going to try to get it out by putting it down on paper. After reading this you may have something rattling around between your ears too.

In these chapters God gives Paul a message through an angel and tells him that everyone on the ship will be alright. To get the picture, Paul is on a ship being blown along by a storm. It is being blown toward the ocean and people were despairing. God gives Paul this message and he relayed it to the Roman officer in charge. There is nothing between them and the Atlantic Ocean except the hand of God. So, He moved them toward a little island called Malta where the land.

Neat little story. It is complete with hunger, snake bites and God healing Paul and a bunch of the people on the island. Read it. The thing that strikes me is that there are only three or four believers on the ship of 276 people and what happens? Because of the faithfulness of a few, the many were saved.

Jesus Himself said that there will be weeds planted among the seeds of wheat. They will be there until Jesus returns! Does that mean that God does not bless His church because there are weeds in it? Nope! He blessed the church and the weeds get blessed because they are in the church. Want proof? In 1 Corinthians it says that the unbeliever in a marriage is blessed because of the believer (1 Corinthians 7:14-16). There is another place that states that children are saved because of the faith of their parents.

Can I put this another way? When we are walking with the Lord Jesus we get blessed. You just cannot help but be blessed because the Lord loves you. I am not saying that nothing bad ever happens. In spite of the bad things, you still get blessed. You get blessed even when you ain’t acting right. You may get disciplined, but you still get blessed. Our finances get blessed, our attitude gets blessed, our worship gets blessed, and we are changed more into the image of Jesus. In the midst of all of that, guess what is happening? Those around you are getting blessed also.

Let me put it a little differently. If there were a big rain storm going on and you were walking outside, what would you want? An umbrella, right? Well, when we are walking in fellowship with Jesus, God holds this big umbrella over us. BIG UMBRELLA! It covers you and everyone walking with you. This gives us the opportunity to testify to everyone around us because they notice that things are different when they are around us.

So, make sure you are under the umbrella when the storm hits.