Storms
September 1, 2010 by Mike Knapp
Filed under Featured Articles, Popular Articles
God’s Purposes in Life’s Storms
A traveler was visiting a logging area in the Pacific Northwest and was interested in seeing how the logs that would be used for furniture were chosen. As the logs came down the stream, the logger would suddenly reach out and hook one, pull it up, and then set it down. He would sometimes wait for a few minutes before grabbing another. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to his choices.
After a while, the visitor said to him, “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“These logs may all look alike to you,” the logger said, “But I can recognize that a few of them are quite different. The ones that I let pass came from trees that grew in a valley. They were always protected from the storms. The grain is rather coarse.
“The logs that I pulled aside are from high up on the mountain, where they were beaten by strong winds from the time they were quite small. That toughens the trees and gives them a fine grain. We save these logs for choice work. They’re too good to be used for ordinary lumber.”
God uses every problem, every difficulty, every trial in your life for His purposes. He views them quite differently than we do. He knows that every wind of adversity and difficulty you face, every single “storm” in you life can result in making you better, stronger, wiser, and more useful to the Master.
Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. ”
Romans 5:3-4 “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.”
Hi Mike, thanks for your time. To summarize where I was trying to go, all the people I ‘work’ with, have zero self-worth, and project resulting self-hate outward or onto self. MOST want nothing to do with “church”/religion, because of the Very Visible HYPOCRISY, and ESPECIALLY because of the JUDGMENT they have suffered from those who should know/DO better. In AA, JUDGMENT is RARE. HEALING can then happen. As in your story of Logging, they have been strengthened by the trials of their life, but don’t yet KNOW IT. IF…. such
people could find a ‘church home’ that PRACTICED LOVE (acceptance) instead of judgment, it would draw the the downtrodden…when the word got out. The three tenets behind FREE Methodist all came from Judgment being practiced in the larger church…and so it was in my first wife’s mother’s church and with her mother, hence Joan would have nothing to do with going to church when we visited her parents. So FREE, to me, also means FREE of Judgment by others.