It is Well
Where is Your Faith • Sermon • Submitted
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· 9 viewsWe must learn to sing and declare it is well with our soul in times of testing of faith. When things don't seem to be changing or getting worse it is there that our souls answer is to respond with such an answer.
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Where is Your Faith?
Where is Your Faith?
Jesus asks us this as a form of encouragement and a rebuke.
The waves and the winds
24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
Life has a way of buffeting us.
Buffet:
knock (someone) over or off course.
(Of misfortunes or difficulties) afflict or harm (someone) repeatedly or over a long period.
Following the direction of Jesus and at his word.
Perhaps its a promise for you or a calling?
Perhaps its situations that have caused you to suffer and hate the circumstances in you are in.
Whatever it might be life has a way of buffeting you.
Life is a Mission
Life is a Mission
It brings us new challenges and circumstances we never thought that would be us or happen to us.
We begin to question Jesus and God and ask why me?
We make scenarios in our head if only I was born there or had that. Wishing for a better outcome or place in our lives.
Here comes Jesus
25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.
The disciples did not recognize His nature
For Jesus walks above the waves and winds that buffeted them
26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
Jesus always reassures us in who He is
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
Telling us to take courage for it is Him.
The Great I AM
It is Him the same one who delivered the people of Israel form Egypt
He is reminding the disciples that Jesus that He is the Great I AM!
The God who departed the Red Sea and demonstrated His mighty acts throughout history.
Nothing is impossible for Him
No situation, waves, or winds are going to hold Him back from coming to you.
Peter still did not recognize that it was the Him the Great I AM
Questioning Jesus authenticity
28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
29 “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
Jesus knows that Peter can do it for He called Peter out
If Jesus calls you out of the boat it is because you can do what He has called or promised you.
Jesus is not a liar that He should change His mind or promises.
We all like Peter take that first step, but we are all too familiar with our circumstances. We begin to doubt Jesus and ourselves because we see the waves and winds that have buffeted us again and again.
We lose heart wanting to give up or go back to our comfortable place of life.
30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
You of little faith, why did you doubt?
You of little faith, why did you doubt?
It brings me to a text of a women in Shunem during the time of Elisha the prophet.
The Shunammite women was a wealthy gentile women.
She respected and knew Elisha was a holy man.
Her account goes as told
8 One day Elisha went to Shunem. And a well-to-do woman was there, who urged him to stay for a meal. So whenever he came by, he stopped there to eat. 9 She said to her husband, “I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God. 10 Let’s make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp for him. Then he can stay there whenever he comes to us.”
11 One day when Elisha came, he went up to his room and lay down there. 12 He said to his servant Gehazi, “Call the Shunammite.” So he called her, and she stood before him. 13 Elisha said to him, “Tell her, ‘You have gone to all this trouble for us. Now what can be done for you? Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?’ ”
She replied, “I have a home among my own people.”
14 “What can be done for her?” Elisha asked.
Gehazi said, “She has no son, and her husband is old.”
15 Then Elisha said, “Call her.” So he called her, and she stood in the doorway. 16 “About this time next year,” Elisha said, “you will hold a son in your arms.”
“No, my lord!” she objected. “Please, man of God, don’t mislead your servant!”
17 But the woman became pregnant, and the next year about that same time she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.
The promise of God to a women who was barren
She didn’t want her hopes to get to high because she probably has been disappointing time and time again. Wanting a child of her own and could not produce.
Like life after trying and trying again we don’t want to be mislead by the promises of God at His word.
Just like Peter when Jesus called Him out to the sea to walk upon it.
Jesus calls us out of that circumstances for whatever it may be.
The Shunammite women had a turn of events.
18 The child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the reapers. 19 He said to his father, “My head! My head!”
His father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.” 20 After the servant had lifted him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. 21 She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and went out.
22 She called her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and a donkey so I can go to the man of God quickly and return.”
23 “Why go to him today?” he asked. “It’s not the New Moon or the Sabbath.”
“That’s all right,” she said.
24 She saddled the donkey and said to her servant, “Lead on; don’t slow down for me unless I tell you.” 25 So she set out and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel.
When he saw her in the distance, the man of God said to his servant Gehazi, “Look! There’s the Shunammite!
The women maintaining the faith and trying to come to the Elisha, so that He might do something.
Seeking to save the boy, but will we have such a response like she did to this when tragedy happens to us. Its the wind and waves that buffet us to question God.
26 Run now, I pray thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well.
It is well!
It is well with things in life buffeting me.
It is well even when tragedy or things don’t go as planned.
It is well Jesus.
27 When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone! She is in bitter distress, but the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me why.”
28 “Did I ask you for a son, my lord?” she said. “Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t raise my hopes’?”
We come out to ask for help from Jesus just like Peter when he began to drown.
Because we see the waves and winds howling and promises of God suddenly are taken away from us.
Jesus ask us, Why did you doubt?
Our doubt levels go up and our faith remains small.
We don’t see a way out but just to tell God didn’t I tell not to get my hopes or call me?
The women response was indeed the response that passed the test of faith.
It is well with my soul
God hid it form Elisha because it would seem that He wanted to see what she will do after she had trusted the God of Israel and his prophet.
Remember she was not part of the Israelite community she came to know God was through the holy man Elisha.
She had an encounter with the Great I AM
For see how this story ends
29 Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand and run. Don’t greet anyone you meet, and if anyone greets you, do not answer. Lay my staff on the boy’s face.”
30 But the child’s mother said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So he got up and followed her.
31 Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but there was no sound or response. So Gehazi went back to meet Elisha and told him, “The boy has not awakened.”
32 When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch. 33 He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. 34 Then he got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out on him, the boy’s body grew warm. 35 Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out on him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.
36 Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite.” And he did. When she came, he said, “Take your son.” 37 She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out.
As she bowed down acknowledges the favor of God and the man of God just another similar boy who was resurrected from the dead by Elisha’s former master Elijah.
24 Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”
As Jesus word is himself God so when He calls you to come! Come, for His word is always true!
We may say it is well throughout the winds and waves that buffet us in following Jesus because
He is the Great I AM
He is the Great I AM
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
It is well with my soul for who He is
That he is the Great I AM
Nothing is impossible with Him and He will get you across to where He commanded so.
W must learn to sing and worship the Lord that it is well with our soul
Testimony