Sermon: "Sinking In The Storm"

How Can God Be Good If I Feel This Broken?

I know you’re in pain. I know it feels impossible to lift your eyes when your body aches, when your heart feels raw, when your soul feels like it’s on fire. I know what it is to beg God for healing and to wake up still hurting. I know what it is to wonder, “How can God be good if I feel this broken?”

The truth is, you don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to be strong all the time. Loving Jesus in the middle of suffering doesn’t always look like joy or bold faith. Sometimes it looks like tears streaming down your face as you whisper, “I still need You.” Sometimes it’s just holding on by the edge of your fingernails. That, too, is love.

Jesus isn’t asking you to fake it. He isn’t asking you to put on a mask. He isn’t disappointed in your weakness. He knows. He felt the weight of agony, the sting of unanswered cries. On the cross, He Himself cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” He knows what it’s like to feel abandoned in the pain.

And yet, He stayed. He endured. Because His love for you was greater than His suffering.

So even now, when your body is tired and your soul feels scorched, His love holds you. His goodness isn’t proven by the absence of pain but by His refusal to leave you in it. He is closer than your own breath, even when you can’t sense Him.

If all you can do is breathe His name, that is enough. If all you can do is let your tears fall in His presence, that is worship. You don’t have to fix yourself to be loved by Him.

You are safe to fall apart in the arms of Jesus. And when you can’t take another step, He will carry you.

Because His goodness doesn’t change with your circumstances. His goodness is nailed into history by a cross and sealed forever by an empty tomb.

Even here, even now, you are not alone. 

- Ellie Mont

Meme: Go To God

Tending To The Inner Storm Of Anxiety

“But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat,
and it began to fill with water. Jesus was sleeping …”

Mark 4:37-38 (NLT)

It was a chaotic day, and my body was holding the stress. I felt like someone had plugged me into a jolting electrical socket.

Do you know that feeling of being both “tired and wired”?

Anxiety can feel deeply disorienting and disconnecting. I’ve often returned to one scene in the Gospel of Mark that puts vivid imagery to the landscape of an anxiety-riddled inner life.

Jesus and His disciples were on the Sea of Galilee when a fierce storm came upon them: “High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water. Jesus was sleeping …” (Mark 4:37-38).

This fierce windstorm mirrors what happens in our bodies when we’re anxious. Anxiety is the body’s way of responding to threats, real or imagined, that trigger the nervous system into survival mode. Our bodies tighten and our minds race because deep down, we don’t feel safe. Anxiety is always about a felt sense of catastrophic aloneness and isolation.

When I feel those churning waves and stormy waters brewing within, I relate to the disciples’ desperate cries: “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?” (Mark 4:38, NLT).

God, do You see me?
Do You care?
Why aren’t You doing anything?
How long will this go on?

With the simple command, “Be still,” Jesus calmed their external environment (Mark 4:39, NLT). He moved toward them, bringing His presence to their fear. But what captures my attention is how we find Him just moments before: asleep.

His sleeping wasn’t an absence of care but an embodiment of the deeper rest He invites each of us into. A kind of rest that can settle our inner world - not in the absence of external storms but despite them.

Here, Jesus embodied the psychological experience of living anchored in God. We can rest in the “still waters” of God’s love and care (Psalm 23:2, ESV) even when the winds and waters of our external world churn. Jesus models what the field of psychology has only recently discovered:

The antidote for anxiety is not calm; it’s safety.

While calm might bring short-term relief, true relief from anxiety comes when our bodies experience and internalize a felt sense of safety.

Some of us have been taught to view anxiety as a character flaw, but it’s not. Anxiety is appropriate in situations that are unsafe or overwhelming. God's invitation is not to pretend there is nothing to fear. Rather, when we feel the storm of anxiety churn within us, we are invited to sink into the indwelling presence of our Resting One, who can help us navigate our fear.

I wish I could tell you that I stay in this grounded, connected place all the time. I don’t, but I’m learning to return more quickly. We can come back to this still and holy place within, experiencing an internal sense of safety with the God who never leaves — who has been there all along.

Dear God, help me rest in You today. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

- Taylor Joy Murray
Provided by "Proverbs 31 Ministries"

You Are Not Alone...

Maybe what you need right now isn’t to have all the answers or to force yourself to be okay. Maybe what you need is just to survive this moment. To take one breath at a time. To be honest about the pain instead of pretending it’s not there.

It’s okay if all you can do is admit, “This hurts more than I can carry.” That honesty is not weakness, it’s courage. You don’t have to fix everything today. You don’t have to see the whole path forward. You just have to make it through this breath, this heartbeat, this small piece of time.

And in that space, know this: you are not alone. Even if you can’t feel God right now, He’s closer than you think. And being real about your pain doesn’t push Him away, it draws Him near.

So let yourself be here, as you are. Not okay, but still breathing. Still here. And that is enough.

- Ellie Mont