Anxiety and fear are commonplace in modern society, and lots of persons are struggling to remain afloat. In his book, How to Quiet a Hurricane: Strategies for Christian Endurance within the Midst of Life’s Storms, pastor and creator Justin Kendrick provides tools and advice to accumulate the inner strength all of us must tackle the hardships of life and find peace within the midst of it.
Christian Today spoke with Kendrick to listen to about his motivation for writing the book and the way we will gird ourselves spiritually for turbulent times.
Why did you write How To Quiet a Hurricane?
Even Christians can walk through trials and disintegrate. I believe it’s because so many followers of Jesus haven’t any framework for suffering, or what God’s purpose may be within the trials they’re experiencing. After a few many years of watching this, I went to the Scriptures wondering what it needed to say around endurance – and the way we grow to be people of endurance. That was really the place to begin for writing the book.
The second a part of the title is ‘Strategies for Christian Endurance within the Midst of Life’s Storms’. What do you think that makes Christian endurance different from atypical endurance?
I’d say that Christian endurance begins with weakness. I believe that with a non-Christian view of the world, endurance begins by attempting to summon up some inner strength to grow to be mentally or physically fit. That is the Western culture’s version of endurance – ‘you possibly can do it’; ‘prove to the world that you just are strong enough’; ‘prove to your haters that you just’re stronger.’
Christian endurance begins with the alternative foundation – ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’; ‘once I am weak then I’m strong.’ Christian endurance begins with a revelation within the embrace of our own brokenness and weakness. We don’t come to the world attempting to construct an identity on our accomplishments, slightly we collapse into the arms of Christ and that is the place where all strength begins for the believer. That could be very different from a cultural idea of endurance.
How do you hope readers will tackle the storms of life after reading your book?
The thesis of the book is that the more I internalise God’s love for me the stronger I grow to be. Paul prays a prayer in 2 Thessalonians 3:5 – ‘may the Lord direct your heart to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ.’ That passage is sort of a house with two rooms, Paul is praying: I pray that you just would first imagine that God loves you – that is the outer room. The more you think that, then you definitely can enter into the inner room which is the steadfastness of Christ, where you will discover the very strength that Jesus needed to endure on the cross. You can personally find it, but you might have to enter through the love of God first.
My prayer with this book is that folks would walk away believing more deeply that they’re loved by God, then from there begin to construct out a theology of suffering. In one in all the chapters I speak about walking through the fireplace and that’s where I provide a basic theology of suffering. As people walk away from the book, I’d hope that they’d first internalise God’s love for them after which, secondly, not be surprised or taken off guard when suffering comes, but as an alternative have a framework to know it after which move through it.
In the book you touch on the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. How does this story speak to you?
That story in some ways modified my life. There is a solution that the three men give on the mouth of the fireplace. They say that ‘God is in a position to deliver us and can deliver us and even when He doesn’t we are usually not going to bow to you.’ There are three convictions that they articulate in that response. The first is that God is ready. The second is that God is willing, that God will deliver us. I believe that almost all Christians within the West imagine that God is ready and willing and for this reason they’re thrown off when suffering comes – they should not have that third leg of the stool. The three men say ‘but even when He doesn’t, we are usually not going to bow.’ This is their conviction that God is smart, that He is just not going to do things the way in which we wish him to do them. We don’t understand His ways about 99 per cent of the time and so we now have to trust ourselves to an intellect beyond our own. That is actually difficult for a post-Enlightenment culture wherein people think their very own way of seeing things is ultimate.
We are called by God to take our eyes off the waves and fix our gaze back on Him. In the book you write ‘the ship functions best when the crew members keep their eyes on the captain.’ Can you share a time when your eyes were fixed on the waves and if that’s the case how did you go about fixing your focus back on Jesus?
I actually have been a pastor of a church for 13 years in New England, US. In the US, it’s the least churched area in America and could be very post-Christian. When we planted this church we had big dreams of reaching individuals with the gospel, and we did. We saw tons of and 1000’s of individuals turn to Christ and their lives were modified. What we also learned is that pastoring a church for over a decade comes with a lot heartache within the sense that you just are drawn to people’s darkest and most difficult moments.
When I actually have seen people walk away from their wife and children, or sink into depression, I actually have incessantly found myself – and still do find myself – in those storms with them and asking ‘God, why?’. It has been in those moments that God has taught me to repair my eyes back on the captain and to say listen, there are solutions. Even if we don’t fully understand the whys, we will understand the who, that God is loving and sort, his arms are open to us, even when human selection leads us far-off from him.
We know the Christian life is just not a life devoid of trials. Jesus himself who did no incorrect had the last word trial ahead of him. Why do you think that as believers it can be crucial to take into account that life won’t be freed from trials?
Underneath that query I believe is the query that each religion and each life system is attempting to answer, and that’s: why is there suffering on the earth? For the Christian, God never fully answers the query. In the book of Job, he incessantly asks why has all this happened and in the long run God appears to Job and says ‘I’m not going to clarify myself to you, I’m God and also you are usually not, but I actually have a plan and it’s on your good’, and Job has to give up to an intellect greater than his own.
I believe for Christians one of the crucial necessary basic convictions is that ‘I’m not God’, and that He does have a purpose greater than what I can see. What we see within the Bible – and that is such a radical idea – is that slightly than alleviating suffering, God entered the human story within the person of Christ and took our suffering upon himself.
Theologians have called this the ‘great reversal’. He took suffering and made it a tool for glory. On the cross Jesus suffered and saved the world. When you check with Christians who’ve endured suffering, they’d often say ‘I don’t want the suffering, I didn’t benefit from the suffering, and yet through the suffering God revealed himself to me and altered me in ways in which I’d never have been modified without it’. That is the nice reversal – God taking a nasty thing and turning it into thing.
Christians get twisted up there because they think ‘well, does that mean that suffering is nice?’. No, it doesn’t mean that suffering is nice. The Scriptures say that God works all things together for the great of those that love him and are called in response to his purpose. It doesn’t say all things are good, it says all things work together for good.
What advice would you give to a reader who perhaps suffers with chronic anxiety?
My encouragement to that reader could be that it takes a protracted time to construct a city and inside us there’s a city built on ideas, assumptions and beliefs. I’d encourage them to permit this book to be the beginning of a recent city inside them. It will hopefully challenge them to show to God’s word and start to rewrite a number of the assumptions. Most people function from the belief that God is much. This book says no, God is near. Most people function from the belief that God doesn’t care, and this book says no, He loves you with an everlasting love.
These are difficult truths to get inside us, and so to those that are wrestling with anxiety I’d just say patiently, each day retrain your heart to see the world through a distinct lens and over time, over weeks, months and years, the reality of God’s word will dawn in your heart and peace will start to switch those anxious feelings. Rarely does it occur instantly.
Would you say most Christians today fail to strategize for all times’s storms?
I don’t need to overstate it, nevertheless it may be the most important problem with Christians today. We live in a culture that tells us trials and suffering are interruptions, so after they come we’re shocked, offended and surprised. This is why so many Christians are melting down; they simply haven’t prepared. If you reside in an area where tornadoes come every 12 months, wouldn’t or not it’s sensible to have a plan for a tornado? If you reside in an area that floods every 12 months, wouldn’t or not it’s sensible to have a plan or buy some flood insurance? These are practical things we do but we live in a world where hurricanes come, each inside and outdoors our lives, every 12 months. The big idea of the book is you might have to arrange for this stuff in the way in which you consider God and the world, and hopefully this book is a technique that we will begin to arrange.
How to Quiet a Hurricane: Strategies for Christian Endurance within the Midst of Life’s Storms, by Justin Kendrick, is out there within the UK priced £16.50.
 Anxiety and fear are commonplace in modern society, and lots of persons are struggling to remain afloat. In his book, How to Quiet...){kind=link}