God Of The Hurricane

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Well, Happy New Year. And a Merry Florida Christmas. For some of you, you just got down here. Doesn't it feel good to be back in Florida? You can thaw out for a little bit. Yeah, the last few days have felt a bit more like normal in Florida. Whatever normal is anymore. I don't even know if we know normal. After pandemics, and now inflation, and political maneuvering, and supply chain issues, and polar vortexes, and falling iguanas, red tide, and, yes, hurricanes. The last five years plus since Hurricane Irma have just been, what a mess in Southwest Florida, right? Just so many things going on. If you don't feel discombobulated by it all, I'd be surprised because I sure have been. I don't think we've had at FGCU a normal semester, whatever that means, in about five years. And after a while, it gets tiring. The more things change, the more they keep changing. They don't stay the same. And change doesn't even feel like progress anymore. It's just accelerating faster and being more random and more unpredictable. We're looking to culminate our series called The Florida Christmas on just that feeling. And we find that feeling, that sense, in the book of Nahum of all places. We're dealing with the God of the hurricane as well as the God of the covenant when we look at the God that is proclaimed here in Nahum. And so that's going on. And next week, I think you're going to be, I hope you're happy with the series as we're going to do one that's based on Psalm 46, be still and know that I am God, in that verse. We're going to look at how we are to be human beings, not human doings, and what it means to be content, to be still, to be present in God's presence and with others. And so a series of five weeks. So often we have these series at the beginning of the new year. How are you going to improve your life? How are you going to do this? It's kind of like Christianity, often at the beginning in January, turns to a self-help movement. And it's like, no, that's not what it's really about. The thing that God wants me to be is more like be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, which is much more about character than it is about accomplishing a 10K run. So we're going to look at that in this series called Be. But today we're back in a Florida Christmas to finish it up. What I've noticed, I'm wondering, I was thinking this week quite a bit as I was painting. I had a lot of time to think when you're painting. Have you ever done that? You're just kind of like this. So you've got time to think. And I was thinking that, you know, when I grew up, I know for some of you it's so long ago. It's the medieval ages. But there was this feeling, especially in small town America, of stability, predictability. Everything kind of was like that movie Pleasantville, if any of you've ever seen that. Maybe it was black and white, like Pleasantville, but it was very nice and easy and simple. And you just conformed and were into it. But our whole kind of American cultural bubble burst, I think, on 9-11. And since then, some of you, you weren't even born then, were you? Yeah, my kids weren't even born at 9-11. But since then, you've grown up in a totally different feel in the United States than I did. And since then, we've had this almost psychic, cultural, gut-level angst about America, where we just feel no longer invincible. We feel very vulnerable as a nation. And I think almost all of the aftermath, 20 years later, we're still looking at the aftermath of all the polarization now and balkanization of America and tribalism and paranoia that's out there and everywhere, is all going back to that event then that changed our sense of safety, security, and invincibility. What we experienced on 9-11 and how we have felt that way is nothing new to the majority of the world, by the way, though. A lot of different countries and nations and people groups, and especially those who are living in lower standards of socioeconomic standards than we do, they have had that feeling of vulnerability since they were born. That's just the way it's always been. And they've always felt like other superpowers around the world were in charge, not them. And I think that's what's going on in the Prophet Nahum's day for Israel itself. Because around them were the nations of the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Egyptians, and they were stuck in the middle of these superpowers not being one themselves and wondering how in the world they fit into the whole picture. And to this time and place, the Prophet Nahum then spoke the words that both will challenge you, I think, and comfort you today. I'm hoping that's what happens. And I'm hoping what you get today is a deep sense of conviction without feeling like you've been judged. Do you understand the difference between that? Where it's like, wow, I needed that, I didn't like it, bu...