Mightier Than the Breakers of the Sea

Mightier Than the Breakers of the Sea
Avril van der Merwe

Photo Credit: Avril van der Merwe

            Don’t you love the ocean with its rhythms and its moods?
Its constant yet shifting sounds, from peaceful susurration to thundering roar both soothe and energize; its ceaseless motion, from rippling rollers to unleashed breakers mesmerize. Each wave is somehow distinct from the last.
Don’t you love to feel its flying spray against your skin; to walk along its shores as its salt water laps gently at your feet, then surprises with a capricious surge that soaks to the knees? You experience the power of its propulsion one moment, and its drag the next.
The sea makes my whole being sing!
I once walked along the beach at Seaside, OR on a winter day when the wind was blowing so hard, that walking into it involved both a full body workout and a free skin exfoliation!  The strength of the wind blew the sand along the beach like a fast-flowing river. The tide was at its peak, and the waves were rushing at the shore, collapsing in a crash, and racing up the width of the beach. Spindrift and spray and spume were flying everywhere, like silly string at a party. Laughter bubbled up in me as I reveled in the abandoned vigor of it all.
“Watch out for logs”. The warning came from the only other person to brave the beach that day. Mighty tree trunks, too heavy for a man to lift, were being strewn about by the waves in an oceanic game of pick-up sticks.
What might there is in the wind and the waves! In fact, the Coast Guard helicopter had to pluck several embattled sailors from the sea that day, who found themselves at its mercy. Mere human strength is rendered puny against the forces of nature.
And yet… the Bible tells us that God not only created all of this by nothing more than His Word, but He also continues to sustain it by the power of that same Word! His Word contains more power than all the forces of nature combined! If wind can cause sand to race and stream along a beach, and waves can toss tree trunks around, oh what power is unleashed when the God who spoke these things into being, sends forth His Word!
On the beach that day, as I thought of the power of the Wind of the Spirit, and the power of God’s Word and God’s voice, inside of me a quiet voice made this observation: “Jesus never worried.”
Jesus, confined to human flesh, experiencing all that a human being experiences, was never anxious. Why? Because He knew He is the Living Word through whom all things were made and by whom all things continue to be sustained. He knew the Father and the Father’s power. And so rather than worrying, He released power through His word: speaking a dangerous storm on the sea to stillness; commanding healing to the centurion’s servant who lay dying at home; calling Jairus’ dead daughter to awake to restored life; summoning Lazarus to leave the tomb and LIVE!
Through Him we have been made sons and daughters of the same Father; through Him we have become co-heirs with Him, inheriting the resources of the Kingdom; through Him, the power of the Living Word is activated on this earth, in and through our lives. It is from THIS position that Jesus says, “Do not worry about anything…”
The power of the Father Creator, the power of the Living Word, is made available to us through Jesus Christ, and no force – natural or unnatural – can stand against that power! Let us declare the power of the God who loves us with unending love, the power of the Living Word, into circumstances before which we stand helpless and the storms that overwhelm – and rest in the might of the One who is:
“Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea – the Lord on high is mighty”! (Ps. 93:4).