Navigating Your Perfect Storm

By Bob Wenz

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus stood on the threshold of the greatest personal crisis any human being would ever face. John's account of that night not only records for us the events of that evening, but also offers a remarkable profile of One who not only is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared for the cosmic storm raging, but who uses his last supper with his disciples as a seminar to equip them for the inevitable life crises they will face as his followers. Crises afflict the lives of nearly every believer, so Navigating Your Perfect Storm looks at five anchors and two admonitions Jesus put in his disciples' grasp to pull them through life—like kedge anchors once deployed on sailing ships on windless days. While the anchors offered to the disciples are significant, Jesus also admonishes his disciples, first by framing the crises of life with an eternal perspective—the reality of an unseen eternal kingdom—that will provide peace when the material world is in upheaval. Second, Jesus warns that those who follow him should not be so foolish or proud as to think they are exempt from the storms. Navigating Your Perfect Storm is not a series of sermons or a how-to self-help book, but a set of reflections, insights, and illustrations for those who seek to follow Jesus today in a turbulent world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP
• Release date: Nov 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780830859245

Bob Wenz

For twenty-seven years, Dr. Bob Wenz (DMin, Bethel Theological Seminary) served as Lead Pastor in churches in Michigan, New York, California, and Washington, DC, before becoming vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals. At the end of 2005 he stepped from that role due to the challenges of a chronic lung disease. He now serves as adjunct professor of Bible, apologetics, Christian thought, and philosophy; and under the banner of Renewing Total Worship, he serves as a consultant to Christian ministries and a coach to pastors. He has been married to Suellen for 34 years and has two children and one fabulous granddaughter.

Book preview

PART I

ANTICIPATION

1

OUR NEED FOR ANCHORS

IN THIS WORLD YOU WILL HAVE TROUBLE. BUT TAKE HEART! I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD.

The events of the first decade of the twenty-first century suggest that this century might be either the most tumultuous decade in history . . . or perhaps the last decade of human history.

We have seen the global economy teeter on the precipice of total meltdown and a resulting instability and recession.

We regularly are alerted to possible global pandemics that threaten to overshadow AIDS, which is nothing less than the greatest natural disaster in human history.

A global food crisis will deepen before it improves. Mothers in Haiti at times resort to feeding their children mud cookies.

Malaria still kills more than a million people every year.

Recent events bring a chilling reminder that terrorism is not going away and may well increase beyond what we’ve witnessed in New York, Washington, Madrid, London, and Bali. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran threatens the West with chaos, believing that such chaos will usher in the Twelfth Imam (an Islamic messiah figure), the global dominance of Islam, and the end of human history. The Taliban is so deeply entrenched we wonder if that movement can ever be contained. International jihad seeks nuclear weapons that feasibly could be placed in a small boat and sent up the Potomac or Hudson River. The prime ministers of Israel warn that such capacity may soon be a reality. Some see in these events an unprecedented global crisis that will bring the return of Christ, anticipated in both the Bible and Qur’an (although with vastly different scenarios!).

Recent population projections suggest that at current rates, Islam will be a majority in Europe by the middle of this century, a situation with astounding potential consequences.

Although we recognize that the individual chances of being killed by a terrorist are still less than being struck by lightning, the glut of information about increasing crises from twenty-four-hour news channels can cause us to shut down mentally and emotionally. Global statistics overwhelm us, yet there is a chilling truth to Joseph Stalin’s claim that where one death becomes a tragedy, a million simply becomes a statistic.

It really doesn’t make much difference which eschatology is correct. If Christ returns as the kingdom is extended to the whole earth (the amillennial view), it will not be without an enormous upheaval of some variety and with the sword. Radical Islam will not go away quietly. Or if the premillennial view is correct and Jesus returns before, during, or after a great tribulation, the return of Christ will be marked by a time of great global crisis. In either case, most of us will have to face trials. The world is neither a healthy place nor a safe place to be.

As well insulated as most of us in North America are from the crises of AIDS and al Qaeda, we are not insulated from the myriad of personal crises that repeatedly send us to the book of Job. Economic crises in the United States have cost millions of people their jobs, retirement savings, and hope. Even if we have been spared seasons of great difficulty, we are all personally aware of real people who are facing a real crisis, people who are very aware right at this moment that life is difficult.

Crises usually come without warning.

KEDGING

In a time of relative tranquility and comfort during my childhood, I learned a song in church declaring that My anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock.¹ Storms and anchors were foreign concepts to me—whether literal or figurative. But now years later I am all too familiar with the reality that the storms of life come sweeping over you. Along my journey a few Navy veterans have been more than happy to teach me a thing or two about ships’ anchors in days past. Anchors, they told me, were utilized in ports at anchorage and in times of storms—and, they added, anchors were also deployed when the waters were calm. And so they introduced me to the ancient art of kedging.

Kedging consisted of placing small kedge anchors into small boats and then rowing them out up to one-quarter mile, dropping those anchors in the water, and pulling the ship forward using the anchor capstan. Then the whole process was repeated. And repeated again. And again. Although the kedge anchors were most often used to pull a ship into a narrow anchorage, they were most cleverly deployed on windless days.

Old Ironsides—the USS Constitution—is the legendary American ship from the War of 1812, known best for deflecting British cannonballs from its wooden sides as though they were made of iron. Old Ironsides is also famous for escaping the British while outnumbered in a sea battle known in naval history as The Great Chase. A British squadron pursued the ship during a two-day period with almost no wind. American ingenuity yielded the method of self-propulsion called kedging, a practice that enabled the American ship to evade the British flotilla.

Of course, kedging is only a curious historical footnote, as even the great sailing ships that remain in service now have engines for negotiating ports and windless days. Yet I would invite you to join me in learning about spiritual kedging. This life skill has great promise that all of us should master, not for navigation of the seas but for the navigation of the soul through life. The seas of life are almost never calm, and we will find kedging a useful skill when the seas of life are stormy and we are looking for a safe harbor.

Life kedging involves dropping our anchors at the right places and allowing them to pull us forward through life, both through the winds and waves as well as the calmer days. Navigating life this way depends almost entirely on our willingness to acknowledge that we are otherwise adrift. Where we lower the kedges makes all the difference.

These anchors we set will pull us through life, moving us along day by day. They also keep us from drifting and crashing onto the rocks when the storms of life rage against our soul. I believe you will find that kedging is a life skill that all of us can master, learned not from a salty metaphor but from the remarkable and practical example of Jesus, who mastered the use of spiritual kedging in his own life and taught it to his disciples that last