Christianity Defined

Calamity seems to be all around us. We hear about it in the news constantly. From earthquakes to tsunamis to tornadoes to hurricanes. And from there we here about floods, power outages, and water shortages. Beyond that there’s wars and rumors of wars. It seems to be never ending.

It can be frightening—and it begs the question, “How do I prepare for calamity?”

How do you prepare for things that are completely out of your control? How do you prepare for hard, difficult things when you don’t know which hard and difficult thing is heading your way?

These are valid questions that we need answers to for ourselves, for our families, and also for others.

Today I want to share with you the 3 P’s:

• Prepared
• Provision
• Protection

Because there is in fact a way to prepare for calamity. You do not have to live in fear and you do not have to live like a future victim—like a person just waiting for their turn of doom and gloom.

That is not God’s will for your life. It is God’s will that you step into safety.

God wants you to know today that He is your safe place—and I’d like to show you how.

Prepared

It is Satan’s desire for you to feel scared, helpless, and hopeless. He is your enemy and he has no desire to see you live a joyful, content life in the midst of chaos. If you don’t know much about this enemy and how he desires to destroy you, I encourage you to read my article What Is Satan After. You need to know the truth about who he is, what he is after, and why.

His agenda for you is always fear. God’s agenda for you is always life and life abundantly (John 10:10).

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7).

God wants you to walk in power, love, and soundness of mind. That is why He gave you His Word. Through reading the Bible, we become prepared, empowered, and strengthened for anything that may come our way. It is a preparedness that is not dependent upon ourselves and our own ability, but on God.

This is why it is so important to make reading the Bible a part of your everyday life. The Bible is filled with prophecy and truth. God has already told us what is coming in our future, how to be ready for it, and how to have victory through it all.

And He didn’t share this information with us to scare us, He shared it with us to prepare us.

When you are prepared, you are in position for victory and not defeat. You have a better perspective on things. You can see difficulty and challenges coming down the line, but because you are centered in God’s Word, and sheltered under His authority and His Lordship, you know that you are covered. Covered by His grace and covered by His goodness.

To be prepared is simply to be rightly aligned with God:

• Saved by grace. If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I invite you to use our guided Prayer for Salvation.
• Committed to reading the Word of God. Reading the Bible should be a regular part of your everyday life and routine.
• Committed to obeying the Word of God. It is important to not just read the Bible, but to actively and intentionally obey it. I share more about this in my course Discipleship: The 5 R’s—I invite you to check it out.

Take a step in the right direction today and start reading the Word of God. You’ll find yourself prepared and empowered to face whatever comes next.

Provision

Having enough seems to be an increasing worry and concern amongst people today. Many are worried about not having enough money to afford their most basic needs. Many are worried about food becoming more and more scarce. Many are worried about water shortages and what that will mean in a longterm scenario.

It’s a thought trail that can lead to despair and hopelessness if your answer isn’t rooted in something bigger than yourself and bigger than anything this world has to offer.

Your answer, your hope, must be rooted in God. And it should be, because He has shown over and over again that He is more than capable and more than willing to help those who put their trust and faith in Him. One of those examples is the story of Elijah the prophet and the Widow.

And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a cup, that I may drink.” And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” So she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” (1 Kings 17:7-12).

Let’s pause here for a minute and gain context.

During this time, Elijah the prophet declared a drought. He himself was living off the water in the brook and then the brook dried up. God sends him to meet a widow and says He will command her to provide for him, but when he meets her, she has nothing to share with him. She had only enough to feed her and her son their last meal, and then she was expecting them both to die from lack of food and water.

This widow was in a desperate situation and could see no way forward. She was at a hopeless point.

And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me; and afterward make some for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.’” So she went away and did according to the word of Elijah; and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke by Elijah. (1 Kings 17:13-16).

The widow saw no way to provide for her and her son beyond that last meal. She had given up, but God did not give up on her. Through Elijah, He challenged her to put her faith in Him, in spite of how bad things were all around her.

He was calling her to trust Him as her safe space. And when she did, when she chose to use her faith to do what Elijah asked her to do, she learned a valuable lesson.

She learned that God’s ability to provide, is not dependent on natural resources or natural abilities.

God’s power supersedes physical and natural laws.

Her flour and oil supernaturally, miraculously never ran out. As long as the drought lasted—so did her ingredients, to feed both herself and her household.

When she put her faith in God through obedience, He became her safe place and He became her provider.

God’s provision is not dependent on how well the economy is doing. His provision is not dependent on whether or not the farmers had a good year. And His provision most certainly is not dependent on what you have or do not have.

There is no circumstance that God can’t provide for you in. Choose today to put your faith in Him and choose to walk in obedience to Him. When you do, you can be certain that He will take care of you. He will provide for you no matter how impossible your situation appears to be.

Protection

The truth is, most of us just want to feel safe—we want to know that we have the ability to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.

But as violence and destruction seems to be rushing in all around us—safety seems to be rushing out.

How do you keep yourself and others safe through a natural disaster you can’t control? How do you keep yourself and others safe through a random act of violence in a large crowd? And how do you keep yourself and others safe when the economy is failing and people are becoming more and more desperate?

Our natural tendency is to cling to safety, but when safety is slipping through your fingers faster than water—clinging to safety clearly is not the answer.

The fact is, we need something—or better yet, Someone to cling to, who has the ability to be both our steady foundation and our strong tower.

The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. (Proverbs 18:10).

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. (Matthew 7:24-25 NIV).

We don’t need to cling to safety—in fact, we can’t. We need to cling to God and His Word. He alone has the ability to protect us through it all.

The 3 P’s is our answer to calamity. Get prepared and know what’s to come by knowing God’s Word. Receive provision through your obedience and dependence on God. And stop trying to cling to safety apart from Him. He is your protector. He alone is your foundation and your strong tower.

The safest place to be is in relationship with God, through Christ Jesus.

Without Him we are doomed to our best efforts, our limited knowledge, and our limited resources. But with Him, we are right where we need to be, doing exactly what we need to be doing—while living prepared, provided for, and protected through whatever may come our way.