The trade war between USA and China has economic consequences to countries and consumers. Singapore is not spared from the trade war. “Quarter-on-quarter numbers showed an unexpected contraction as well, with the Republic’s trade-reliant economy shrinking by 3.4 per cent in the second quarter compared with the three months before, when growth was 3.8 per cent Some analysts caution that the Republic could slip into a technical recession, which is two consecutive quarters of negative quarter-on-quarter growth reported straits time dated 21 July 2019.
Should the trade wars continue, Singapore may enter a technical recession, with great financial impact, which may threaten livelihood and lives.What can we do? Will we panic and desert God? Or, will we be like George Muller, whose simple resolutions were to put his trust solely on the Lord Jesus Christ, to tell no one of his needs but God Himself, and yet, he was able to support and feed thousands of orphans.
There may be times when we are face storms in our life. Health problems, retrenchment, marriage breakdown, other relationship issues are all too common a storm in many of our lives or in the lives of our friends and relatives.
Life can be uncertain and may spring sudden surprises in your life. In such storms, you may be gripped by fear in our life in such situations. How should we handle the storms in your life?
The disciples in Jesus’ time faced storms which threatened their very lives. Although the disciples were professional fishermen, they had not faced such huge storms and were terrified. We read of this in Matthew 8:23-27:
Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
However, Jesus amazed even these fishermen when He was able to calm the storm with a simple rebuke. Jesus commanded the winds and waves to stop and cause the storm to cease. When He saw the lack of simple faith in the disciples, He had to rebuke the disciples. In calming the storm, He had performed a miracle, and this brought fear and amazement to those who witnessed the miracle.
In the same way, when we face the storms in our lives, we need to depend on Jesus to help us through them. Let us look beyond these storms and look at the person who is able to calm the storm. Let us look to Jesus, our very help in time of need. Let us exercise faith to believe and depend on Jesus Christ.
And, what is faith? Heb 11:1 defines it as “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” Will we be an Abraham, who was promised descendants like the multitude of stars, but did not have a rightful heir until he was 100 years old.
Just as the disciples were saved from the furious storm, likewise, we will be saved from the storms in our lives. All we need to do is to trust, believe and depend on Jesus Christ to guide us safely through our storms in life!
He is the son of God and is able to calm the storms in our lives. Let us trust, depend and believe in Jesus Christ. He has proven Himself to be able and willing to help us and see us through the storms in our lives.