Anxiety and fear are commonplace in modern society, and many people are struggling to stay afloat. In his book, How to Quiet a Hurricane: Strategies for Christian Endurance in the Midst of Life’s Storms, pastor and author Justin Kendrick provides tools and advice to build up the inner strength we all need to tackle the hardships of life and find peace in the midst of it.
Christian Today spoke with Kendrick to hear about his motivation for writing the book and how we can gird ourselves spiritually for turbulent times.
Why did you write How To Quiet a Hurricane?
Even Christians can walk through trials and fall apart. I think this is because so many followers of Jesus have no framework for suffering, or what God’s purpose might be in the trials they are experiencing. After a couple of decades of watching this, I went to the Scriptures wondering what it had to say around endurance - and how we become people of endurance. That was really the starting point for writing the book.
The second part of the title is ‘Strategies for Christian Endurance in the Midst of Life’s Storms’. What do you think makes Christian endurance different from ordinary endurance?
I would say that Christian endurance begins with weakness. I think that with a non-Christian view of the world, endurance begins by trying to summon up some inner strength to become mentally or physically fit. That is the Western culture’s version of endurance - ‘you can do it’; ‘prove to the world that you are strong enough’; ‘prove to your haters that you’re stronger.’
Christian endurance begins with the opposite foundation - ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’; ‘when I am weak then I am strong.’ Christian endurance begins with a revelation in the embrace of our own brokenness and weakness. We don’t come to the world trying to build an identity on our accomplishments, rather we collapse into the arms of Christ and this is the place where all strength begins for the believer. That is very different from a cultural idea of endurance.
How do you hope readers will tackle the storms of life after reading your book?
The thesis of the book is that the more I internalise God’s love for me the stronger I become. Paul prays a prayer in 2 Thessalonians 3:5 - ‘may the Lord direct your heart to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ.’ That passage is like a house with two rooms, Paul is praying: I pray that you would first believe that God loves you - this is the outer room. The more you believe that, then you can enter into the inner room which is the steadfastness of Christ, where you can find the very strength that Jesus had to endure on the cross. You can personally find it, but you have to enter through the love of God first.
My prayer with this book is that people would walk away believing more deeply that they are loved by God, then from there begin to build out a theology of suffering. In one of the chapters I talk about walking through the fire and that is where I provide a basic theology of suffering. As people walk away from the book, I would hope that they would first internalise God’s love for them and then, secondly, not be surprised or taken off guard when suffering comes, but instead have a framework to understand it and then move through it.
In the book you touch on the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. How does this story speak to you?
That story in many ways changed my life. There is an answer that the three men give at the mouth of the fire. They say that ‘God is able to deliver us and will deliver us and even if He doesn’t we are not going to bow to you.’ There are three convictions that they articulate in that response. The first is that God is able. The second is that God is willing, that God will deliver us. I think that most Christians in the West believe that God is able and willing and this is why they are thrown off when suffering comes - they do not have that third leg of the stool. The three men say ‘but even if He doesn’t, we are not going to bow.’ This is their conviction that God is wise, that He is not going to do things the way we want him to do them. We do not understand His ways about 99 per cent of the time and so we have to trust ourselves to an intellect beyond our own. That is really difficult for a post-Enlightenment culture in which people think their own way of seeing things is ultimate.
We are called by God to take our eyes off the waves and fix our gaze back on Him. In the book you write ‘the ship functions best when the crew members keep their eyes on the captain.’ Can you share a time when your eyes were fixed on the waves and if so how did you go about fixing your focus back on Jesus?
I have been a pastor of a church for 13 years in New England, US. In the US, it is the least churched area in America and is very post-Christian. When we planted this church we had big dreams of reaching people with the gospel, and we did. We saw hundreds and thousands of people turn to Christ and their lives were changed. What we also learned is that pastoring a church for over a decade comes with so much heartache in the sense that you are drawn to people’s darkest and most challenging moments.
When I have seen people walk away from their wife and kids, or sink into depression, I have frequently found myself - and still do find myself - in those storms with them and asking ‘God, why?’. It has been in those moments that God has taught me to fix my eyes back on the captain and to say listen, there are answers. Even if we don’t fully understand the whys, we can understand the who, that God is loving and kind, his arms are open to us, even when human choice leads us far away from him.
We know the Christian life is not a life devoid of trials. Jesus himself who did no wrong had the ultimate trial ahead of him. Why do you think as believers it is important to keep in mind that life will not be free of trials?
Underneath that question I think is the question that every religion and every life system is trying to answer, and that is: why is there suffering in the world? For the Christian, God never fully answers the question. In the book of Job, he frequently asks why has all this happened and in the end God appears to Job and says ‘I’m not going to explain myself to you, I am God and you are not, but I have a plan and it is for your good’, and Job has to surrender to an intellect bigger than his own.
I think for Christians one of the most important basic convictions is that ‘I am not God’, and that He does have a purpose bigger than what I can see. What we see in the Bible - and this is such a radical idea - is that rather than alleviating suffering, God entered the human story in the person of Christ and took our suffering upon himself.
Theologians have called this the ‘great reversal’. He took suffering and made it a tool for glory. On the cross Jesus suffered and saved the world. When you talk to Christians who have endured suffering, they would often say ‘I don’t want the suffering, I didn’t enjoy the suffering, and yet through the suffering God revealed himself to me and changed me in ways that I would never have been changed without it’. That is the great reversal - God taking a bad thing and turning it into a good thing.
Christians get tangled up there because they think ‘well, does that mean that suffering is good?'. No, it does not mean that suffering is good. The Scriptures say that God works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. It doesn’t say all things are good, it says all things work together for good.
What advice would you give to a reader who perhaps suffers with chronic anxiety?
My encouragement to that reader would be that it takes a long time to build a city and inside of us there is a city built on ideas, assumptions and beliefs. I would encourage them to allow this book to be the start of a new city inside of them. It will hopefully challenge them to turn to God’s word and begin to rewrite some of the assumptions. Most people function from the assumption that God is far. This book says no, God is near. Most people function from the assumption that God does not care, and this book says no, He loves you with an everlasting love.
These are difficult truths to get inside of us, and so to those who are wrestling with anxiety I would just say patiently, daily retrain your heart to see the world through a different lens and over time, over weeks, months and years, the truth of God’s word will dawn on your heart and peace will start to replace those anxious feelings. Rarely does it happen in an instant.
Would you say most Christians today fail to strategize for life’s storms?
I don’t want to overstate it, but it might be the biggest problem with Christians today. We live in a culture that tells us trials and suffering are interruptions, so when they come we are shocked, offended and surprised. This is why so many Christians are melting down; they simply haven’t prepared. If you live in an area where tornadoes come every year, wouldn’t it be wise to have a plan for a tornado? If you live in an area that floods every year, wouldn’t it be wise to have a plan or buy some flood insurance? These are practical things we do but we live in a world where hurricanes come, both inside and outside our lives, every year. The big idea of the book is you have to prepare for these things in the way you think about God and the world, and hopefully this book is one way that we can begin to prepare.
How to Quiet a Hurricane: Strategies for Christian Endurance in the Midst of Life’s Storms, by Justin Kendrick, is available in the UK priced £16.50.
