Memorial Day Weekend 2008. Just another chance to spend some time in the great outdoors with family and friends. That is, until the storms came. And I'm not just talking about any old storms. I'm talking about big storms.

First, there was the storm of Thursday evening. We had taken our pop-up camper out to a local state park and were attempting to set it up. The roof lumbered a bit and started to rise. When it was just about two feet off the body of the trailer, we heard a loud "pop" and the roof smashed down with great force. The lift system had broken.

Luckily, no one was hurt. We hooked the unit back up to the van and headed home, where we grabbed a couple of tents before returning to the park, determined all the more to have a great weekend.

That night, nature brought a thunderstorm through the Missouri River valley and it raced across the campground, leaving everything wet and windblown. With the sunrise, however, there was hope for a pleasant Friday.

It wasn't until later in the morning that we received news of another storm. A relative of one of the folks we were camping with had been involved in a work-related accident and was fighting for his life. Compared to this news, the storms we had already faced that weekend seemed intensely insignificant.

Our friends departed for the weekend and we stayed to face even more rain and wind as the weekend progressed. But our inconveniences paled beside the tragedy our friends and their loved ones were enduring.

I have learned, through years of fret and worry, that we are able to face the storms of life only by the grace of a living and loving God. Jesus has given us the authority to overcome tough times, but we must have the courage to execute our authority and speak the Word of God even in the midst of storms.

As people of God, we have to know what to do during the storms of life. Storms will come. Being hearers and doers of the Word empowers us to endure the storms life. If we refuse to give up, we will see the end of our faith.

The storms we face do not mean God doesn't love us, or that God is angry with us. We must not personalize these storms. Use storms as an opportunity to draw closer to God. They teach us that we have the ability to endure and overcome.

We don't really know why storms come. Some may come as a result of disobedience, but they may also come as a result of being obedient to what God has called us to do. No matter what the reason, it's imperative that believers operate in the authority of God's Word.

When we speak to the storms in our lives with the authority of the Word of God, we can expect things to change for the better.