Sheryl Brady - Finding the Calm in the Crazy

We’re going to find the calm in the crazy. For over three decades, I have been a student of biblical characters. Three decades—I sound old when I say it like that! I mostly love studying the Old Testament characters. I call them characters, but the truth is they are real flesh-and-blood people. They are men and women; they are heroes, harlots, saints, and sinners. They have so many meaningful moments tucked into the pages of what we have come to know as scripture. If you really want to get to know them, all you need to do is open the book.

One of the things that I have learned as I’ve looked into many of their lives is that their strengths and weaknesses, strangely enough, are very similar to yours and mine. The times in which they lived are very different; the circumstances we live under today are very different than what they experienced. The culture was vastly different back then, and yet, in spite of all our differences, much like them, we still reach for dreams. We wrestle with this thing called fear and uncertainty, struggle with indecisiveness, and battle with loneliness, anxiety, and betrayal. Yet, just like them, we wipe our tears and fight the good fight of faith, having done all to stand. Some of us are still here, and even though we don’t share the culture they had or the customs they lived by, we do have something in common: it is called the commonality of humanity. We are all human—at least, I think we are. Since God speaks to us in the language of human experience in His Word, this gives you and me the opportunity to meet God for ourselves as we read their stories.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the story of Ruth and Naomi and found myself right in the middle of it. I discovered God in the life of Noah, and something in his story connected with my life. As I looked into the lives of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Isaac and Esau, Nehemiah, Esther, and Job, I found the Word to be incredibly relevant to each of us. As we look into their lives, it allows us to see God for ourselves. It also provides us with a broad view of God, showcasing the all-encompassing, far-reaching, wide-ranging view of faith in action—faith that is in a fight, faith that is functioning, faith that is developing, and faith that is transforming and changing. It shows us faith when it fluctuates. It reveals faith in a time of crisis, offering us a front-row seat to faith in times of fear, pain, doubt, exhaustion, failure, anxiety, and adversity. As you read the Word of the Lord, you can find all of that right there.

Before it is all said and done, as you read, you’ll have to agree that faith always shines its best when circumstances are at their worst. It always shines brightest in the midst of darkness. And though we may be in a battle at times, though we may be facing grief, or experience an all-time low in our life, there is something deep inside every one of us called the need to survive. Look at someone and tell them, «I need to survive! I need to survive!» Because of that particular need, we learn how to keep progressing under pressure.

Have you ever gone through something and looked back and said, «Lord, I know that was nobody but You on my side»? Because I know me, and I know that should have taken me out; it should have wiped me out. But by Your grace, I am still here! On the first Sunday in January of 2025, by grace, I’m still clapping my hands. By Your grace, I’m still singing! He is the reason I keep going. I don’t know why you keep going, but He is my reason. He is the reason I get up time and time again. In case nobody ever tells you this, let me be the first to tell you: your faith is going to be vital to your survival! Look at somebody and tell them, «Your faith is vital to survival!» Tell someone else, «That means your faith has got to work! It’s got to work!»

There is no way around it; your faith as a believer has got to work. You don’t have time for broken-down faith; you don’t have time for depleted faith. You don’t have time for defeated, defective, weak, or non-producing faith. Your faith has got to work! So, in order for that to happen, your faith has to be strengthened. Every time you get an opportunity, you need to sneak in and allow your faith to be strengthened in the presence of the Lord. We have to deepen, cultivate, and elevate that seed of faith—that mustard seed faith that is within us. We have to build ourselves up!