Rebuking the Storm

Amazing Grace
John and Julie
Mon 7 Dec 2009 17:35
Did I mention the excellent weather we've had for our crossing and the number of people praying for our safe passage?  Well, here is an example of what I mean.  These 2 pictures were taken early this morning when I was on watch and demonstrates the blessing and covering that we have had, continue to have and are very grateful for.
 
Take a look at the left hand side of this picture below.  The boat symbol in the middle is us and the big purple blob behind us is a 'squall' cell.  Its basically a big cloud which has rain and strong winds associated with it. Typically the wind can go as high as 30-40kt.  The radar actually detects the rain so it is the rain you are seeing rather than the cloud.
 
 
I saw this cell coming towards us a good way off. But this one was different from some of the others, I took our usual jink in course (see picture) to the south but this storm continued to follow rather than diverging from us.  I could feel the wind strengthening while it was some way off and reefed the sails. When I cam back I decided to take this picture to demonstrate what you can be up against when sailing in these waters.  Since it seemed that the cell would track right over us and we would get the brunt of the wind, rain and large seas, I decided to rebuke it and commanded (in the name of Jesus) the wind to be calm and the seas to calm.
 
The picture below is taken 3 minutes after the first one.  (Sorry for the quality - I hadn't realsied that I had shaken the camera and there are a few raindrops on the screen).  However it clearly shows what happened.  Within a minute the cell had neatly split in two and it subsequently passed neatly down either side of us.  The wind hardly changed from what it had been - we experienced none of the gusts that we have seen in thhe vicinity of other squalls. The rough seas never came.  We did get a few spots of rain as you can see from the screen.    
 
 
Praise God and keep praying - thank you! 
 
Interestingly and off the screen, there was another boat "Starchaser" a mile or two to our north at the time. They also had a squall pass very close to them at exactly the same time which did not diminish like ours did - we spoke to them on the wireless later and they were just drying out.