“This storm will kill you.” That’s how Florida Gov. Rick Scott described Hurricane Matthew as he warned residents to flee the strongest storm system to threaten the US in a decade.

The western eyewall of the hurricane brushed by Cape Canaveral this morning, producing wind gusts of 115 mph. More than 300,000 people are already without power across the state of Florida. Officials are predicting that power will eventually be lost to 2.5 million as further “catastrophic damage” is expected.

Forecasters warn that this storm could be “unlike any hurricane in the modern era.” About 3.1 million people are under mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders in three states. Some areas in the hurricane’s path could be uninhabitable for weeks or months to come.

The region has instituted the largest mandatory evacuation since Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. However, the storm surge is expected to be much larger than the New Jersey shore saw during that tragedy. As the hurricane continues to hug the coast through Saturday, the National Weather Service warns that Matthew could deliver “the strongest, most destructive winds anyone in parts of the northeast Florida coast and Georgia coast has seen in their lifetime.” Catastrophic flooding is predicted as well.

How should we respond today?

One: Obviously, we need to pray.

Pray right now for God to move Hurricane Matthew out into the sea and to protect those in its path. The psalmist said of God, “He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed” (Psalm 107:29). Ask him to do the same with this storm and to help those facing its devastating power.

Continue reading Denison Forum – ‘THIS STORM WILL KILL YOU’ →

Nearly two million people are fleeing in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas as Hurricane Matthew approaches. The storm has already devastated Haiti and eastern Cuba and is expected to strengthen over the next day. However, officials in South Florida are worried that residents have become complacent after eleven years of near misses. Weather authorities know what everyone should: the best way to respond to a hurricane is to flee its path.

This fact applies to more than hurricanes.

A new study involving more than a million women found a significant correlation between birth control pills and depression. The risk is especially elevated with teenagers: women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen who took oral contraceptives were 80 percent more likely to become depressed.

While some teenagers take the pill for medical reasons, 86 percent do so for birth control. If these women chose to abstain from premarital sex, they would avoid the pill’s depressive side effects.

Scripture repeatedly warns us to flee temptation (1 Corinthians 6:18; 10:14; 15:33; 1 Timothy 6:11; 2 Timothy 2:22). Contrary to conventional wisdom today, God’s moral standards are not puritanical legalism but an expression of his grace. He is a loving Father who knows his children and wants only what is best for them (Psalm 103:5). His standards are like signposts intended to keep us on the road and out of the ditch.

For instance, God warned Jerusalem that her sins would lead to her demise: “Woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose corrosion is in it, and whose corrosion has not gone out of it!” (Ezekiel 24:6). This is a powerful metaphor. When a cooking pot is corroded, nothing put inside it is edible. So it is with immorality: it poisons all it touches and ruins what comes from it.

It did not have to be this way. God told his people, “I would have cleansed you” (v. 13), but they refused his forgiving grace. Now they would face his judgment: “I will not go back; I will not spare; I will not relent; according to your ways and your deeds you will be judged, declares the Lord God” (v. 14).

Continue reading Denison Forum – HURRICANE MATTHEW AND THE MORAL STORMS OF OUR DAY →