What do you do the day the bottom falls out? In May 2025 Pastor Linda Reese taught that a crisis is not the end of the story, that there is solid ground to stand on while it lasts, and that trouble has a way of making people ready to listen.

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.

2 Corinthians 1:20 (KJV)

Repentance is a change of direction, not a bad mood

She started further back than most crisis talks do. Repentance means more than being sorry about how you have been living. It means living differently. It is the work of the Holy Spirit deep in a person, and it moves someone out of slavery and into service they are actually glad to be in.

She spoke from her own side of it. A lot of people believe they are happy living the way they live, and it is a different life once you give your heart to God. “I have more friends now than I did when I was living for the devil,” she said. She hardly knows any of the people she used to run with.

That is the turn: off the broad road and onto the narrow one, a full hundred and eighty degrees in the direction of daily living.

Two words on a beach

Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, which in His day had around thirty fishing towns along it, with Capernaum the biggest. He saw Simon Peter and Andrew working their nets and said two words: follow me. They left the nets. Further along He called James and John, and they left the boat and their father where they stood (Matthew 4:18–22).

Pastor Linda noticed that Jesus used their own trade as the challenge. Commit to Him, and He would make them fishers of men. The room sang the children’s version of it together.

Why fishing is the right picture

She would not let it stay romantic. Fishing was hard work. It took patience, skill and endurance. It meant braving stormy weather. Sometimes you succeeded and sometimes you came back with an empty boat. It made a living and it never made anybody wealthy.

That is the honest shape of reaching people, and it is why a crisis matters. People in trouble will listen to things they would not hear on an ordinary week.

Moved with compassion, not sympathy

Jesus went through the cities and villages teaching, preaching and healing, and when He saw the crowds He was moved with compassion, because they were as sheep having no shepherd (Matthew 9:35–36). Pastor Linda was careful about that word. It was not polite sympathy from a distance. He was stirred to the depths as He saw what sin had done to people, and He knew He was the only place their deepest need could be met.

Then the line that turns it into a job: “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers” (Matthew 9:37–38).

She paused there to explain the difference between the two words. Preaching, as she puts it, is stating a message to bring people to salvation. Teaching fills in the details and adds the instruction. “I usually do teaching more than preaching,” she said. “When I go to another church it is usually preaching. But here I do mostly teaching.” That is a fair description of a Sunday morning in this chapel.

And when it is you in the water

Standing on a promise does not mean pretending. It means deciding in advance whose word you will believe when your feelings say otherwise. And a church is a body: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). When one person is in trouble, the rest do not watch. They carry.

Something to do this week

Write down the one promise you most need to be true right now, and read it aloud each morning. Then think of one person in trouble and do the carrying part.

Related messages: Jesus Calms the Storm, Having Faith in Hard Times and Praising God in Hard Times.

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