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Faith in the face of an ice storm: Is God a parachute in my plane? · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Greetings on this Friday, January the 23rd, 2026.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Innocent Forum's daily article podcast.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's daily article is written by Theologian and published author Dr. Jim Dinesson and narrated by yours truly, Chris Elkins.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where I live, we are less than 24 hours away from a major ice storm that is predicted to shut down our area for days.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Roads will become impassable, power lines may come down.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone is stocking up on food and preparing for the worst.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Since most of us remember the great Texas freeze of 2021, we're reliving the pain of those terrible days in advance.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our situation is by no means unique.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: This system could end up affecting more than 200 million people in the US.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's an odd thing, really.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our collective impotence in the face of nature.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You and I live in the most technologically advanced age in human history.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The slab of glass in my pocket can access the world's store of information gathered across human history.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: These words I am typing on my laptop will soon be transmitted to hundreds of thousands of people in every nation on Earth.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: My home is more climate-controlled and electronically equipped than any home I have ever owned.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yet a winter storm, I can neither force stall nor shorten, will dominate my life for the next few days.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Think how people felt in the earlier areas, when there was no sophisticated meteorological instruments to predict the weather,
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: and no electricity to light and heat their homes.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: No wonder every civilization known to history has worshiped some type of deity or deities.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you're facing forces you cannot defeat, it only makes sense to call for help from forces greater than yourself.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: If worshiping a God of rain and storms can protect you and your family from the weather, this becomes a why not proposition.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: If such worship seems to correlate over time with better outcomes, you'll likely codify your religious beliefs into religious practices.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have personally seen some of the alters built by Greeks and Romans across their empires to their pantheons of gods.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've met tribal people in Southeast Asia who worship the elemental spirits they believe in habit and control their natural environment.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I prayed this morning to my God, asking him not only to guide what I am writing today, but to protect my family as the I-Storm approaches our area.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Recent literature has documented the positive outcomes from religious practices for mental health, social stability, and overall wellness.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But these outcomes are natural,
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: not supernatural.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: They can be seen as a kind of placebo effect.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: The consequence of wish fulfillment and practices that produce benefits by virtue of the activities themselves rather than the supposed deities being worshiped.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's the matter of negative outcomes.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It would be one thing if religious practices always led to positive results.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: If people were healed every time we prayed for healing, or storms were diminished every time we asked God for such protection, a skeptic would be more likely to believe that an actual God was a work.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I have prayed for healing that did not come, and protection that never arrived.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So of you.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fact that I believe in Jesus doesn't prove Christianity to be true, any more than a Muslims or Hindus beliefs persuade me to adopt Islam or Hinduism.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'll continue to pray for divine protection as the I-Storm approaches, but with the knowledge that my prayers may not be answered as I wish, and that many in our post-Christian culture see my religious beliefs as outdated superstition akin to someone praying to Zeus.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: At this point, my career-long study of Christian apologetics can be helpful.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can cite remarkable evidence from history, archaeology, science, and logic for the existence of God, the veracity of Scripture, the historical existence and resurrection of Jesus, and the continuing activity of the Creator in His creation.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: but a post-truth culture will likely listen to all of that and retort, that's just your truth.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: If all truth is personal and subjective, even objective evidence for Christianity become subjective as well, and even a professional apology such as myself must admit that no faith commitment can be compelled through reason.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: All relationships require a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: You could not prove scientifically or rationally that you should go to school until you attend its classes or that you should get married until you get married or that you should have children until you have children.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: you could not prove that reading this article is worth your time until you read it.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You examine the evidence to be sure, but then you must make a decision that proves it self by experience.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Herein lies my point today.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unlike every other religion and world view known to human history, Christianity offers the proposition that the God we worship can and will
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is not just the right hand of the Father from Ephesians 1 verse 20, I can too Zeus atop Mount Olympus.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is also living by his spirit in every person who trusts him as Lord according to 1 Corinthians 316.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is not just with us to the end of the age, stated in Matthew 28 verse 20, he is also Christ in you, the hope of glory, announced in Colossians 1 verse 27.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Paul testified in Galatians 2 verse 20, Christ lives in me and we are filled with all the fullness of God affirmed by Ephesians 3 verse 19.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the problem.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I relate to Jesus as transactional as the Greeks pray to their gods, giving him what I think he wants, so he will give me what I want.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I miss the essence and the uniqueness of the Christian faith.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I make him primarily a weather god in the face of an eye storm or a healing god in the face of a health crisis or a wisdom god in the face of a
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I make him a means to my ends, a genie in my bottle, a parachute in my plane, or a spare tire in my car.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is not the heart of Christianity.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The beauty of our faith is that we can experience the God of the universe personally and intimately.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can know the joy and peace of his presence.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can walk with our father through the valley of the shadow of death into whatever lies on its other side, noted in Psalm 23 verse 4.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can know that he is with us as we pass through the waters, promised in Isaiah 43 verse 2, because we are in his hand, and he is in our heart, stated in John 10 verse 29.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can pray for help to be sure, in fact, he encourages us to do so in Matthew 7, verse 7, and James 4, verse 2.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at a level far higher and deeper than any transaction, we can experience life and life eternal in a conscious, abiding experience of his presence in the depths of our being, no matter what circumstances life brings us today, reference by John 15, verses 1 through 11.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot know what I storm you are facing today, but I do know that your father wants to redeem it by using it to draw you closer to himself, not just for what he can do for you, but for what he can be in you.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: What will you do to experience this romance today?