You know, just this past week, I was reminded of an event that had occurred some years back that I wanted to share with you all. This young lady, in her mid 30s was at a time in her life when everything seemed to be going great! Every time she turned around things seemed to be falling right into place. It was a full life mind you, meaning her schedule didn’t leave much wiggle room but all-in-all it was good. You see, at the time, she was a single mom of two young children. She enjoyed her 9-5 job, was a fulltime student and had recently accepted a position as the children’s pastor for a struggling baby church (who had been in existence for probably less than 5 years). But she could see the light at the end of this tunnel for it was her final semester and the culminating project was the last mountain she had to climb. So, like I said, her schedule was a full one but she was loving the place that she was at in life. The trickiest part for her lately was sufficiently juggling it all, especially with that final project right around the corner. I remember her praying one day, asking God if He could help her find the time she needed to get this final project done. Well, she had a vacation planned for her family and upon returning two things happened. First, the office manager at her 9-5 presented her with an ultimatum. While she was away, the decision had been made to change things up in the office and the new position being offered to her would require her to be away from her children 5 nights a week instead of her current schedule where she was away only 2 of the nights. Immediately knowing that this wasn’t even a possibility for her family, the young lady (out of options), resigned. She returned home and that evening she received a call from the senior pastor of that struggling baby church. After lots of praying, him and his wife had decided that they were resigning…they had felt like they had done all that they could and they were tired…the church was closing its doors. The young lady turned her attention to God and said, “this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I was asking you for time to finish my final school project.”
Ever been there? I promise I’ll get back to this story a little bit later but what I really want to know is, have YOU been there? I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps we all have at one time or another. In fact, experience would tell me that I’m making a pretty safe assumption as I look out amongst you and with rather certainty say that “everyone of you either have had or will have to face a time in your life that you’re not anticipating, like that young lady, and that, if given the choice, you’d rather not find yourself in.
Perhaps it will appear to be a perfectly devised plan or a decision which seems “perfect” at the time…maybe it will be a day that has all the appearances of the start of a “perfect” one – you know the one, when everything just feels “right with the world;” every time someone asks you, “so how’s it going” the only natural response would be “Great! Everything’s just ‘perfect’”…then all of a sudden, ‘wham’ you’re face-to-face with the unexpected. Totally caught off guard; blindsided.
Maybe it’s a call you get from the doctor telling you that he would like to discuss the results of your most recent exam, something came back of concern. Or maybe you arrive at the office and find a pink slip waiting for you. It could be a call from your child’s school notifying you that there has been a terrible accident and that your child was involved. Or, maybe you come home from a long day of work and find all your spouse’s belongings gone and a note left for you, in their place …what do you do??
Well, after first denying such a thing is even happening, after unsuccessfully attempting to blame somebody (anybody) for your predicament, and after the anger finally begins to settle, my guess is that you may attempt to respond in one of four ways:
Some of you may decide that the only thing to do is to face the situation dead on! After all, up until now, you’ve always been pretty confident in your ability to maneuver in and out of life’s situations and so you figure this must be treated no differently. You take the “bull by the horns” and you are ready! You’re ready to do whatever you have to to get yourself through this! But as you plow full steam ahead matters only worsen! So, still determined, you roll up your sleeves and continue to “push through”…but nothing! No amount of effort seems to make a bit of difference. No matter what you do you find yourself in an ever worsening condition and the only thing you have to show for all your efforts and hard work is sheer exhaustion…now what?
Well, some may take a very different approach. You are just dumbfounded…you were certain that you had taken all the necessary precautions, you carefully weighed the pros and cons, then plotted out THE best possible route for the desired outcome for your life and then ‘wham’! This is entirely inconceivable!! You are the ones who go back to the drawing board, if you could only retrace your steps you are certain you can find where it is you went wrong in order to fix the problem. But no recalculating is able to change this scenario, and it’s beginning to appear hopeless…what now?
Others of you may live by the motto which says “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray”…so why make any plans at all?! Just roll with the punches. Enjoy whatever life brings your way, and when you’re handed “lemons in life make lemonade.” Yet after months of positive thinking the situation has only worsened…
And then finally, there may be those of you who simply don’t like to create waves, you don’t like to rock the boat or upset the status quo so for you the only reasonable option would be to quietly surrender. A lot of reflecting and internalizing goes on as you find a safe corner to retreat to. And yet, this time, the problem isn’t going way…
Is it possible that there may be yet another way…one that would give us very different results! Not that it would change the situation you find yourself in but that it would change the very way we see and therefore respond to our situation?
Well, thanks be to God that He doesn’t leave us to figure things out for ourselves! Turn with me please to Matthew Chapter 8. We will be beginning with verse 23. So go ahead and find the passage and then just put your finger there to hold its place for a moment, allow me to first set the scenario for you.
Jesus is beginning to call his disciples and he is beginning to preach about the coming kingdom of heaven. In his teaching he is teaching a brand new way to live, far different from anything they’ve ever heard before, and the crowds recognize that he comes teaching as one with authority. What the crowds want to know is that does this Jesus in fact have the authority that he claims to have? And so now Jesus begins to show them on what authority he comes teaching these new things.
He heals a leper and a centurion’s servant. He has power over fevers, the demon-possessed and the sick. The crowds are amazed, they desire to be around a person with such power and authority but Jesus is looking deeper, he’s looking for something more. He is calling for disciples who are willing to follow him completely and immediately.
And that’s where we find ourselves as we come to Matthew 8:23-27. So open your Bibles back up and we will pick up the story there:
“Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat…But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We’re GOING to drown!’ He replied, ‘You of little faith, why are you so afraid?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, ‘What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him?’”
Let’s pray and ask God to speak to us this morning! [pray]
So let me see if I can unpack this for you. In the first two verses (vv23, 24) we are made aware of something very important. If you look at them again you will see that Jesus got into the boat, his disciples follow him, then, without warning, a furious storm comes.
Did you catch that? The very first thing we are being told here is that though the disciples followed Jesus…a furious storm came! Or put another way, WHILE they were following Jesus or BECAUSE they were following Jesus… You see, from the very beginning Jesus is dispelling that one myth that says “if you follow him life will always be smooth sailing; you’ll never experience trials or troubles of any kind, in fact, it will simply be one big party after another.” Have you heard that before? Well Jesus is making it very clear here that that is simply not so! In fact, in John 16:33 we are told, “In this world you will have trouble…” So right at the outset the first thing we do know is this: Though we follow Jesus we will still face storms. It’s part of living in a fallen world. Storms come…they just do! And anyone who tells you any differently is simply not telling you the truth.
The key then lies in what you “DO” when the storms come!
So, here are Jesus’ disciples, on a boat because they are following Jesus…and he’s sound asleep! Then, apparently out of nowhere comes a “furious” storm! What’s interesting is that at least 4 of the disciples that were on the boat with Jesus (Peter, Andrew, James and John) – at least these 4, were seasoned fisherman. That means, they knew the Sea of Galilee well! They were definitely no strangers to the tempest storms that frequently arose on this sea…and yet, with all their collective knowledge and experience they were at the end of themselves…fearing for their very lives, and nowhere else to turn, they find Jesus and they awaken him. Do you see their words in verse 24: the disciples go to Jesus, wake him and say, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” If one were to translate these words literally it would sound more like this: “Lord, save us AT ONCE(aorist), we ARE PERISHING (present linear).” Now that is a desperate lot!
And at a quick glance, I would have thought that Jesus would have commended his disciples for finally getting it right…they’re coming, after all, to the one who could actually do something about it! But that’s not the end of the story here. Instead, if we look again at verse 26 we read, “He replied, ‘You of little faith, why are you so afraid?’”
You see the disciples had waited. They had waited until they had depleted every other possible option available to them! After all, they were the “experts” at this sea business and therefore assumed that their expertise ought to be sufficient enough to get them through this storm. But what they didn’t take into consideration was this crazy kind of storm. The storm turned out to be one of massive proportions – one they’d never experienced before. The word Matthew uses to describe this storm likens it to an earthquake that’s happening under the sea! So after exhausting every human possibility, after trying everything THEY knew to do FIRST, THEN, the disciples (certain that they were “perishing,” and out of desperation) make a last plea to Jesus in hopes he would or could do something. Sound familiar?
You see, they’ve seen him heal sicknesses, diseases even the demon-possessed. But this was nature we’re talking about…AND it was happening to THEM!! When storms come knocking at our own front door terror and threats seem to intensify. I remember listening to one of my girlfriends. She was sharing with me her current life’s journey and she was frustrated…because she wanted to know WHERE God was directing her family not THAT God was directing them. I, on the other hand, upon hearing her story, was so excited for them and even expressed my excitement by saying something crazy like: “How cool is that…you get to live just like Abraham did when God told him to go, do you remember? God didn’t even tell him WHERE he was going he just told him that he would lead him…and Abraham got to witness firsthand just how faithful God is!” I could practically hear my friends jaw drop open on the other side of the phone call, and then she just burst into laughter at hearing my perspective.
Well, a few years had past since that conversation, and now I found myself in a situation rather similar to my friend’s and all of a sudden, right at the outset, it didn’t feel like it was so “cool!”
You see, we gain quite a different perspective when it affects us personally and this is what was happening here with the disciples. All of a sudden it no longer was about watching Jesus heal OTHER people’s issues. No, it was their very own lives that were now at stake and they needed Jesus to do something NOW!
Yet, I don’t believe it was act of turning to Jesus for help that prompted Him to point out their “little faith.”… Not at all, that was even commendable perhaps. But the reason their faith was “little” was because Jesus had been with them that whole time and yet they had themselves completely convinced that they were not going to make it through that storm! Jesus wanted them to understand that it was the existence of fear that spoke of “little faith.” Unbelief (or “little faith”) surfaces as fear. Yes, Jesus does indeed call us to follow Him but in our following Him, just as the disciples had done as they hopped into that boat with Him, Jesus ALSO calls us to TRUST Him!
The disciples had interpreted Jesus’ sleeping as not caring about their situation. Yet they were about to learn that that wasn’t at all the case. You see, Jesus was in the process of revealing the authority upon which He stood. So, He awakens, and then, after rebuking the disciples, and in order to show them that they never had anything to worry about…he calms the storm. Instantly and completely!
Here’s the point, even when we don’t perceive Jesus to be working and we think instead that he must perhaps only be “sleeping,” he’s working! And when we get THAT…everything changes!
All along, the real issue was the disciples’ focus. It was completely misdirected because they were focused on the threatening storm that surrounded them. And focusing on the storm, they wrongly concluded, that not only were they NOT safe but that they were certainly going to perish. Jesus tells us instead that our focus ought to be rightly on Him.
You know, Peter experienced this for himself at a later time, in another boat incident, when he wanted to step out of the boat onto the water and walk toward Jesus, yet the moment his gaze shifted from Jesus to the winds & the waves, out of fear, he began to sink! Jesus wants us to get that ALL authority (authority on heaven and on earth) belong to Him. He is telling us that we are in good hands!! And our courage comes from this very fact, the fact that Jesus (who has all authority) is right there with us in the middle of our worst storms! The Psalmist in Psalm 89 puts it this way, “O LORD God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O LORD, and your faithfulness surrounds you. You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them.” (Ps 89:8-9) The scriptures tell us that He is able to do ALL things. Daniel 3:17 says, “The God we serve is able to save us” …Ultimately, we have NOTHING to fear! Everywhere we turn in scripture we hear the words: “Fear Not!”
So, back to the book of Matthew. There’s something else that I want be absolutely certain that you do not miss! Verse 23 tells us that even though a horrendous, hurricane-like storm encircled Jesus and his disciples when they were on that boat…Jesus was sleeping. He could rest confidently in the will of His Father…And we can too. Like the Psalmist of Psalm 4:8 we can say, “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.” We can resonate confidently with the words spoken in Psalm 23:4 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me;…” You see, if Christ is with us, (and He is) then fear is unnecessary. Our security is not rooted in our circumstances. Instead, our security is rooted in our relationship with God. And that is the faith God is calling us to.
Well let me finish that story for you…the one I started sharing at the very beginning. The young lady had been in conversation with God, she knew she needed time to finish her final school project. She also knew that “coincidentally” she currently had enough money in the bank that she could afford to be off of work for the next 1-2 months without being concerned about the finances. So, for her, the only right response was to accept the time God gave to her and get her project finished. Now, one of her closest friends thought she was nuts! “You can’t just turn to your project…you need to be looking for a job! After all, it’s not just you you know. Need I remind you, that you also have young children that you must also look after? I don’t know what you’re thinking but it’s not as if God is going to just drop a job into your lap!” But she knew that she had been in conversation with God, she also knew she was in dire need of some time to complete this culminating project, and though she wasn’t asking for both her jobs to be taken from her, she trusted that God was answering. Appears crazy, doesn’t it? Well, let me tell you the end of that story. About a week and a half into her project her cell phone rings. The lady on the other end introduces herself and says “you probably don’t know who I am but I was just talking with a friend and I believe that YOU might want to work for me.” After accepting the position, in utter amazement at God’s goodness and faithfulness, all the young lady could do was give thanks to God. The start date for the new job gave her the exact time she needed to finish her final project! She hung up the phone and could only beam with an inexpressible joy and peace as she gave non-stop praises to God!
You see faith is choosing to follow JESUS (not a well-devised method or plan) but the person of Jesus. He asks us to simply follow HIM…and in our following, He asks us to TRUST Him! Jesus’ authority IS sufficient to overcome any trial that may come our way! Earlier we read part of John 16:33, let me finish that verse for you, it goes like this: “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you WILL have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!”
I’m reminded of a catchy little phrase: “Don’t tell God how big your storms are, tell your storms how big your God is.”
So, when the storms come, and they will come, where will your focus be? On the power of life’s storms or on the power of Jesus who can overcome them?
