Part 1 – Storms
A familiar sound of trouble
In 1971 a strange new sound came over the radio: a low rumble of thunder, rain in the background, and Jim Morrison’s hushed voice sliding like mist through Riders on the Storm.
It wasn’t just music; it was a feeling. The song pictured life as a dangerous highway where anything can leap into the lane and end the trip.
Half a century later the metaphor still works, because life does come with squalls that seem to appear out of nowhere.
The Bible never denies the reality of storms. It does something better: it shows us a Rider who rules them.
Before we watch Him in Revelation 19 ride through history’s last tempest, let’s start closer to home—where most of our tempests blow up—inside the ordinary journeys of our lives.
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A storm told to me before I could speak
Family stories say that when I was just six months old, my parents boarded a Dutch freighter called Banka for a long crossing of the Pacific Ocean.
They weren’t seasoned sailors. They were young missionaries, following a call and holding an infant who couldn’t even sit up.
One night a violent storm found the ship.
They later described the steel deck shuddering with each wave.
Cargo chains snapped and clanged like gunfire in the dark.
Spray rattled against the porthole while the ship pitched and groaned.
All through that blackness they prayed—short, urgent prayers to the One they believed could ride any storm.
I have no memory of the smell of salt or the pitch of the deck.
But before I could form words, the God who “rides on the wings of the wind” was already shaping my life through my parents’ faith.
Sometimes faith is planted in you before you can speak.
Sometimes you are the answer to a prayer you never heard.
That family night at sea comes back to me whenever I read Mark 4.
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Mark’s storm: obedience meets chaos
> “That day when evening came, He said to them, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’” (Mark 4:35)
They launch because Jesus said so.
Obedience puts them exactly where the storm will find them.
The lake is calm at first, the way trouble often is. Then the wind drops like a hammer from the cliffs and the water turns into a fist.
Seasoned fishermen who have read this water since boyhood start bailing with anything they can grab.
And Jesus?
He is asleep on a cushion in the stern.
That detail is more than quaint; it is theological.
He is not panicking because His Father isn’t panicking.
But the disciples don’t see it that way.
They shout the prayer of frightened hearts everywhere:
> “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” (v. 38)
It’s raw, unpolished, and exactly the kind of prayer God honors.
Faith is not polite phrases; faith is bringing your fear to the only One who can hold it.
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Three commanding words
Jesus wakes.
He stands, balanced like a carpenter used to scaffolding.
He rebukes the wind and speaks to the sea:
> “Peace! Be still!” (v. 39)
The Greek is blunt—“Be muzzled.”
And instantly the sea lies flat, like a dog that drops at its master’s word.
The disciples are still trembling, but the storm is not.
Then He asks, not harshly but incisively,
> “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (v. 40)
The question isn’t about waking Him. It’s about the conclusion they drew—
You don’t care.
The storm didn’t prove His absence; it exposed their misunderstanding of His presence.
And Mark notes something striking:
> “They were filled with great fear” (v. 41)—after the calm.
They suddenly fear the Man who commands weather more than the weather itself.
Who is this? Even the wind and the sea obey Him!
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Truth for every hidden storm
What does this mean for us?
Obedience doesn’t buy fair weather.
They were in the storm because they followed Jesus, not because they strayed.
Jesus rests where He intends to reign.
His sleep was authority, not neglect.
What seems like silence may be the calm of a King who already has the next command ready.
Prayer can be blunt.
“Don’t You care?” is a real prayer when you aim it at the right Person.
He calms two storms.
The one outside and the one inside.
Sometimes the sea quiets first; sometimes your heart does.
A holy fear replaces lesser fears.
Awe of Jesus is the beginning of courage.
When the greatest power in the boat is for you, the smaller waves lose their bite.
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A lyric that says it well
Here the Gaither Vocal Band gives us language almost written for this passage:
> Sometimes it takes a mountain,
Sometimes a troubled sea,
Sometimes it takes a desert
To get ahold of me.
Your love is so much stronger
Than whatever troubles me,
Sometimes it takes a mountain
To trust You and believe.
That night on Galilee, the disciples discovered the truth of that chorus.
So did my parents on a freighter in the Pacific.
So do we whenever life’s sudden gusts push us beyond human control.
Sometimes it really does take a mountain—or a stormy sea—to make us reach for the only One who can still the wind and hush the waves.
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Part 2 – The Cosmic Storm and the Faithful Rider
From personal squalls to the storm of history
The lake at Galilee was only the dress rehearsal.
Mark’s story showed Jesus stilling a single sea for a few disciples.
Revelation now lifts the camera until we see the whole world’s ocean foaming.
What we face as individuals—cancer diagnoses, betrayals, wars—is a shadow of something larger: the storm of evil itself, the long rebellion of sin that has churned since Eden.
John, exiled on Patmos, is shown how that final storm ends.
The vision is so vast he can only describe it in layers of symbol and song.
> “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse!
The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True,
and in righteousness He judges and makes war.”
—Revelation 19:11
This is not a fantasy or a mere poetic flourish.
This is the clearest unveiling of Christ as Conqueror—the Rider who brings history to its intended calm.
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Seeing the Rider
John sees a white horse.
White is the color of uncorrupted victory. Roman generals rode white stallions in triumph parades; here the imagery is taken and purified.
He is called Faithful and True—not Attila, not the Terminator, not any warlord we fear, but One who always keeps His word.
His eyes are like a flame of fire, meaning He sees through every lie and cannot be deceived.
On His head are many diadems—crowns of every domain.
His robe is dipped in blood—and not the blood of His enemies, but His own. The victory He brings was purchased at the cross long before the last trumpet sounds.
John adds:
> “From His mouth comes a sharp sword,
so that with it He may strike down the nations.”
—Revelation 19:15
It is startling: the sword is not in His hand but in His mouth.
His weapon is Word, truth spoken in power, a love so precise it cuts through deception without shedding human blood.
The armies of heaven follow, clothed in white linen, clean and pure, but they never lift a weapon. His word is enough.
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Why the storm must come
Some storms are disciplinary; some storms are cleansing.
This one is both and more.
God is not content to patch a broken world.
He intends to end evil in such a way that it will never rise again.
> “He will wipe every tear from their eyes;
death shall be no more;
neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore,
for the former things have passed away.”
—Revelation 21:4
Hellfire in Revelation is not God gloating over endless punishment; it is evil’s final extinction, the “finishing fire” that leaves the universe clean and free.
When He says It is done, it will truly be done.
That is why the New Testament calls the end a new creation, not merely a repaired old one.
The final storm is not chaos; it is the last cleansing rain before eternal morning.
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Music that already knows the ending
John hears the sound of a multitude like rushing water, singing:
> “Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigns!” (Revelation 19:6)
This is heaven’s equivalent of a standing ovation.
It is the universe celebrating that love has finished its work.
Our hearts know pieces of that music even now.
We sing fragments of it in church, we hum it in hospital rooms, we ache for it when we watch injustice on the news.
And sometimes a song from our own culture becomes an echo of that Hallelujah.
> Sometimes it takes a mountain,
Sometimes a troubled sea,
Sometimes it takes a desert
To get ahold of me…
Those Gaither lines are more than sentiment.
They describe the very process Revelation unveils.
God is so committed to winning our hearts that He will ride through mountains, seas, and deserts—personal and cosmic—to make sure nothing finally separates us from His love.
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When the Rider speaks
Imagine the moment when the sword of His mouth—His perfect, creative Word—finally speaks over every injustice:
Over war zones: Peace, be still.
Over trafficking and abuse: No more.
Over cancer and dementia: Finished.
Over graves and grief: Arise.
No coalition, no weapon, no strategy on earth can speak with that kind of finality.
Only the Rider on the white horse can do that.
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Living in the light of the coming storm
What does this vision ask of us now?
1. Worship while waiting.
Praise is not escape; it is alignment.
We rehearse the Hallelujah before the curtain rises.
2. Witness without fear.
If the final storm belongs to Jesus, we don’t have to win arguments with panic.
We speak truth in love, trusting His Word to cut through lies.
3. Stay clean in a polluted age.
Revelation’s white linen is a gift, not an achievement.
Receive His righteousness and let it shape your choices—how you speak, spend, and forgive.
4. Keep hope muscular.
Evil’s noise can feel endless, but history is not circling a drain.
It is moving toward the day when the Rider says, Enough!
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A chorus to carry into the night
Before we move to Part 3, let the Gaither refrain ring again as a prophecy over every unfinished story:
> Your love is so much stronger
Than whatever troubles me.
Sometimes it takes a mountain
To trust You and believe.
If a mountain, a troubled sea, or even the final world-storm is what it takes for God to get a hold of us, He will ride through every gust to do it—and His love will outlast every wave.
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Part 3 – Riding with Him Now
From Vision to Vocation
Revelation has lifted our eyes to the Rider on the white horse—Faithful and True, robe dipped in His own blood, sword of truth issuing from His mouth.
We have heard the Hallelujah chorus of a cleansed universe.
Now we come back to today—Monday morning kitchens, workplaces, neighborhoods—because the question isn’t only what will happen; it’s how do we live until it does?
Mark showed Jesus ruling one storm.
John showed Him ending all storms.
Between those horizons lies our calling.
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Riding with the Rider: three faithful practices
1. Anchor to His Presence
When the Galilee squall struck, Jesus was in the boat before the storm formed.
That hasn’t changed.
Daily boarding: Begin the day in His presence before you read the weather report or the headlines.
A Bible open on a kitchen table is more strategic than any emergency plan.
Prayer as steering wheel, not spare tire: We don’t haul God out of storage when lightning hits.
We let His presence set the course long before the sky darkens.
Pray the Gaither lyric as a morning confession:
> Sometimes it takes a mountain, sometimes a troubled sea,
Sometimes it takes a desert to get ahold of me.
Let it remind you that even difficult terrain can become holy ground when He is near.
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2. Speak Storm-Stopping Words
The sword is in His mouth.
If we ride with Him, our words must echo His.
At home: Replace sarcasm with blessing.
At work: Name injustice without demeaning people.
Online: Refuse to forward contempt; speak what is true, necessary, gracious.
This is not soft speech; it is Christ-shaped speech—sharp enough to cut through lies, gentle enough to heal.
The Rider conquers with truth, not with volume.
Every time you choose a sentence of grace over a jab of anger, you ride with Him.
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3. Practice Fearless Love
Revelation’s Rider ends the cosmic war by self-giving love—love that went to the cross long before the final trumpet.
He calls His people to the same courage.
Forgive quickly.
Serve sacrificially.
Refuse to return hate with hate.
Martin Luther King Jr. put it plainly: “Someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate.”
Every time you love an enemy, you cut a link in that chain.
> Your love is so much stronger than whatever troubles me…
That chorus is not sentiment.
It is discipleship.
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Courage for present storms
The world’s headlines can feel like one long squall:
political strife, wars and rumors of wars, a planet groaning under its own pollution, families under strain.
Jesus never promised that following Him would spare us from those gales.
He promised something better: His presence in the boat and His victory at the end.
When the doctor says “incurable,”
when the market falls,
when the relationship you counted on frays,
you can still pray, “Lord, ride this storm with me,”
knowing that His calm is stronger than any wave.
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The final sunrise
All of this points forward to the day John saw:
> “He will wipe every tear from their eyes;
death shall be no more;
neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore,
for the former things have passed away.”
—Revelation 21:4
On that morning the last storm will have done its holy work.
Mountains of challenge, troubled seas of conflict, deserts of waiting—all will have served the purpose of drawing us to Him.
And the universe will sing what Handel tried to capture and the Gaither chorus foreshadowed:
> Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigns!
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Invitation
Where is your storm tonight?
A diagnosis?
A fractured friendship?
The ache of global unrest?
You don’t have to ride it alone.
The Rider on the white horse has already proven at Galilee and at Calvary that winds and waves still know His name.
Pray with me:
> “Jesus, Faithful and True, ride every storm of my life.
Speak Your peace over my chaos.
Cut the chain of hate and fear.
Make me a rider with You until the day every storm is still and every tear is wiped away.”
