You might remember the phrase from a famous movie a while back, “Life is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re going to get.” And if you have lived any number of years here on this earth than you know that that phrase is true…life is anything but predictable. Your circumstances can change with a blink of an eye, and in the process your whole world can turn upside down. Life is not always pleasant and it‘s not always what you want it to be…you never know which way the wind will blow and what storm it will bring with it.
Often our peaceful lives are interrupted by these disturbing storms. It may be an unexpected shower, like a cutting remark that wounds are pride. Or it may be a brutal F-5 tornado that tears through your world, like the loss of a loved one, a pink slip from your boss, or maybe a lump on your breast that the doctor says is malignant.
In life, no matter the forecast there is always a chance for rain. Job 5:6-7 “For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground. Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.” Now how we react to those unpredictable disturbances will either make or break us in our Christian life. This dramatic incident on the Sea of Galilee should teach us some valuable lessons about life and also some basic principles about God’s protection in life’s storms.
So let’s look at this text together, and I want you to see three practical lessons that you can apply to your life and help you in your Christian walk.
The first thing I want you to see is that Every Person Experiences Storms, even if they have Jesus in their boat. This storm came impartially. Having Jesus in their boat did not exempt the disciples from being battered by a serious squall. And just because you are a Christian doesn’t mean that you are exempt from the problems of life. A preacher once said that there are three kinds of Christians: Those coming out of a storm, those in a storm, and those fixing to go into one. Every one of us fits into one of these categories.
Some of you may be enduring a downpour even as we speak, and you are wondering how you will keep your boat afloat, and as a Christian you are not exempt from those problems. Sometimes storms come into our lives because of our own misdoings, Like Jonah who disobeyed God so God sent a mighty storm after him. You decide to go to the coast and gamble your paycheck away then you at the end of the month you ask God why your having trouble making ends meet. You neglect to discipline your child, you never teach them the things of God and when they hit the teen years you wonder why you have such a rebellious teen.
Sometimes the storms come from our own bad choices, but not always…at times they come even when we are doing right. Unlike the storm that hit Jonah, these disciples were not being punished for an act of disobedience. In fact, they were doing exactly what the Lord had asked them to do…they were going to the other side of the lake, and yet they still had to endure a storm. Just because you attend church doesn’t mean you’ll never get cancer. Just because you marry another Christian doesn’t mean you’ll never have problems in your marriage. Just because you tithe doesn’t mean that you’ll never be in debt. Matthew 5:45 says that “ He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” The rain falls on us both, so don’t be mislead by a preacher who tells you that if you become a Christian you’ll never have to worry about being sick, or about your finances, that you’ll never experience any type of trouble at all…don’t believe them because it’s just not true. Even as a Christian the storms will come. God does not exempt us from pain. If He did then people would follow Him for purely selfish reasons.
Jesus told a parable about two builders who built their house on different foundations, one was on solid rock and the other was on sand…now notice in that parable that the storm came an hit both houses and the only difference was in the type of foundation the house was built. You see being a good Christian doesn’t exempt you from accidents, malignancies, tornadoes or termites; but it does give you a foundation to withstand the storm. It has been said that God had only one Son without sin, but none without suffering. Even the apostle Paul had a thorn in the flesh. In John 16:33 Jesus says, “…In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." So don’t be discouraged when you face the storm, realize that it is a normal part of life.
The next lesson I want you to see is that the storms often come unexpectedly. These disciples were expert fisherman and they were even caught off guard by the storm. Storms in the Sea of Galilee are especially rough. The Sea of Galilee is more than 600 feet below sea level. It is surrounded by tablelands beyond which the configuration of the surrounding mountains cause the winds to be extremely strong, stirring up violent storms. The rivers have cut deep ravines into the tablelands and down into the sea. These ravines act like great funnels to draw down the cold winds from the mountains, and thus the storms arise. Waves can be as high as 20 feet. And the storms are sudden. One second it can be blue skies and within a 10 minute period a strong thunderhead will fill the sky. So this was a fierce storm that the disciples were unprepared for and were blind sided by it.
And the storms can come upon you when you least expect it, when life is going well and all of a sudden the bomb is dropped. Without warning, your routine examination reveals a tumor. You get a phone call in the middle of the night and your mother sobs, “It’s your Dad, he’s gone!” It happens so suddenly you can’t believe it. You keep saying, “It’s like a nightmare; I can’t believe it’s real! I’m going to pinch myself and wake up in a minute. It just can’t be.”
When I was stationed in Pascagoula, MS a good friend of mine named Jeff Cooper endured a fierce storm that wrecked his life. Jeff was a young man, same age as me and had been married to Val for a little less than a year. It was near Christmas and Jeff and his young bride were preparing to make the track from The gulf coast up to South Carolina where Val’s mom lived. Val was excited to go home and see her mother who she was so close to, and so right before they left…Val called her mom to let her know that her and Jeff were on their way they’d be there by nightfall. They hung up the phone, and Jeff and Val started their journey. After driving all day, they finally reached Val’s mom’s house and they noticed that there were a number of cars parked in the front drive. Jeff reasoned that they had just started the party without them, so with the presents in hand, Val rang the door bell waiting to surprise her mom…but the door was answered by Val’s sister who was in tears, and she explained to Val how that after they got off the phone that morning, Val’s mom wanted to buy one more gift and on her way home she lost control of her car and had an tragic accident and died. Val was crushed. Here she had gone home to celebrate Christmas with her mom, now instead she would spend Christmas at her mom’s funeral.
For Jeff this was a fierce storm. Not only did he love his mother-in-law, but Val never got over her mom’s death. She relapsed back into her old life style of drugs and promiscuity, and within three months Val filed for divorce. Val went through the storm, but because she had never turned to the strong foundation of Christ, her world crumbled. And it caught her off guard. How you respond to the storms will tell a lot about the foundation you have built your life on.
For many, when those storms come, their first instinct will be one of panic and fear. Luke 8:23-24 reads, “As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” When storms come we tend to automatically think the worse. Our spouse is 10 minutes late getting home so we assume there has been a wreck. We get a call from the police and automatically we think our child is hurt, then we find out he’s only been arrested and so we then think of how we will make him hurt. Now these disciples had reasons to fear yet at the same time they shouldn‘t have feared. You see, the storm was furious, the bible says it was so bad that the water was coming over the sides and they were being swamped.
Yet at the same time, they had plenty of reasons not to be afraid. You see, Faith is not believing in spite of circumstances; it is believing in spite of feelings and consequences. The disciples looked around and saw danger, and looked within and saw only fear. When they should have looked to Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith.
Warren Weirsbe points this out in his commentary. He says, “There were at least three good reasons why none of the men in the ship should have been disturbed, even though the situation appeared to be threatening. To begin with, they had His promise that they were going to the other side . His commandments are always His enablements and nothing can hinder the working out of His plans. He did not promise an easy trip, but He did promise a guaranteed arrival at their destination.
Second, the Lord Himself was with them, so what was there to fear? They had already seen His power demonstrated in His miracles, so they should have had complete confidence that He could handle the situation.
Finally, they could see that Jesus was perfectly at peace, even in the midst of the storm. This fact alone should have encouraged them. Jesus was in God’s will and knew that the Father would care for Him, so He took a nap
Now the next lesson, which is an important one, that I want you to know deals with that second reason of why the disciples shouldn’t have been afraid, and that is that the Lord was with them. The lesson I want you to know is that Jesus will accompany us through the storm, even though at times it may seem that He is unconcerned. Here the disciples were fighting for their lives, the huge waves were crashing over the sides, and over in the corner laid Jesus, exhausted from a long day of preaching taking a nap. In Mark’s gospel it reads, “The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown‘” Isn’t that how we feel at times, “God do you care?” “Are you out there God?” “Can you hear me?”
We’ve all heard the phrase that states, “Silence is Golden” but there’s a time when it isn’t. You pray for a raise and the next time you go into work like you always do and the boss says, “There’s been some cutbacks and we are going to have to downsize and guess where they are going to start?”
“Is anybody up there?” You ask God to bless your family and their health. But then a person in your family has a suspicious spot on their body, the tests reveal that it’s malignant and suddenly everything changes. Plans for the future are drastically changed and attention shifts to aggressive chemotherapy and spending more time with family. And in the privacy of their own bed they pray to God with their questions, while tears stream down their cheeks and they say, “God are You listening?”
It’s times like these when we cry out to Jesus like the disciples, “Don’t you care?” Well jesus does care. He wasn’t asleep due to lack of concern, but he was asleep due to a lack of request. From the context, it seems that the disciples had waited till it got to much to handle before they woke up Jesus. They had relied on their own human skill as long as possible. They were expert sailors. They had tried to empty the boat of water, set the rudder, they tried to fix themselves and only when they were at the end of their rope did they reach out for Christ. I’m convinced that Jesus would have calmed the storm sooner if they had only asked sooner. Prayer should never be just an SOS for us. We should never wait till the boat is flooded till we call on Christ to save us.
Now like we said earlier, there are times when the storms come and we feel like Christ isn’t concerned…times when we don’t feel His presence. There are times we do. Ms. Toots Hutto of our church testified that when her son had an awful accident, she felt the hand of God upon her shoulder, but there are times when the hand is there, but not felt. But even when we don’t feel God, God is still there. On a wall in a cellar in Cologne, Germany, where Jews hid from Nazis, there was found an inscription. The anonymous author who perished with his fellow victims left behind these words, "I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when not feeling it. I believe in God even when he is silent."
Now here is an important lesson for us to learn. Sometimes the Lord won’t calm the storm, but He’ll calm you. You can be confident, and rest in assurance knowing you are not going through it alone. He has promised you that He will never leave you nor forsake you. He doesn’t always bring peace to your circumstances, but if you allow Him, He will bring peace to your spirit. It we understand that truth, we can be spared some major disappointments in the Christian life. He is always there, even if we can’t see Him.
A family was awakened by their smoke detector in the middle of the night to discover that their house was on fire. The father ran into the upstairs bedroom of his children and carried his eighteen-month-old baby in his arms while dragging his four-year-old son by the hand. They were halfway down the stairs when the little boy remembered that he had left his teddy bear in the bedroom, so he broke free from his father’s hand and ran back to the bedroom to retrieve it. In the furor and confusion, the father didn’t notice that his son wasn’t with him until he got outside. By now the little boy was trapped by the flames and smoke in his second-story bedroom. Smoke swirled around him and he coughed and cried out from the upstairs window, “Daddy, Daddy! Help me!”
His father yelled from below, “Jump out of the window, Andy! I’ll catch you!” In the darkness and smoke, the little boy yelled back, “But Daddy! I can’t see you!” Daddy shouted back, “That’s okay, son. I can see you! Jump!” You might not see God, but God sees you…and He cares for you. He’s already showed you how much He cares for you when He allowed Jesus Christ to be crucified for you in your stead.
Now I don’t know what it is that you are going through right now. Maybe its an illness, maybe you’re worried about a relationship, maybe things are looking sour at work. I don’t know, but God knows. I don’t know what tomorrow will hold, but I know who holds tomorrow; And I know that your Heavenly Father wants to hear from you. Whether your storm is a simple shower or a forceful hurricane, In Isaiah 41:10 the Lord says, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged, take it to the Lord in prayer.
This morning I invite you to come forward to the altar to talk to your Heavenly Father. If you would like someone to pray with you, grab that person and come down, if you need someone to pray with you I’ll meet you down here at this altar. As the Spirit leads you, come. Let’s stand and sing.
