Rider On The Storm

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,