Strength For The Evil Hour

Right inside the boat, the disciples must have been arguing just like some Christians do today. A group might have said since Jesus was in the boat, the storm must be His will, therefore they needed not to bother themselves. Others might have concluded that if it was His will, water would not have entered the boat and the boat would not have started to sink. Some might have opined that the end had come at last, after all, everyone would die of something, someday. Another group might have felt that probably God wanted to teach them a lesson through the storm. Some could have seen it as a satanic attack. There could be a lot of confusion during the hour of darkness.

Many years ago, I experienced my own hour of darkness. I was dashing off to somewhere when somebody called me to help her remove her pot of oil burning from the fire. As I got to the door of the kitchen, I saw a ball of fire rise from the pot of the oil on the fire and landed on my leg and started to burn my leg! The three adults there, watched helplessly. They argued a bit on the kind of first aid I needed. One opted for ice water, another preferred wet corn flour (Ogi) and the third favoured raw egg. Before they finally decided to use ice water, my leg had been badly burnt. A few weeks later, I fell down and sustained a fractured hand! It was in the midst of this situation that I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit one night saying, “Don’t you see that these people don’t want you to take your school certificate examination? You better start praying or they would just kill you.” That was the day I started to learn how to pray aggressively. It was the same situation when everybody in the boat took to argument despite the fact that the boat was about to sink. I am sure the devil must have been there too telling them, “You will just perish in a watery grave. I pity your wives and children you left at home to be following this man called Jesus.” Eventually they remembered the word of God and it occurred to them to pray, and as they did, Jesus came.

A pastor in one of our branches once shared an experience with me. He said a strange girl strolled into their fellowship one day and after the meeting, she came to him for prayers and he prayed with her. Then as he was going home, the girl asked him for a ride in his car and he obliged her. But as soon as she entered the car, it developed one problem after another. At a stage, he got out of the car and started to pray and then the car started to work again. After sometime, he dropped the girl at a bus stop. The following day which was Sunday, he was surprised to see the girl coming forward to give testimony. She said, “I am now sure that God is here because yesterday, when I entered the pastor’s car, there were hundred of us struggling for the pastor’s steering, even though I was the only one he could see physically. But as he was praying, the others ran and he dropped me too.”

According to our passage, when Jesus arose, the evil hour instantly came to an end. What did He do? He simply rebuked the wind and spoke to the storm and there was a great calm. The hour of God’s voice came and as He spoke once, there was peace and there has been peace ever since. It is on record that the Sea of Galilee is the most peaceful in the world today, because since Jesus spoke to it, there has never been another storm.