Walking On Water, But There Is Much More To This Miracle.

… Now the wind is usually a reference to the Holy Spirit, but we will ignore that for now, but sometimes a great wind develops in our lives from nowhere, and our human senses, everything we have been brought up to believe tell us straight away that this is bad, … turmoil and conflict is bad, and that peace and harmony is good. So if it is bad, then we somehow go into a program of self-destruct.

5 Walk by faith and not by sight.

Are we fundamentally wrong in thinking this way? … I would say no, but let us examine now our New Testament reading and we read in Romans 10 verse 5 “Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things shall live by them.” … But the righteousness that comes from faith says in your heart … who shall ascend into heaven” (that is, to bring Christ down from above)”.

This is basically saying that the law requires an actual and complete fulfilment, and it is based in our good deeds which are, labourious and impractical. … It is the exact opposite of the being made righteousness under the grace of the New Covenant which is based on faith. … However 2nd Corinthians 5:7 puts it much more simply, that “… we walk (or live) by faith, and not by sight”. … Ephesians 2:8 & 9 clarifies this further that, “… by grace are we saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: … … Not of works, lest any man should boast”.

And we all know that God wants us to walk in faith, … and we all know that it is easy to walk in faith when there are no waves, or storms, or no pain, or no loss, nor conflict … but that is not good enough, God needs to develop faith in us that will endure … he wants us to grow strong in faith; … and the only possible way that he can do that, is to teach us to weathering these storms that appear from nowhere in our lives. …

Now I am not saying for one second that we go out and look for such a storm, I am saying these storms will arise in our lives when we least expect, nor want them, because John 3 verse 8 tells us that “The wind blows where ever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from, and where it goes: … so it is with … everyone who is born of the Spirit”, and that is us, his believers.

That verse is telling us that it is not our fault that these storms arise, … and we must not take the disasters that we have had to endure in our lives as being our fault as many would lay blame … in fact these very disciples this morning were following the orders of Jesus, … Jesus ordered them into the boat against their own good judgement and common sense … and they carried out his wishes. … They had not upset him, rather they had probably pleased him, and so this dreadful storm was not a storm of judgment upon them as they were in the centre of his will.

And so from this we can clearly see that God will not shelter us from all turmoil and distress in our lives; … yes he will protect us, Hebrews 13 verse 5 even tells us very clearly that he will “Never leave us, never will he forsake us. … So that we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid” … but the Lord will use these storms in our lives to teach us to be calm and confident through the faith that he is developing in us. … Now I don’t like this any more than you do, but can you see, how we need to view these storms as something to embrace and overcome, rather than view them as something designed to defeat us. …