I want to start off by telling you a story. Some of you
may be familiar with it, it’s ok if you’re not…
This story comes from a book in the New Testament called
Mark. Mark is one of the 4 Gospels in scripture and it tells the account of
Jesus when He lived and walked on earth. Each Gospel is written from the
perspective of the writer and how they heard, saw or interpreted the events and
happenings of Jesus. You can find that particular story in Mark 4:35-41, the
heading is titled “Jesus Calms the Storm.”
I am going to put myself in the story and pretend that I
am one of the disciples telling the story from my perspective: (This is my own
interpretation of the story; I of course do not know what all actually went on
in the thoughts and minds of the Disciples or Jesus.)
"Jesus is
the big celebrity here in town and he has been ever since he began healing
people, performing miracles, and doing things that are completely counter-cultural.
He is no ordinary man, that's for sure! So of course EVERYONE is trying to follow him all around, trying to hear everything and see everything that this man does. So on this particular
night after a long day of crowds, people and mobs trying to get close to listen
to Jesus and his teachings, Jesus finally told us we were going to the other side of
the lake. We were tired from a long day
and ready to have a little bit of time alone with Jesus and not have so many
people around us; We were relieved. We got on the boat and not long afterwards Jesus disappeared
down in the deck. We were sailing smooth
across the lake, for a short period of time. All of the sudden a huge storm hit
us; it was as if it came out of nowhere, with absolutely no warning of danger
to prepare us for what was coming. The waves were pouring over, crashing and
rocking the boat as if the boat was going to crumble to pieces any second
because of the power and strength of the waves. Were hysterical and terrified!
And can you guess where Jesus was? He was sleeping in the stern! Sure,
of course he’s tired it HAS been a long day, but how can you sleep so
peacefully through a storm this powerful? We could stand it no longer; we were terrified
and afraid for our lives, so we went down
and woke him up. “Don’t you care if we DROWN?? How can you be sleeping at a
time like this and not helping?” We asked him once he woke up from his peaceful
rest.
And would
you believe that he didn’t seem a bit worried!?! He simply rose to his feet and spoke
to the wind and the waves saying, “Quiet! Be still!” Within seconds, literally
less than seconds, the raging storm was completely calm! Then he turns towards
all of us disciples and says, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
WHAT??
How in the world did this guy do it? Not only does he speak and the weather
obeys, he acts as if we weren’t supposed to be frightened by it! What did he
expect? I wasn’t the only one thinking this in my head, we all turned towards
each other once Jesus walked away and asked, “Who is this? Even the wind and
the waves obey him!”
I am encouraged by this story for a few key reasons:
1.
First of all we see the extraordinary power in our Lord
and Savior; Jesus has complete control over everything, even the weather
submits to His commands! That alone
makes my problems and worries seem so small compared to His power. How can I
ever let myself get flustered over the small things in life when I have the
most powerful creator God on my team, walking with me, and commanding the
storms in my life to be “Quiet and Still”? I do want to be clear about how I
see God calming the storms in our lives.
First we see that once the disciples realize the seriousness of the
storm they literally GO to Jesus to wake him up. They seek him out, asking for
help! They don’t just sit back and wish they weren’t in such a terrible
circumstance. This teaches us that when we are struggling through our storms of
life, whether they are big or small, we need to call upon Jesus; we need to
seek him for help and guidance to get us through the storm.
Second,
we need to believe that he is big enough and powerful enough to move on our
behalf. If we are calling upon him to change our circumstances or calm our
storms and yet we don’t believe he can actually do it, it won’t happen. Jesus
asks the disciples, “Do you still have no faith?” If we don’t have faith that
God can do the impossible and get us through the big storms of life, we will be
stuck relying on our own strengths and only allowing the storm to crash and
destroy our tiny little life boats.
And
third, we need to trust that God knows what he is doing and that he has
complete control even if the storm does not come to an immediate stop when we
ask. God’s plans and purposes will not always look the way we assume or wish
they would look. We may not always get the things we ask for and God may not
always calm our storms right when we ask. Sometimes he may have a much better
purpose with our storms. Maybe he wants to strengthen us and teach us more
about trusting and relying upon him? Maybe he knows the final outcome of your
circumstance and although it is horrible now, he is planning something GLORIOUS
because of it. God always has a plan and
he does not waste anything. Time is in his control and if we allow him to use
it, he will take all the time we will give him to transform our lives and
change us from the inside out.
2.
The second reason I am encouraged by this story is
because it shows that even the disciples, who were walking and being with Jesus did not understand him or truly know
him. We see the disciples asking, “Who is this?” They did not even know how
powerful he truly was. If the people who were with him when he was alive on earth couldn’t
comprehend or explain his power, how can we today? The truth is we cannot.
Jesus is not meant to be explained. Our job is not to completely understand him
or make sense of all that he did. Jesus simply was. He was who he was on earth,
and he is still that same person; he will always BE. He is constant and
never changes. Sometimes we feel we need to explain him to others. We feel we
need to defend him or try to fully wrap our minds around him. We get
discouraged and sometimes we doubt because we cannot explain it. Our small
minds will never fully comprehend the prefect and awesome savior of our lives. We
must call it faith. We believe in Jesus because of what we have seen, heard,
experienced and because we put our faith in him. We are not called to know everything in the
Bible or about Jesus. We are not meant to understand everything on earth. RC
Sproul puts it this way:
“The
King James Version expresses the question like this: ‘What manner of man is
this, that even the wind and the
sea obey him?’ The question was ‘What manner of man is this?’… They were looking for a category to put Jesus in, a
category with which they were familiar. If we can classify people with certain
types, we know immediately how to deal with them. We respond one way to hostile
people and another way to friendly people. We react one way to intellectual
types and another way to social types. The disciples could find no category
adequate to capture the person of Jesus. He was byond typecasting. He was sui
generis—In a class by Himself…Jesus was different. He possessed an awesome
otherness. He was the supreme mysterious stranger. He made people uncomfortable”
(The Holiness of God, 64-65).
The
disciples were trying to categorize Jesus in order to make sense of who he was
in their own minds. They were trying to place him in a box and say, “this is who Jesus is.” But Jesus did something they could not explain and they were blown away yet again. I believe that we
are all guilty of that. Whether we realize it or not, we try to make sense of
who Jesus is and we categorize based off of our own learning and experiences;
it is not bad, we just don’t realize that our God is so much bigger than what
we make him out to be. We cannot put our savior in a box, but we can study his
word, and spend time with him in order to get to know him more. I believe that
the more time we spend with him, the bigger our boxes become and hopefully over
time our boxes will disappear. Actually, I believe we will never be able to
fully know God here on earth, so maybe our boxes will never disappear in this
lifetime, but it is my hope that we will get to a place where we realize that
the box is there, and we kick it away and let God be God. Allow him to surprise
you and completely exceed your expectations, because that is what he does!
Allow him to do immeasurably more
than all you ask or imagine! Expect big things from our huge and powerful God!
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably
more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within
us.” (Ephesians 3:20)
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