ALONE IN A STORM?

Luke 8:24 “The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Master, Master, we're going to drown!"

Robert Munger was in a storm, this is his story in his own words, he wrote:

“Being assaulted by winds and walls of waves and a wildly tossing sea was like being run over a train in a dark tunnel. We knew the typhoon was coming, but I for one hadn’t expected it to pack such a wallop. Everything was battened down as we prepared to take a direct hit. Those of us who were on deck had our slickers on, similar to the old yellow slickers used by New England fisherman. Being a novice to things of the sea, I’d hung mine up by a hot pipe a few days before and the heat had melted all the oil from the fabric. Now my slicker leaked like a sieve. It wasn’t much good but it was all I had to wear as the ship shuttered and pitched into huge mountains of brine and foam.

It was fast approaching midnight. As I made my final rounds on deck, everything I saw brought on physical terror. The lights of the ship reflected only a few feet out over the water. Each wave became visible only as it reared to crash. More than once, I thought, what if I were washed overboard while making my rounds? No one would even know. I would be lost forever in a violent, angry sea. The possibility of death was enough to focus my mind. But almost as terrifying as drowning was the fear of falling into darkness and death all alone. No one to see. No one to hear. No one to report. The blotting out of life. Caught. Trapped. Right there in the eye of the storm.”

I don’t know what storms you’ve been through but I do know that all of us at some time or another have had an experience in which we have felt our life to be so tiny, tossed around like that little cargo ship in the middle of the wide ocean. Tossed around as if in the middle of a storm that would not go away. With our lives in danger, with chaos threatening at any moment to undo us, to rip life away. Thrown in every direction.

Our scripture offers a great account of how Jesus calmed a great storm seemingly just in the nick of time. It did not happen, however, before panic gripped the hearts of the disciples. While they are fighting for their lives, Jesus is sleeping below deck. Have you ever felt like the Savior was sleeping while the storm was on? Have you felt like Job who said, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hides himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him.” (Job 23:8, 9) You know, there will always be times when we may not feel like God is near, but it is in those times when we can’t feel God’s presence that we need to trust him. Jesus later asked the disciples where their faith was. God wants us to trust him no matter what. If we only trusted him in the good times, we wouldn’t really be trusting him. He wants us to rely on him.

Is your faith in what you can do? Is your faith in the lies that the devil has convinced you of like the lie that ‘Jesus doesn’t care about you’? Where is your faith? If you will rely on Jesus, he will calm the troubled storm of your life. No, it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever have to face another storm; it just means that you will have someone on board who can take care of the winds. That’s the kind of person that I want to take with me.