With Jesus, Yet Afraid
Back to Words of Cheer and Comfort
"Where is your faith?" Luke 8:25
It was a matter of life or death with these men! To their dim human vision, there were gathered around that little ship, the materials for an awful tragedy! Fierce gusts of stormy wind — devouring waves of the sea — a frail boat every moment in jeopardy of sinking, paralyzing terror in the hearts of all but one of their number — and Jesus was asleep! One can imagine the despair and intensity of the cry with which they awoke Him, "Master! Master! we are perishing!"
"Then He arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there was a calm." In an instant, the turmoil was over, and the danger gone; but we can imagine the grieved look of reproval in the Lord's face as He turns from the cowering elements, to ask the trembling men at His side the question, "Where is your faith?" "Have the winds scattered it? Has the sea swallowed it up? Has your fear utterly swept it away?"
To us, looking back over the centuries at this incident on the Sea of Galilee, it seems incomprehensible that the disciples could be afraid of anything, while Jesus was with them. We would have thought that His personal presence, whether sleeping or waking — would have been a perfect security to them against all fear of ill. Had they not seen daily manifestations of His mighty power? Had He not healed the sick — opened blind eyes — made lame men walk — multiplied a few loaves and fishes to provide food for a great multitude — raised the dead to life, and done many other wonderful works? After all they had seen, and felt, and known of His mighty power in the past — one wonders that the present danger should so utterly affright them. The reason of this may have been that they did not go to Jesus at once, as soon as the gale burst upon them. Perhaps they thought that they could manage the boat and weather the storm by their own efforts and skill.
It is possible that self-confidence was lurking in their hearts, and that the Lord used this perilous position to convince them of their absolute helplessness and dependence on Himself for everything.
Ah! dear friends, does not this teaching come home to our own hearts? Do not we behave in precisely similar fashion when placed in the same alarming circumstances? Some great trial or temptation bursts like a tempest into the serenity of our life, and overwhelms us with a sense of danger and distress; we are terrified and trembling, we see nothing but the perilwhich surrounds us, we struggle against the storm as best we can — till there is no more endurance in us, and then we go to the Master with the bitter cry of those about to perish!
Yet, as a matter of fact, He has been with us all the time!
Has He not promised never to leave us? Is there not always access by faith to His gracious presence? He may be in the hinder part of the ship, asleep, and apparently oblivious of all that is passing around Him; but the pillow beneath His head is His own Omniscience, and, as surely as He ruled those winds and waves on Galilee's lake, and reined in the tempest with a word — so certainly does He manage all the affairs of His children, and appoint or permit all that concerns them. A sincere and steadfast faith in this blessed fact, would keep our minds in perfect peace, whatever might befall us; it would lift us above all fear of the perils and storms of life, and hide us as in "the secret of His tabernacle."
Dear Master, You come to each one of us with the same question as that which shamed Your poor timid disciples, "Where is your faith?" And we are speechless before You, Lord, as they were, for we have no excuse to offer for our unbelief; we have not even the slight plea which they might have urged, that they had as yet scarcely realized that You were God incarnate, and had asked, wondering among themselves, "What kind of man is this?" We know You as the once crucified — but now risen Lord, to whom all power in Heaven and on earth has been given, and You may well marvel at our unbelief.
Strange indeed it is, that the love of Christ, so boundless and so infinite — should be so grudgingly trusted in by those whose only hope lies in the fullness and freeness of that love as manifested to them. We do not find it difficult to believe and rejoice in the love of a fellow-creature; but when the fathomless love of God is declared to us, we question, and reason, and evade, and calculate, with a stubbornness which only too plainly shows the hardness and unbelief of our heart.
O beloved, let us cast away from us, with shame and loathing, the bonds of this cruel sin of doubting, which grieves our Savior's tender heart, and so shamefully dishonors His love! His pathetic question, "Where is your faith?" plainly shows that He expects our absolute trust at all times, and that He is disappointed when He fails to find the faith He so much values in His chosen people.
Back to Words of Cheer and Comfort