Peace, Be Still

     I'm currently studying through the book of Mark, and last night I noticed something pretty cool at the end of chapter 4. The last 4 verses say,
          "And he (Jesus) was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? And he arose, and rebuked them, and said unto the sea, "Peace, be still." And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, "Why are ye so fearful? how is that ye have no faith?" And they feared exceedingly and said one to another, what manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
    In the verses right before we see that they were on a ship, and a horrible storm was beating down upon them. In studying this chapter, I found that there are 4 lessons that we can learn from these 4 verses. 

    1. The God who calmed their storm, can still our storms too.

Our trials and struggles in life often parallel to storms and tempests, and although the disciples were experiencing a real storm with water, it relates quite a bit to the storms in our lives. I feel like sometimes it's so easy to judge the disciples here. Like, Jesus is right there, you can SEE Him! But we have that same assurance of Jesus' presence, yet our faith lacks too. They saw Jesus yet they doubted His capability to fix the problem. Amidst their doubt, He calmed the waves just by speaking, and they were in awe of Him. I find it totally incredible that this is the same God that we serve daily. He looks out for His children, and we trust in that.

  2. Don't accuse God of not caring.

The disciples say, "Carest thou not that we perish?" They're upset that Jesus is laying there asleep instead of watching out for them. You see, sometimes we as Christians ask God the same question. "Do you not see that I'm hurt? Why aren't you doing anything about this?" We think that just because God isn't actively calming the storms right when we want Him too, that He must not care enough. It's clear from so many scriptures that Jesus DOES care, more than we could ever comprehend. One of my favourite chapters in the Bible is Psalm 139, and verses 17-18 say, "How precious also are thy thoughts toward me, O God, how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand..." I don't know about you, but I've never taken a handful of sand and counted each little grain, and I have no intentions of doing so. God thinks precious thoughts toward us, so never accuse Him of not caring just because you can't see His calming hand.

   3. Don't let fear rock your faith. 

God sometimes chooses His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction. When storms come up in life, don't fear. We can see Jesus right there, and we can rest in the knowledge that He has it under control. When we fret and worry about being injured by the waves, we are telling Jesus that we don't think He is able enough to protect us. Don't let the fear take precedence over the overwhelming calm that can come with faith in the one who created you.

   4. We are safe in Jesus' hands no matter what.

You could imagine that the disciples were probably pretty confused at the fact that Jesus was asleep, during the storm, laying on a pillow no less! But Jesus was just as much in control asleep as He was awake. We are always safe in God, just like they were. He is very much in control no matter what, and I think that we can see the contrast of Jesus and the disciples' faith by the fact that Jesus was sound asleep while the disciples were panicking. Even if He doesn't wake up and calm the storm, we can still be safe in Him. I don't know about you, but there's no place I'd rather be.

 I love that calm assurance that we can have in knowing that we can trust God no matter what. When He says, "Peace, be still," the storms don't fight back. He has the whole world in His hands, and that's something that we can have total confidence in.

Stay excellent!