I believe one of the biggest challenges to us as Christians, is to allow God to stretch us in our definition of what is “good and bad” for us.  Naturally, we all want ideal lives of comfort, because no one works hard so that they can struggle “to make ends meet”. But the natural desire to be comfortable financially and physically, can lead to a desire to be comfortable spiritually, which is why God sends storms…

If you recall the context of this passage, Jesus had sent the disciples into a boat so He could pray after John the Baptist death, and feeding the five thousand.  They end up drifting far away from the shore into a “storm”, where Jesus arrives to them walking on the water!

Their immediate reaction is fear.  Fear not only of the conditions, but their perspective of what is approaching them in such conditions!  So it is multiple things grabbing for their heart to be “terrified” in this storm.  Yet it is the Word spoken by Jesus, that immediately brings them perspective that this is not a ghost, but God in the storm.

So this is different than being left out to sea “to drown” in my situation.  It is an opportunity to walk by faith in something, I have just proven to be terrified by.  As you know Peter ends up walking on the water before sinking, but the experience of walking while the storm was going, awakened him that God will keep him, if he doesn’t doubt (vs 32).

Our challenge is to allow the storm to be re-defined, not as something out to destroy us, but reveal to us how to continually remain anchored to Jesus.  Recognizing that without such a lifestyle, we will view storms as simply “bad” and being in the way of our comfort.  Instead, storms are used by God for our good, with it’s goal to “shake us” out of comfort into a lifestyle of faith.

In His Love, LD