Image: Summer evening, North Garden, Virginia.
Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Mark 4:36-41:
The record of Christ stilling the storm in Mark 4:36-41 has been a comfort
to many believers over the years, as they have
encountered their own storms. It might
be the storm of losing a job, of failing in a business, of having conflict with
a parent, spouse, or child, of losing a loved one, of serious illness, of
facing deep spiritual discouragement, depression, or despair.
The adjective “great (Greek: mega)” is repeated three times in
this passage. There was a “great [mega] storm of wind” (v. 37), a “great
[mega] calm” (v. 39), and a “great [mega] fear or awe” (v. 41,
where the AV reads, “they feared exceedingly”) in the aftermath.
From this account we gain the application that we are to rely upon Christ
in all the circumstances of life and never doubt his tender concern for us.
We should first
consider the comfort of the fact that the Lord Jesus was awakened by the cries
of his disciples in their distress.
Matthew Henry observed, “When Christ seems as if he slept in a storm, he is awakened by the prayers of his people; when we know not what to do; our eye must be to him (2 Chron 20:12); we may be at our wit’s end, but not our faith’s end, while we have a Savior to go to.”
Sadly, even our
prayers to Christ in distress can take on that complaining tone of the
disciples, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (v. 38).
Christ himself
taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount not to be overcome by worry
(Matthew 6: 25-34).
Someone said,
“Worry is an old man, with bended head, carrying a load of feathers which he
thinks are lead.”
Another wrote,
Fear knocked at the door.
Faith answered.
No one was there.
Peter exhorted that
we are to be “Casting all our care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Peter
5:7).
Christ told his
disciples that every hair upon their head were all numbered by the sovereign
Father (Matthew 10:30).
Some years back I read a devotional book titled Jesus is Victor by Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch believer whose family was sent to a concentration during WW2, where her aged father and beloved sister would both die.
She writes of her initial imprisonment which included four months of solitary confinement in a dark dank cell:
Once I stood with my back against the wall with my hands spread out, as if to try to push away the walls that were closing in on me. I was dead scared. I cried out, “Lord, I’m not strong enough to endure this. I don’t have the faith!”
Suddenly I noticed an ant roaming the floor of the cell for days. I had just mopped the floor with a wet rag, and the moment the ant felt the water on the stones, he ran straight to his tiny hole in the wall.
Then it was that the Lord said to me, “What about that ant? He didn’t stop to look at the wet rag or his weak feet—he went straight to his hiding place. Corrie, don’t look at your faith; it is weak, like the tiny feet of that ant. Don’t dwell on the treatment you might receive from these cruel people. I am your hiding place, and you can come running to Me just like that ant disappeared into that hole in the wall (pp. 79-80).
Let us remember that though the Lord may permit great storms, he also provides great calm, that issue in great awe.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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