Matthew 8 verse 23 says this,
And when He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him, and
behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat
was being swamped by the waves. But He was asleep, and they went
and woke Him, saying, Save us, Lord, we are perishing. And He
said to them, Why are you afraid? O you of little faith! Then He
rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, And there was a great
calm, and the men marveled, saying, What sort of man is this, that
even winds and sea obey him?" So when Amber and I, my wife,
Amber and I, we were first married. We lived down in Ferndale. And
it was great. I absolutely loved our house
in Ferndale. So did Amber, obviously. But it was kind of a small house,
but it was pretty tall. And it was probably built in
1910 or something. So it was over 100 years old. It was great in terms of all
the wood inside of it and things like that. It had these huge
trees. One of the larger trees in the
backyard began to have this branch that kind of came over the house
and what I began to realize is that it was sort of destroying
the roof, you know? And so I was like, man, there's
this big old branch that's hanging over there. I need to cut that
down. And I thought to myself, I've been on several roofs before. I mean, this can't be bad. I mean, this can't be that difficult.
A word to the wise for those of you that don't know. If you're
going to get on your roof, use a ladder that is able to extend
much further up than actually the roof itself. The ladder that
I had, it just kind of got right up to the roof. And I'm thinking,
I can easily step up on that thing. So I climbed that ladder
and got up on the roof. And just as soon as I took about
maybe one step, I was like that on the roof. I thought, wow,
this is much steeper than what I anticipated. And honestly,
of all the things that I had been through in my life, I thought
to myself, you have got to be kidding me. You're about to go
out, not just falling off the roof, but like just as a complete
idiot. in this situation because I began
to go certainly I could get down but then of course the ladder
was just up to the thing so I had no idea I'm like doing this with
my leg and I was stuck I was paralyzed I think that is and
I was by myself actually that was Amber probably at that point
heard me begin to screech in a way that she hadn't ever heard
me screech before but the point is is that when I got up there
it began to be much steeper than what I anticipated. And it was
much more frightful than I had anticipated. And in that moment,
it completely paralyzed me on that roof. I mean, I was just
stuck. And the reason why I share that is because that's just an
illustration of really what it's like to have fear in many other
areas of our lives. Fear, human fear. When we are
that frightened, it can be paralyzing, debilitating. to our whole lives. It leads you to a place where
you're stuck. You can't get out. You're in
this situation, right, spiritually, emotionally, physically. I mean, we know that even fear
can even physically impact us in ways that we don't really
anticipate in the moment. And we find ourselves completely
stuck. When Jesus, in this passage,
when he says to them, why are you so afraid? Why are you so
freaked out at what's what's going on here? Jesus is not asking
this for like information You see he's not going Wow, you know,
I just happen to see that you guys are all freaked out. Tell
me a little bit about what it is that you're so afraid of and
you're paralyzed that maybe I could potentially help you in this
given situation. Jesus isn't asking for information.
He's also not asking because he's sort of freaked out. He's
wondering if he should be freaked out about what is happening. It's more along the lines of,
like, I have a seven-year-old son, Caleb. And particularly
at night if there's anything that has to happen downstairs
We may be upstairs and you say hey Caleb run downstairs and
grab that he's like, oh no Like I'm not falling for that
I'm not going downstairs Right now and I'm like bro It's downstairs
You right what what Jesus what I'm saying to Caleb is it's absurd
That you would be frightened in this situation. I mean not
only have you been downstairs a gazillion times But on top
of that I'm here and if I'm here, I mean, you know, it's all good,
right? Jesus is saying to them you're
freaked out and It's absurd Because you've been through many things
like this before, actually. And on top of that, I'm here. Because the fear that we have
in life, and usually when we're alone, we feel like we're alone. Things are steeper than we had
anticipated. Things get a little scarier,
a little windier than we had anticipated. And we begin to
feel alone. And in those moments, we often
begin to feel like, wow, I'm losing control here. When Jesus
is sort of coming on the scene and going, you never were in
control. Don't you realize that? All of
your fear that is happening right now is you think you're losing
control, when in reality, I've been here the whole time, and
I am in control. And that no matter what the storm
is in life, God is with us, and that it's by faith in Jesus that
will get us through any storm of life.