Faith is actually a deliberate
action. It's something you choose to
do. We think of it like, man, it's
getting real hot in here, the AC will just kick on. It just
kicks on. When it gets real hot, my faith
just kicks in. It doesn't. You actually have
to make a conscious decision to trust God. I'm gonna make
a conscious decision, watch, based upon what I already know
about Jesus. That I know the storm is right
here, but if I want great faith in this moment, then I need to
begin to remember what He's capable of. What He's already done in
the past. So what that means is this, if
you believe Jesus is saying, if you believe that I'm the Son
of God, if you believe that I died on a cross for you, if you believe
that I rose from the dead for you, then how could you not trust
Me now? This is really important that
you get the Gospel, the good news of who Jesus is and what
He has done deep down in your heart. that you actually apply
what you know to be true about the gospel to your life. If you
are here right now, and you're going through a storm, or whatever
that storm is going to be in the next year, or whatever it
is, and you begin to say to yourself, well, I'm just believing. Believing
what, though? Well, I just have faith. Faith
in what, though? Faith in your ability to do something
about it? We see where this has gotten.
Right? I mean, if there's anything in
the world that speaks to me deliberately, that I'm not in control of the world,
it's my own life. Can you relate to that? But if
God is real, and if God was willing to give himself on the tree of
the cross, then you know what? Then there's hope. There's hope. Because if he was willing to
do that, if he didn't abandon me on the cross, then he won't
abandon me in this moment. Right? And so Jesus doesn't say
to them, why are you afraid? You should have had more positive
thoughts through this. Right? He says, why are you afraid? You know enough about me. You've watched me heal people.
You've watched me raise a girl from the dead. You've never seen anything that
I've ever said to you not come to pass. I've told you that I
love you. I've told you that I know every
hair on your head. I've told you that I am for you. Why don't you believe me? You
could have greater faith. The faith that we need through
the storm is actually remembering how good God has actually been.
We have this uncanny ability to what? We get into this situation
and we say, God, I need you in this moment. And he shows up
in just an incredibly miraculous way in many of our lives. And
we often think to ourselves, man, I'm going to serve God.
I'm going to love God. I'm going to trust God. How could
I ever doubt him again? And then just a couple of months
later, I don't know what I'm going to do about this. Oftentimes
in my life, I've thought, God, I know you're capable, but how
can I trust that if I surrender this over to you, if I commit
to you, if I commit this control over to you, that you're actually
going to do what's best for me? I mean, that's where a lot of
us are sitting in this room. You love the idea that God could
do something about it. But how do you know that you
can trust him? See, when the disciples say,
they go down there and they wake him up and they go, we're perishing. Actually, in the parallel account
in the Gospel of Mark, it actually says, don't you care that we're
perishing? See, they actually begin to question
whether or not God, whether Jesus is for them. Whether Jesus truly
loves them. They begin to question everything
that's happening around them, whether or not they're going
to sink in this moment, because even if He can do something about
it, would He do something about it for them? And maybe you're
sitting here today and you're saying, man, you don't know how
I've lived my life. How could God possibly be for
me? How couldn't I truly trust that
God is going to do right with my life in this moment? Because
if you knew where I've been and what I've done, I can't possibly
imagine God loving me. What's interesting is that when
they say, are you going to allow us to perish? What they don't
realize is that He was the one who was going to perish. He was
the one. that ultimately took on a greater
storm than you and I could ever possibly imagine. The storm of
God's judgment coming down in Jesus willingly, involuntarily
taking your judgment, my judgment, my condemnation, my sin, upon
the cross, upon His body, and that through His stripes I'm
healed. The cross teaches me that if
God didn't abandon me in going through that, then how could
I ever question that He's going to abandon me now? There is nothing
greater that He could not only prove to me, there's nothing
greater that I could sin against God. than to have the nails and
the hammer in my own hands. And nailing His arms and His
hands and His feet to the cross. But Jesus teaches us that that's
exactly what He did. He took it upon Himself on the
cross. And that is what speaks to us
that God has been so, so good to me.