Calm Faith

“Then He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves. So they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’” (Luke 8:24b-25)

After the disciples shoved the boat out from the shore an exhausted Jesus laid down under the stern’s platform and slept. Not long after, a sudden storm arose on Lake Galilee. The boat was being swamped with water, along with the hopes of the disciples. They saw themselves going down. When they got a quick second they woke Jesus up and “upbraided” Him for sleeping on the job and for not caring. He got up and shut the wind down and smoothed out the waves, all with a word. Then He had a word for them. “Where is your faith?” They were stunned by His awesome display of power. But they had no answer for His question.

Do we?

Their very real experience on the water sometimes reminds us of the events of life that can come our way. Some of them are very much like a raging storm that can threaten our very existence.

Where does this calm faith Jesus pointed His disciples toward come from? It comes from trusting in the sovereign purposes of God. That is what Jesus did. He knew that His life’s destination was not yet reached, and that He would continue on until He reached that skull-shaped hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem. That was the Father’s purpose for His life. So He put His entire confidence in the sovereign purposes of the Father.

We cannot understand the storms of life. We cannot understand why God allows them. But we believe that the Scripture teaches us to trust ourselves into the sovereign purposes of God. The writer of Hebrews reminds us in chapter 11 that this is what the faithful servants of God through the ages were commended for.

God calls us to trust His sovereign purposes, and when we do so, that yields a calm faith.

Lord, We recognize this is not easy for us to do, but help us to genuinely trust Your sovereign purposes for our lives through every life encounter we have. Amen.