A jon boat full of faith

If only Jesus disciples knew when they were with Jesus what we know now.

That statement has cropped up in my mind many times as there were so many questions I would have asked Jesus that they, as far as we know from scripture didn’t.

Today, we can read the Bible and we see Jesus, at least I hope everybody does, as the Son of God, part of the triune Godhead. The disciples, due to their narrow time with Jesus, mostly saw Jesus as a remarkable man who could do miraculous things. It is evident from scripture until Jesus walked out of the tomb and appeared to them.

There were questions, though, throughout their time with Jesus. They would see him do things and they would marvel.

“One day Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side of the lake.’ So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great dangers.

“The disciples went and woke him, saying, ‘Master, Master, we’re going to drown!’

“He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. ‘Where is your faith?’ he asked his disciples.

“In fear and amazement they asked one another, ‘Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.’” — Luke 8:22-25

According to Luke, the disciples had already seen Jesus raise a widow’s son from the dead, they saw him heal people with sometimes deadly infirmities, restore sight to the blind, they heard him teach; yet they still had a hard time understanding who Jesus really was. They couldn’t quite get it.

To be sure, they were scared of Jesus. Sure, Jesus was a loving and gentle man, but they saw Jesus rebuke evil spirits. They saw how scared those evil spirits were when Jesus came in their presence. They knew for a fact that Jesus wasn’t any ordinary man, but what they didn’t know was if this man was going to destroy the world — or save it.

Let’s get a little perspective here; the boats the disciples were using most likely were fishing boats. Ocean cruise lines they definitely were not. A boat from that time period would be about 27 feet long and about 7 to 8-feet wide and had a flat bottom. In modern parlance it was just a big jon boat.

Knowing this, it was understandable the disciples would be afraid out on the Sea of Galilee in such a small vessel, but they had forgotten something — Jesus was on board.

To be accurate, they hadn’t forgotten about Jesus because they did call on him to do something — he was their line of last defense.

Even though they called on Jesus, and Jesus calmed the storm, Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith, but why?

It’s not that hard to understand, if we look at the entirety of their time with Jesus up to that point. As noted before, the disciples saw Jesus do things no other prophet, not even Moses, had done before. They heard Jesus’ teachings. No doubt they had one-on-one conversations with Jesus, yet they still didn’t realize that they were safe as long as he was with them. Or, let’s put it like this, they didn’t fully believe they were safe in the presence of God, as Jesus is God the Son.

That’s why Jesus scolded them. In essence Jesus was telling them, “Don’t you know who I am? I am.”

The same can be said of our lives. There will be storms, there will be times of trouble, but if we believe Jesus to be who he says he is, then there is a security for us. The raging storms and the troubles cannot drag us down to the depth of this world, for we have placed our lives, the very essence of our existence into the hands of Jesus Christ. A good example of this is Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. A devout Christian, Gen. Jackson never did anything without prayer, whether it was entering battle or going for an afternoon walk, he believed in staying in communion with God. The name “Stonewall” came from his unflinching resolve in battle. He was fearless to an extent, but it was a deep abiding faith that kept him from being paralyzed with fear.

Jackson was quoted as saying “he was as safe in bed as on the battlefield.” In other words, Gen. Jackson so believed in his abiding purpose in Jesus Christ that he was immortal until God called him home.

That was the point Jesus had with his disciples. As long as he was with them, nothing in the world could harm them — if that was His will.

So many times when we pray we ask for God’s will in our life, but I believe strongly that God’s will is God’s will, and we should seek for our lives to be lived within his perfect will. It’s an argument in semantics, but if we seek to work for God, then he will help us accomplish our goals, and there was no way Jesus’ goal for his disciples was to drown in the Sea of Galilee.

To my fellow Christians out there concerning our mortal life, God does not promise a long life, a life filled with riches or a life free from pain and sorrow, but what he promises us is life in abundance — of the eternal kind.

What does it take to get that life — faith in Jesus Christ? For those who have accepted that fact, then Jesus has a job for you to do, and cowering meekly in the corner of the boat is not it. He is telling us to, “Have faith, I’ll take care of the storms, you just keep rowing the boat.”

Keep rowing the boat my fellow workers in Christ, our time is short and there are many who still need to hear the gospel of our precious Lord, bend to the oar and push for the goal, then maybe all of us will get to go home soon.