Daily Devotional

What a question to ask the Man who’s been sent to be our Savior! In Mark 4 Jesus begins this emotional scene with a statement that seems casual and a simple directive, yet casual is rarely the case with the Infinite One who breathes stars. So He says to His disciples (followers) on one side of the Sea of Galilee, “Let us go over to the other side.” (Mark 4:35)

Now the problem is that after Jesus’ statement and affirmation that they were going “to the other side,” two significant things happened: Jesus went to sleep, and then a “furious squall” (storm) over took them, flooding the boat where soon His followers feared for their lives. The tension is, Jesus’ “pre-nap” words had not changed, but the circumstances had changed drastically.

This is where we as believers are confronted with a profound question: what is more real, the words of our mighty invisible God, or our circumstances that surround us that we see and experience?

In response to certain doom , the disciples rush in to the lower stern of the boat and ask a very sincere question in the moment of fear, “don’t you care if we drown?!” I wonder if any of you have also ever felt that way? What I was confronted with when leading this devotion with my kids a couple weeks ago in Mark 4, is Jesus hadn’t changed His directive from the initial statement. The word was that they were going to the other side, and no influence of nature or darkness (Romans 8:38,39), could keep that from happening, since the One who commanded creation into existence (Col 1:16,17) had said for it to be so.

Is your boat flooding? Does Jesus appear to be napping? Even if this isn’t true in your present, it’s probably a vivid past memory or soon coming in your future, and Jesus is still the same Lord now as He was then. He may seem quite in your situation, but if He has given you a promise, at just the right time He will respond to your cries, rebuke the waves and can make it “completely calm” as it suddenly says in Mark 4:39.

I invite you to join me in prayer, as we grapple with this faith injection from the Gospel of Mark: “Jesus as we strive to walk by faith today, may our trust in You, Your power & promises, be bigger than the waves that threaten to drown us. Remind us again that Your banner over us is love, and that you see us. In Jesus name again.”

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.