Transcript

Well, take your copy of the Word of God and for the first time in a while, go to the new part of the book, Mark chapter four. Mark chapter four, we’ll look at verses 35 through 41, this narrative of the disciples getting in a boat with Jesus to cross over from Gethsemane over to the shores of Gerizim.

The Lord is tired, he’s sleepy. He’s wanting to get away from the crowd so he can get some rest. He’s not the first preacher that needed to get away from the people to get some rest. Matter of fact, the New Testament says 11 different times the Lord took a retreat away from the people that he might be restored and make sure he is committed to the Father’s will. Of course, he always was. I’m not implying that he could not be, but to realign himself or to keep himself aligned with the Father’s purposes and not just the demands and the whims of the people.

Verse 35, Mark chapter four. “On that day when evening came, he said to them, let us go over to the other side. And leaving the crowd, they took him along with them in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were with him. And there arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up”. Verse 38, “Jesus himself was in the stern asleep on the cushion”. That means while the boat’s filling with water, obviously he’s partly underwater, he’s sound asleep. “And they woke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we’re perishing? And he got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, hush, be still. and the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. And he said to them, why are you afraid? How is it that you have no faith? And they became very much afraid and said to one another, who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

I’ve entitled this message, actually I entitled it 36 years ago. Stay in the boat. Stay in the boat. No one is immune from storms in this life. Storms afflict everyone. As the old adage goes, you’re either coming out of a storm, in between a storm, about to go into a storm. That’s a part of this fallen world. Difficult days, challenging, hurtful, troubling situations come into our lives. And when the storms strike the boat of our lives, we become much more vulnerable to Satan’s winds of rationalization and the crashing waves of justification. Satan comes against the boat of our lives, giving us rationalizations why, oh, in this situation, I don’t have to trust Jesus like I used to. I’m gonna have to kind of handle this on my, own. In this situation, I’m gonna handle this with my understanding because it doesn’t look like Jesus’ way is working. justifying, rationalizing a compromise.

I can just see these disciples in this raging storm. Jesus is asleep. Don’t you care that we’re perishing? And Simon Peter, right after he says that, is doing this right here. He’s just about to dive in and swim it in his own understanding and in his own strength. He’s gonna face a storm with his wisdom and his own strength. And you know what that looks like? Have you ever heard of the dog paddle? I call it the Baptist dog paddle. You dive in doing it your way, not the Bible way. You kind of give up on trusting Jesus. You’ve been hearing the rationalizations and the justifications of the enemy as he crashes against the boat of your life and you thought I’ll just dive in in my understanding and have my strength and I’ll just swim this thing to safety and you end up just doing the Baptist dog paddle. Just a lot of energy but going nowhere. But when the storm comes and the trial comes and the enemy says it’s not working following Jesus, it’s not working being biblical, you’re gonna have to do your own thing here. Here’s what you do, reject that and stay in the boat with Jesus. No boat ever sank that had Jesus in it. Never has, never will.

Well, this storm on this day was an amazingly fierce storm. But first thing I want you to know, Roman number one, it was a predicted storm. It was a predicted storm. Notice two things about the men who are in this boat on this day and face this storm. First of all, note that they are converted men. Look at verse 35. “On that day when evening came, he said to them, let us go over to the other side”. Well, who are the them? Who are these men? Well, they’re the disciples, his inner circle. Jesus had been teaching the multitudes, the kingdom parables, and these guys got to go along with Jesus into a house and he explained those parables to those men more thoroughly. So they’ve been in session all day long. They’ve been in Jesus’ school all day long. And so he’s already taught them, and now he’s tired. He’s been ministering to the people that he’s been teaching his disciples. He wants to get in the boat from the shores here of Capernaum, go across the sea in solitude to get in some sleep until he arrives on the shores of Gerizim, across the Sea of Galilee.

So these are men who know Jesus, who are committed to Jesus, who are saved men, they’re converted men. But secondly, note that these are committed men. They are committed men. Look at verse 36. First of all, in verse 35, he said, “let’s go to the other side”, i.e. get a boat, let’s go to the other side. Verse 36, “leaving the crowd, they took him along with them in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were with them”. In verse 35, Jesus said, let’s get in a boat and go to the other side. In verse 36, these men are saying, we’re getting in a boat, we’re going to the other side. What am I saying? These men are committed. How do you know you’re committed to Jesus? You’re obedient. That’s what they were. He said, they didn’t question him as, what’s on the other side? Do you know how long it’s gonna get to the other side, Jesus? As a matter of fact, it’s that time of the year, Jesus, that these fierce storms pop up unexpectedly on the Sea of Galilee, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, but they do none of that. Jesus said, get in the boat, go to the other side, they obey.

They’re committed. It’s just that simple. Committed men. And as soon as they get in the boat, listen to me, as converted, committed men, the storm strikes. You see, Jesus had been teaching the word to them and now it was time for their practical test. And faith will be tested. Romans 10″17 reminds us, “faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of Christ”. You’ve been hearing the word of Christ, these men had all day long. Now they’re about to be tested. Did Jesus know the storm was coming? Absolutely. The storm was a part of this day’s curriculum because storms are predicted. They are actually assigned for the committed converted child of God.

Now, many people think storms only come when you’re disobedient. Now, there’s some truth to that. God does bring corrective difficulties and trials when we need to draw back close to him, but that’s not the context here at all. Storms are just a part of following Jesus. Storms are a fault, generally speaking, of living in a fallen world. The unconverted, the unbelievers face incredible storms. It’s just that theirs have no eternal purpose, ours do.

Matthew 5:10, Jesus said, “blessed are you”, not if, but “when men persecute you”. Young people, are you listening to your pastor this morning? If you live for Jesus in the school, you will be persecuted. There will be people who will slight you. There will be people who will mock you, who will laugh at you, who will exclude you from your fellowship. Jesus said, if you follow me, “blessed are you when men persecute you”.

The scriptures tell us that we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. There are times when the world gets so fed up with us, when the world gets so angry, and they start reviling against us for our convictions and our doctrine. Ask Charlie Kirk. And they just consider it better to kill you than to have you in their circle or in their society.

Jesus said if you’re gonna follow him, you had to carry a cross. I don’t understand these so-called churches that are making Sunday more of just an entertainment event. There’s no small groups. There’s no accountability. Church membership is absolutely meaningless. Matter of fact, church membership is so meaningless, they don’t even have membership in most of these things they call a church. One church across the river has gone as far as to design a particular perfume that they put through their system because this research has been done and when people smell that particular odor, that particular aroma, they’re drawn to it and may want to come back. Didn’t Abercrombie and Finch do that in their stores or something? What kind of shenanigans?

Here’s my point. How many times are those kind of people that are gonna come to church because it smells right, are gonna follow Jesus when it means carrying a cross? Should the persecution and the undermining and the assault of the enemy get so strong that we get in serious trouble here, I wanna know that some of you is gonna still be with me. Even when, as Paul said to the Corinthians, to some people, we have an aroma of life, and to some people, we are the aroma of death. They hate for us to be around. John 15:20, Jesus said, “if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you”. What I’m saying, they’re predicted. Troubles and trials and hardships and storms and difficulties are predicted for this journey. But praise God, we’re not just a part of this journey. This is just our warmup till we get to our real home.

So storms are an essential part of our discipleship. We learn things about following Christ through storms that cannot be learned any other way. I was in the UK recently, and Joseph Turner, well, he’s been dead, but there was an exhibit of Joseph Turner’s paintings on display not long ago, I think right before I got there. But one day Joseph Turner was painting a portrait and he was painting a portrait of a ship caught in a raging storm. And a pastor friend of his was walking by and looked in the door and saw that portrait and walked in and said, Joseph, Joseph, that is magnificent. The vividness, the clarity, the realistic element, the waves, the splash, the lightning, the force of the water, it’s just amazing. Joseph, how did you capture the storm like that on canvas? And the artist Joseph Turner said, “well, not long ago, I went down to the seashore and I hired a fishing captain to take me out on his boat during a violent storm. And he tied me to the mast, And there as the wind howled and the rain came down and the lightning cracked, he said, I didn’t just see it, I experienced it. The pounding of the waves over the bow of the ship and the stinging of the droplets and the piercing brightness of the lightning. And now having walked through that storm, I can capture it on canvas like never before”.

Isn’t it true, child of God? On the backside of the storm, you now see Jesus more clearly than you did before the storm came. They’re predicted. They have a purpose. It’s a part of our pilgrimage. And what happens when the storms come and Satan crashes against the boat of your life with those winds of rationalization and those waves of justification? Oh, my goodness, I’ve got to trust my own thinking here, my own logic here. Matter of fact, the boat’s filling up with water and Jesus is in the boat. It’s not working staying with Jesus. I’m going to step out and do my own thing here. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. God’s got a purpose. He knows what he’s doing. Do what’s biblical. Do what’s right. Stay in the boat with Jesus. in the storm when it’s difficult.

Well, secondly, we’ve really hit on this quite a bit, but let’s amplify it some. Not only are these storms predicted, these storms are painful. Notice how the text spells this out to let us see the painful severity of the storm. Look at verse 37. They get in the boat, they just go a little ways, “and there arose a fierce gale of wind”. In the Greek, that’s a very powerful statement. Matter of fact, Matthew, in his gospel account of this storm, says it was a sea quake. He uses the original Greek word that means an earthquake, but in the water. It’s just a terrible, violent event.

You see, the Sea of Galilee is 13 and a half miles long and seven miles wide, and it’s rimmed by mountains. And occasionally, the cold mountain air will come down through those narrow mountain passages and collide with the warm, moist air coming up off the Sea of Galilee. And sometimes that erupts in a violent, whirling windstorm as powerful as it is unpredictable. Some American tourists were in a tour bus going around the Sea of Galilee some years ago and one of the Americans spoke up to the tour guide and said, hey, have you ever seen one of those storms here on the Sea of Galilee like the New Testament describes? And the tour guide said, I’ve only seen one and I never wanna see another one. Painful, ferocious, difficult storm.

You know, that’s the way it happens in our lives. You become a follower of Jesus and all of a sudden Satan’s lost. And what happens when you become a committed follower of Jesus Christ, Satan will leap from his lumbering, he will shoot from his slumber, he will revolt from his rest, and he’ll put the best weapons he has against the boat of your life. And you’ll be convinced that your boat’s gonna sink if you stay with Jesus. All the rationalizations, all the justifications, this isn’t working the way I thought it would work.

You could not have been a more shall I say, immature and naive minister than I was when I was first converted, first started preaching. I didn’t grow up in church. I didn’t know anything about church. I didn’t know a Baptist from a wall, and there’s some similarities. I didn’t know anything. I just knew that I was drawn to the word of God and drawn to the people of God. Listen, here’s what I believed. I thought, if I can get in a Baptist church and help them be more biblical, they will love me. Not the case. What I figured out was a lot of folks, now there were some good godly committed folks for sure, but a lot of folks in our churches are very comfortable in their status quo. They’re very comfortable being maybe what you’d call mildly biblical, if that much. And they did not want to be confronted with reforming a church to be more biblically healthy, and it was a difficult thing. And there were many times I thought, this is not working the way I thought it was gonna work. They don’t love me for this, they hate me for this. And I would struggle and strain and question and lay awake at night and tell God it wasn’t working. But God gave me the grace to stay in the boat with Jesus. Failing a lot, yes. Messing up, yes, I did that for sure. but never leaving the track very far, getting back on track, trying to lead this church for the glory of God.

I jotted down some things that are maybe more common storms. Some of these pretty much relate to your pilgrimage as a faithful Christian witness, and some of these are just storms in general. But the first one I jotted down is the storm of family failures. I remember Pam and I had dear friends decades ago here in this church. And one day the wife of that dear friend came in and confessed that she had been living in adultery with someone else. And she was gonna leave the marriage. And we counseled with this brother during the very week he learned about it. He was totally shocked. He didn’t know anything about it. And we were counseling with him and I realized how very hard it was gonna be for him to come back to church. Because you know how it is. You come for the first time and your spouse isn’t with you. Oh, what happened? Oh, what did he do? He was the innocent one, but you know, all the storms. And I’m sure he had to deal with the rationalizations and the justifications of the enemy as to why he maybe ought to take a break himself. Maybe he ought to go chase some flings and some funs and some treasures, pleasures like his spouse did. Maybe that’s the right thing to do. But you know, he didn’t do that. He stayed in the boat with Jesus that next Sunday. I looked back there and there he sat by himself. for the first time in many years. But he stayed in the boat with Jesus. His wife was guilty and he was free, therefore, allowed a concession in the scriptures to seek a remarriage and God brought a committed Christian lady in his life and he was remarried.

I don’t know what may happen to you, but that’s a difficult storm. But when the storm strikes, don’t run from Christ. Don’t dive in and swim it in your understanding and in your strength, stay. in the boat with Jesus.

The storm also of forsaken friendship. Forsaken friendship. I have a phrase that I used to use all the time. You know, you have to let Jesus pick your friends. You get converted and you begin to grow in Christ and all of a sudden, some of the folks whom you thought were real friends don’t really like being around you anymore. and they start falling off. When I was brand new here, I mean brand new, there was a dear man in the church who kind of took me under his wing, became something of a father figure to me, and he was a deacon. We would go hear preachers preach. We’d drive sometimes an hour, hour and a half to hear certain preachers preach here and there, and we would read a Christian book together and talk about it and go eat lunch every now and then. He was quite a bit older than me, obviously, but it was special, it was encouraging. And I became the senior pastor, and we began to change some things here. And one of the things I decided I had a strong conviction about was if a man was gonna be a deacon, he ought to at least be faithful to the church. Radical idea right there.

And we had some deacons, nice guys, but barely even came to church. And so we, I decided that we were going to no longer have deacons if they weren’t at least willing to come to church, be a part of the ministry of the church. And some people got real upset. So they were going to leave the church. I’ll never get it, under that driveway area out there on this end of the building. I was standing there one evening after church and a lot of people around and this man that I thought was a dear, devoted friend came up to me and stuck his finger in my chest and said, you are messing up everything here. He was red in the face. You better change all of this stuff, all these convictions. I’m telling you, you’re the problem and you better change these things and he walked away. and I’m a brand new Christian almost and a brand new minister and I could have used some encouragement, but he was just tearing me up. I went home and didn’t sleep much that night and struggled and wrestled and thought, well, I’m messing everything up, I guess. I guess I’m on the wrong track, but I’d read my Bible and studied the scripture, studied church history, and I did not change. I stayed in the boat with Jesus. He left the church. A lot of his buddies left the church. I don’t know, look around. Now I’ve got an army of men who rejoice in a church having some principles and convictions about things.

Stay in the boat with Jesus. Now I always do this when I come to these points. I could have been wiser, I could have been kinder, I could have been gentler in some ways, but I should not have ever changed my convictions and I didn’t. And God is blessed. Kind of thinking about our young people, what about that storm of the fear of the peer? The fear of the peer, P-E-E-R. “Well, she’s dating a lost guy. That’s okay, I think, and he’s dating a lost girl. Why can’t I court someone that may not be saved?” “They’re not sure they’re saved. Why has that gotta be wrong?” You see, you’re jumping out of the boat where Jesus is. You’re figuring it out yourself. It’s not gonna work. Peer pressure. “Well, they go to these kind of events, and they go where there’s drinking, and they go where there’s dancing. They hang out at those events”. Here’s all I’ve got to say to you. I’m not saying you can’t go to those, but please don’t tell anyone you belong to Christ in Grace Life Church. It’s inconsistent with a faithful witness for Christ. Now, sometimes you get put in circles where you get involved in something, you didn’t know what’s going on. I’m talking about as a willful known pattern of life. What you’re doing is you’re not honoring Christ, and it’s because you don’t treasure him first, and you don’t honor him and join him before all other things, and that’s why you enjoy sinful things. Stay in the boat with Jesus.

Then the adults have these storms. There’s the storm of sickness that’s obviously so very prominent as we get older, and it’s so difficult and challenging, and it’s painful, and it’s powerful. Let me ask you something. When you go to work, do you criticize your employer like the others criticize your employer who don’t know Christ? You better get back in the boat with Jesus. That’s unbiblical. Do you justify withholding tithes and offerings that you might be like other people in the world and spend more money on your pleasures? Instead of honoring the Lord, you better get back in the boat with Jesus. You’re trying to figure this thing out in your own understanding.

There’s a storm of a prodigal child. That’s a difficult storm. Some of the very best parents, I’ve watched it for decades, could have a child that goes bad and you don’t know what to do. But I’m gonna tell you one of the storms you come in when that happens is, yes, be kind and compassionate to that child. They should always know you love them, but do not budge on what sin is. Stay in the boat with Jesus on that. “I love you, darling. I’ll be here for you. But that violates Scripture, and I can never agree with that, period”. Stay in the boat with Jesus. How are they ever going to be drawn to repentance if they work on you and you begin to capitulate to, “make them feel better”? Good, they’ll feel better and go to hell. Stay in the boat with Jesus.

Well, these are painful storms. Your flesh, when you’re in some of these storms, is gonna do just what their flesh did. Look at verse 38, the last phrase. “Teacher, do you not care that we’re perishing?” Jesus, don’t you realize I’m hurting? Jesus, don’t you realize this is hard? Jesus, don’t you realize I’m missing out? I’m castigated, I’m ostracized, I’m slandered. Jesus, it’s not working. Do you not care? It’s almost like I think Jesus would say, well, what did you sign up for? You want to be a true disciple? You want to carry a cross in this world? And by the way, God does bring seasons of favor and blessing, amen? But we have to be willing to face the persecution and the rejection, being left out. It’s not any fun, young people, on Friday night to sit at home when everybody else is enjoying something that you can’t go to because of your convictions. Stay in the boat with Jesus.

Sir Francis Drake was a great English explorer in the 16th century. Sir Francis Drake was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the entire globe. He went around the whole world. And he came back to England and he’s going up the relatively tiny Thames River into London to his port. And a fierce storm erupts. And Sir Francis Drake just ended his worldwide cruise, sail, he’s in the Thames River, it’s not very big, and his boat is filling up with water and about to sink. And historians say that Sir Francis Drake shook his fist toward heaven and said, “am I the one who’ve tamed the seven seas, now come home to be drowned in a ditch?”

Reminds me of how the difficulties of life come. They come often from the person and the place we least expected them. I thought he would support me. I thought she was my friend. I didn’t see that coming. Get ready, but stay in the boat with Jesus. Well, these are predicted storms. It’s a part of the curriculum. It’s a part of our discipleship. Jesus said we’re gonna face storms and we can be trained and matured and understand and see Christ more clearly after we’ve gone through storms.

Secondly, they are painful. It’s a fierce gale of wind. It’s not just a little wind came up on the Sea of Galilee. These men were convinced they were dying.

Thirdly, Praise God, not only are they predicted and are they painful, they are passing storms. Passing storms. You know, if Jesus is with you in the storm, the storm cannot last. It has end incoming.

My New Testament professor in graduate school, Dr. Phil Allison, told us all the time that his wife’s favorite Bible passage was, and I quote, “it came to pass”, end of quote. She said, thank God it didn’t come to stay. It came to pass. Whatever you’re facing, it’s got an end date on it. It’s not your ultimate end. The storm will pass.

Victor Hugo has a novel called 93. And in that novel, Victor Hugo describes a Navy ship, a warring ship, in the middle of a raging storm and the captain has the sailors throw everything off the deck they possibly can to lighten the ship to keep it from sinking and then all of a sudden the sailors heard a noise they dreaded hearing the most. One of the huge iron cannons on the deck below the top deck had broken loose, and every time the ship would tilt hard to one side and then to the other, the cannon would roll across and slam against the inside of the wall of the ship, and then slam against the other side, and they knew in just a little while it would tear the ship apart from the inside out. Somehow, some brave sailors went down there, at risk of their life, because the thing was very heavy. And as it rolled across, got it pegged back down in its spot and saved the ship and saved everyone’s lives. And you know, that’s the way it is with you and I. It’s not the storm on the outside that’s our problem. It’s the raging of our unsettled flesh on the inside. Rest in Christ in the storm. Quit wondering, is this gonna work? Why is this working? Why is it like this? I don’t think I can do this. Following Christ is not working. Yes, it will. Stay in the boat with Jesus. That storm’s gonna pass if you give it some time.

Well, three quick things here and we’ll be done. Notice the promise. The storm’s gonna pass because he promised. What did he promise? Look at verse 35. “On that day when evening came, he said to them, let us go over to the other side”. He said, I promise you, we’re going to the other side. He didn’t tell them there’d be a storm on the way, but they have his promise on that.

It reminds me of John 14:2, “I’m going to prepare a place for you”. And by the way, if he goes to prepare a place for you, you have a prepared place waiting for you. It’s his promise. So even if you leave this life in a horrible, difficult trial and storm, your next moment will be paradise. Glorious paradise. It doesn’t matter how vicious the storm, the Lord has a place for you on the other side. It’s a figurative language, I’ve prepared a place for you. And here, this narrative, Bishop J.C. Ryle, who’s an esteemed expositor, says there are spiritual lessons in this for us. “You’re going to the other side, he’s gonna see to it. It’s a passing storm, you have his promise”. And my friend, you listen to me, if Jesus says we’re going to the other side, we’re going to the other side. We’re gonna make it.

That’s one reason we need each other. That’s one reason we need small groups. So we can come in there on Sunday morning and look at each other and say, grab ahold of me and yank me back in the boat. I’ve gotten in my own understanding this week. I’ve looked to my own strength this week and get me back in the boat. Matter of fact, when you jump out of the boat away from Jesus, the next thing you see is his mighty arm stretched out. All you got to do is grab it. He’ll yank you right back in. Stay in the boat with Jesus. Don’t swim it on your own. Stay with him. He’s promised.

Secondly, the storm is passing not only because of his promise but because of his power. Look at verse 39. What a verse. They’ve yelled at Jesus. They’ve rebuked Jesus. He’s asleep. The storm’s raging. The boat’s filling up. He’s asleep in the boat. And they yell at him, “don’t you care that we’re perishing”. So, wouldn’t you love to know what Jesus was thinking at that time?

Verse 39, “he got up. and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, hush, be still. and it became perfectly still”. The Greek means this is an absolute miracle. Now, if you go over to the Tennessee River during a storm, even after the storm cloud passes, that river’s gonna roll a long time, churning and rolling in waves. That’s not what happened here. Instantly, Christ says, “hush, be still”, and there’s a glassy stillness on the surface of that water like the starry heavens on a summer’s night. Oh, God does stuff like that. God does stuff like that.

I was talking to one of our dear families this last week that got a very serious, horrible medical diagnosis. but it required immediately seeing a specialist, and I wrote them a text, and I said, look, I’ve seen this over and over and over again. Our good doctors do the best they can and feel like something’s very serious, and thank God they need to err on that side, and you’re scared to death, and then you go see the specialist, and the specialist says, it’s not at all that. I’m not even worried about this. Woo, that’s good. Hush, be still. The storm had just knocked out, removed by His power. He does that sometimes. Goodness, He’s done that to me in ministry so many times. I can’t tell you how many times.

Years ago, when I was working with the students here at Grace Life Church, we began to teach some things that they’d really never heard before. I begin to teach that you shouldn’t be a child of God and hang out at dances. You shouldn’t be a child of God and drink. You shouldn’t be a child of God and date people who don’t know Christ. You ought to strive to dress modestly, etc. And people got really mad at me. And some mamas got real mad because I was messing up their baby’s lives. And there was one little girl, she was a cheerleader at the university, matter of fact, and she was a sweet girl, tiny little girl, but her mom in particular really, really gave me a tough time, privately and publicly. And I have her permission to share this, by the way. And so it was a stay in the boat moment. I remember going to my senior pastor. I’m the youth guy, student minister, associate pastor and student minister. And I actually started weeping. I said, well, what am I gonna do? These people hate me, and they’re against me, and they’re threatening to leave us, and all these things. I forget what he said. Probably something humorous, because he was humorous. I was struggling. Not too long after the first episode of me understanding that they opposed what I was trying to teach, Susie came down with a very serious form of cancer. And it progressed very fast. And God did such a spiritual work in that little girl’s life. She was powerful for Christ. She would go speak at churches, and you couldn’t get people in the door, literally. She would speak with such conviction and boldness about a person’s need for Christ. God used her in a great way. Well, the cancer did not remove, and she was in Huntsville Hospital, and we didn’t know it at the time, but she would only be alive two more weeks. And I went over to Huntsville Hospital and I went in Susie’s room and her mom was sitting at the foot of the bed and I went over there beside her and she was just kind of out of it. She wasn’t very alert. Had a very, very large tumor in her chest. And she pushed herself up on that bed when she recognized I was there. She pushed herself up on that bed and she took her little bony finger and pointed at me. She said, you know that stuff you taught us in the student ministry at church? I said, well, yes, Susie. She said, everything you taught was absolutely right. And she laid back down. That’s the last words I heard her say.

Stay in the boat with Jesus. He’ll vindicate you. He’ll protect you. And he can blow that storm out. When Susie had that conviction about me, it calmed a lot of people’s thoughts about me. You don’t know what God’s going to do. These storms are passing because of his promise. These storms are passing because of his power. And by the way, you don’t get to see the conclusion right away. You have to keep walking with Jesus when it’s hard. when it’s, “not working”, when people are not in agreement.

Thirdly, we know the storm is passing because of his presence. He’s with us all the way. Look at verse 38. “Jesus himself”, there’s an emphasis on that in the Greek. “Jesus, he himself was in the stern asleep on the cushion”. Again, I’m just gonna marvel. Recon his head was underwater, I don’t know. Amazing scene. God may not remove the storms, but if he does not remove them in a timely manner, he will sustain you through them with his presence. You know, I found something. When you stand in the fire, your heart stays warm. Jesus becomes more real to you. “But Jesus, he himself”, do you realize who he is? And he’s with you. These men on this day had forgotten just who it was in the boat with them. What in heaven’s name are you going to do swimming out there on your own when the Lord who made the sea is in the boat right there that you’re fixing to leave?

“How I proved him o’er and o’er, proved him, proved him o’er and o’er”. Years ago before airline travel, a passenger ship was leaving Liverpool, England and the destination was New York City. On that particular night, the captain had his entire family on board. and his little 12-year-old daughter had already gone to bed and was in her bed in one of the captain’s suites on the ship. They were just a couple of hours in leaving Liverpool when a fierce scale of wind hit that passenger ship, and it tilted over severely to one side, and the little girl fell out of her bed, rolled across the floor, and hit the wall. She was fine, but she was startled and she was scared. And she said, Mama, Mama, what’s happening? And her mom said, Sweetheart, I think we’ve come into a storm. Mama, what’s gonna happen to us? What’s gonna happen to the ship? She said, sweetheart, I don’t know. The little girl paused for just a moment, and she looked back at her mom, and she said, is my father at the helm? Yes, darling, your father’s the captain of this ship. And that little girl crawled back up in her bed, pulled up her covers, and went fast asleep.

Listen to me. The old ship of Zion is faded, sunburnt. It has dents and scars and scratches. It’s not in fashion, but Jesus is the captain. You stay in the boat with Jesus. He’ll see you safe to the other side. Now, there’s not a soul in this room that doesn’t need to bow your head this morning and say, Christ, I rededicate myself to stay in the boat with you. No matter what comes or what happens, I’m staying with you. Give me the grace to do it. If I don’t have the grace to get it done, give me a brother or a sister in my life that helps me stay in the boat with Jesus. That’s what the church is for, amen?