Why are you fearful,
O you of little faith? —Matthew 8:26
When we are afraid,
the least we can do is pray to God. But our Lord has a right to expect that
those who name His name have an underlying confidence in Him. God expects His
children to be so confident in Him that in any crisis they are the ones who are
reliable. Yet our trust is only in God up to a certain point, then we turn back
to the elementary panic-stricken prayers of those people who do not even know
God. We come to our wits’ end, showing that we don’t have even the slightest
amount of confidence in Him or in His sovereign control of the world. To us He
seems to be asleep, and we can see nothing but giant, breaking waves on the sea
ahead of us.
“…O you of little
faith!” What a stinging pain must have shot through the disciples as they
surely thought to themselves, “We missed the mark again!” And what a sharp pain
will go through us when we suddenly realize that we could have produced
complete and utter joy in the heart of Jesus by remaining absolutely confident
in Him, in spite of what we were facing.
There are times when
there is no storm or crisis in our lives, and we do all that is humanly
possible. But it is when a crisis arises that we instantly reveal upon whom we
rely. If we have been learning to worship God and to place our trust in Him,
the crisis will reveal that we can go to the point of breaking, yet without
breaking our confidence in Him.
We have been talking
quite a lot about sanctification, but what will be the result in our lives? It
will be expressed in our lives as a peaceful resting in God, which means a
total oneness with Him. And this oneness will make us not only blameless in His
sight, but also a profound joy to Him.
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