“Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. – Luke 8:25

With dawn approaching on Friday September 14, millions watched as cable and television reporters stood in rain gear, bracing themselves against gale-force winds and breathlessly reporting on the landfall of Hurricane Florence. In the aftermath, the stories were all too familiar: multiple fatalities, hundreds of thousands without power, families stranded in their homes.

Hurricanes are vicious, unrelenting, and terrifying. The wreckage they leave in their wake is indiscriminate. They can destroy lives.

And sometimes, they can restore hope and faith.

Luke 8 tells of an episode when during a terrible storm. Jesus had just directed his disciples to set out in a boat across the lake near Galilee where he had been preaching for several days. As they made their way across to the country of the Gerasenes, Jesus fell asleep, likely exhausted from his efforts.

Without warning, a “fierce gale of wind” overtook them, filling the boat with water and potentially sinking them. These were hardened sea-goers, accustomed to rain and wind while fishing or traveling. This “squall” (as one translation calls it) should have been nothing to them unless it was extraordinary and truly terrifying.

Moreover, the journey from Galilee to the Gerasenes is not a leisurely trip across a small lake. The Sea of Galilee, separating the two, is Israel’s largest freshwater lake, some 13 miles long 8 miles wide. A ship sunk in the middle of this lake would mean certain death to the passengers.

The disciples felt doomed.

Waking Jesus from his sleep, they exclaimed the boat was sinking and they were fearful for their lives. Unfazed, Jesus stood up and rebuked the storm, immediately calming the winds and the raging water. Luke writes that the disciples were “amazed” and cried out “who is this man?”

This story combines everything I love about Jesus and his faith in God. Not only does he remain calm in the very midst of chaos knowing God has a plan to turn all things to his purpose, but reading past the verse 25, Jesus takes no time resting, repairing, or recounting the storm incident. Instead he immediately gets out of the boat and faces down a man with demons, casting them out into a herd of swine who themselves drown in the very same lake his disciples had feared they would die just a few hours earlier.

The lessons we can draw from this are profound and meaningful in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.

God’s Intentions are Bigger Than Our Storms

God’s plans are bigger than any storm we face. While we fear the unknowns and potential tragedy of loss, God is busy calming the waters ahead of us.

Why? Because there is always another “side of the lake” to reach. God’s intention was for Jesus to encounter the demon-possessed man amidst the people of the Gerasenes, and getting through a storm was part of that plan.

Our personal storms may not be hurricanes. Instead, they may be the unexpected death of loved one. Or we may lose a job and not know how we will pay our bills. Or we may be betrayed by a friend or a spouse.

Our storm may happen when life has seemed to turn against us so much, we don’t know where to turn or what to do. We may even hear the Great Deceiver whispering in our ear, “It’s no use, it will never work. You may as well give up.”

Yet to those who trust in God, the waves and the rain, the despair and the pain – they have no power. His intention is greater than our desperation.

God Interprets Storms Differently

In Luke’s account, Jesus is sleeping through what his disciples believed was a deadly event. Clearly, Jesus was not concerned – he was sleeping soundly as the boat rolled.

How do we typically react in bad times? Do we sleep soundly? I know I don’t! I have sleepless nights, anxious that God needs my help in sorting out my world. I want to take action, jumping into the middle of things.

The disciples saw their storm as a horrifying event that needed to be stopped. In truth, there was absolutely nothing they could do to change the situation. They were powerless, and this feeling of powerlessness impacted their faith.

God, however, was not powerless, and did not consider this storm a calamitous event – He saw it as a way to strengthen the disciples’ faith in His sovereignty.

This has ever been so. The prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Even in the darkest of times, when trouble and hardship crash down on us, God asks us to trust in His Word, claiming His promise for us. We see a storm, God sees an opportunity to bring us closer to Him.

God’s Instruction Surpasses Our Assumptions

We often place enormous faith in our ingenuity and creations. We build houses to withstand the strength of hurricanes – until they don’t. We invent earthquake-resistant buildings which collapse when the Richter Scale is a tick too high. We trust in ourselves when God is patiently waiting for us to place our trust in Him.

“Where is your faith?” Jesus asked his disciples as the storm raged. I imagine it was in many things: the construction of the boat, their own seamanship and experience, perhaps in the strength of the sails to weather the winds.

One place their faith clearly wasn’t – with Jesus and God. In the midst of the storms in our lives, where is our faith? In people? In money? In short term pleasures? None of these can truly save us, and often they can’t show us how to get through the hardships facing us.

Yet God reminds us that He has the power to get us through, to bring us to the other side of the storm. His guiding hand is there, calming the winds and if we listen we can hear His instruction to trust and place our faith in Him.

The aftermath of Hurricane Florence is still unfolding. There will likely be additional fatalities and extreme hardship. God remains here, in our midst, reassuring us His plans are greater than ours, His wisdom infinitely more complete than our imagination.

By placing our faith and trust in Him, we can see the through the darkness and know the truth in Paul’s words from Romans 8:28 when he wrote “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him.”

Peace.
Colossians 1:17