July 16, 2024

Mark 4:40

⁴⁰ But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?” 

­­The disciples had just been through a big storm. And they had survived, although they thought that they probably wouldn’t. But Jesus did not commend them for SURVIVING the storm. Rather, He chastised them because they had not believed that they were going to survive the storm and come out the other side intact. They had been fearful and faithless during the storm. And obviously their reactions were not cause for a commendation.

When you realize that He made this statement to His closest group of followers, the statement becomes far more than shocking.

He asked them two questions about their performance in going through the storm. First, He asked, “Why are you so fearful?” And second, He asked them, “How is it that you have no faith?”

If Jesus had asked these questions to unbelievers (to those who didn’t believe in Him and didn’t follow Him), I don’t think the questions would have been so shocking. But these questions were directed at His closest followers. And their performance during the storm had made them APPEAR to be something that they really weren’t. Unbelievers.

Fear had controlled the actions of the disciples. But fear is NOT supposed to control the actions of a disciple of Jesus. And so He asked them, “Why?”

There was no good answer for their performance. Jesus had been in the boat with them. Did they actually think He was going to die too? Did they think that a mere storm was going to take out the One that the voice of God had declared to be His beloved Son?

Now fear and faith are exact opposites. And they are both powerful forces. In fact, they are the two most powerful forces in the universe. But when the negative power of fear is the power that is allowed to reign, the power of faith is not going to be present.

“How is it that you have NO faith?” This question is a tough one. He wasn’t asking them why their faith was too little. He asked them why their lives had a total absence of faith.

These were His closest followers! And yet He had to ask them why their lives were totally devoid of faith.

Now Christians today have storms too. And we have a rock-solid promise that Jesus is in our boat with us. But just because we have this promise doesn’t mean that we will perform the way that Jesus expects us to perform in a storm.

The implication here is that fear is a choice. It is not something that we have to accept.

Was there a storm? Certainly! But they made the choice to operate in fear and so they made themselves faithless. That was NOT the right choice!

Our five senses may tell us that the storm is intense and that our boat is taking on water. But if we really believe the promise that Jesus is in the boat with us, our reaction to the storm should not be fear. We should not be acting like our unbelieving counterparts in the world.

If you are operating in fear, then you have no faith. But Jesus wants us to know that we have the option to tell our fear (an emotion) that it is lying to us and then ignore it. We truly can make a choice to operate in faith. And operating in faith is simply believing that Jesus is in the boat with us and there is absolutely no way that the storm is going to make us sink.

Our Captain will never go down with the ship because His ship will never go down! And once you realize that you are on HIS ship, you will never be fearful again.