If you have ever taken a car through a car wash you know that it can be a harrowing experience if you haven’t done it before. Imagine being a small child going through it for a first time in the car with a parent.

The shaking, the noise, soap and water being shot at you, brushes brushing all around you violently…. If you were that child, you would look to the parent to see what the parent’s reaction is... Is she calm, is she panicked, is this normal?

Children look to see how the adults around them are reacting to what seems like a VERY frightening situation. The circumstances may not make much sense at all to the child, but if the parent is okay, it must be okay.

The followers of Jesus did not think to take this approach and look to Jesus as a dangerous storm came up suddenly on the water:

One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they set out, and as they sailed he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. And they went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?” (Luke 8:22-25)

The disciples panicked because they knew this storm was dangerous and they did not see Jesus as larger than the storm. They didn’t know the full extent of who he was and the power that he had as the actual God-man, the creator. The story is told, though, so that we can know that and believe that now. If Jesus is calm, we can be calm. Jesus the Son, with God the Father, is sovereign over our lives and our storms. Keeping our eyes on him is the key.

You may be seeing storms on the horizon of your life. Perhaps you are going through one right now. You may be in “the eye of the storm” and anticipating more hardship to come. Where are your eyes focused? Will you be like the child in the car wash, trusting, or will you be like the disciples in the storm, panicking?

A child has a relationship of long-standing trust in the parent based on time spent and past memories. Jesus desires this with us. He wants us to so trust what he has taken us through in the past that we look to him and trust him no matter how weird things get around us.

He wants us to know we can trust him. If you are new to a relationship with him, or thinking about how to start that relationship, know that he is waiting, delighting in you and he can’t wait to have you draw closer with him.

He once said that he longed to gather those in Jerusalem under his wing, but they wouldn’t have him:

"How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! " Matthew 23:37

He longs now to gather us under his wing like a mother hen anticipating a storm coming. Will you get under?

Staying under as best I can,

Ellen

Watch this amazing sermon on this passage by Tony Evans called "Trusting God in a Storm" (about 30 minutes but you can skip the interlude in the middle about his father if you are short on time)

For a helpful article Jon Bloom entitled “Can We Really Be Free From Excessive Fears?” click here.