And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. — Mark 4:39
There are a lot of things that we are guaranteed in life. There was once a statement made that the only two guaranteed things in life were death and taxes. Unfortunately, there are many other guarantees that we have. We will have times of difficulty and sadness. We will have times in life that test us beyond our imagination.
The interesting part about those times is that we usually do not see them coming. They usually come up without much warning, catching us by surprise. We are not specifically looking for the trial, but the trial certainly finds us and puts us to the test. It is in those moments that we have one of the greatest opportunities in life.
Recently I heard someone make a statement that is so true. The statement was that there are many times you will not experience the glory of God until you have a problem. It isn’t that you didn’t experience God work outside of the problem, because God is always working in our lives. It’s that we experience Him work in a mighty way, an extraordinary way, when we are in the middle of those problems.
That’s certainly what happened here for the disciples. They were simply crossing the water on a boat. We read that Jesus was asleep in the boat and that the storm “arose.” It caught them by surprise, it was all the sudden. Their boat was filling with water and they thought that the storm they were in was going to take them all down. Yet, they experienced God in a mighty way that night.
Maybe you find yourself in one of those storms. It may have caught you off guard and you feel like you are in th middle of the night in a boat that is filling with water. Don’t forget who is in your boat! Call on God and give the situation to Him. I have no doubt if you do, you will experience the glory of God in a magnificent way.