Why does Jesus allow storms into our life? — Matthew 14:22–33

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. 

Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. 

But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” 

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” 

“Come,” he said. 

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” 

And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” Matthew 14:13–21

 

Why does Jesus allow storms into our life?
Jesus is able to save from fear both above and below the surface of our consciousness.

Have you seen the movie The King’s Speech? You could say it’s a movie about the power of the subconscious. It’s about King George VI, who king of England during WWII. Actually, it’s mostly about him while he was still called Prince Albert. He had this horrible stutter, especially when out in public when he was supposed to be doing impressive royal things. He could hardly get a few words out at a time. So he began to work with a speech therapist.

But the speech therapist was a little bit unorthodox. The prince realized this when the therapist refused to call him by his royal title, instead calling him “Bertie,” the nickname no one was allowed to call him except his family. This made Bertie angry. And he kept getting angry as the speech therapist wanted to do all kinds of different therapies to delve into Bertie’s subconscious. Bertie demanded that they only work on mechanical issues, like loosening his jaw and strengthening his diaphragm. Physical issues, things above the surface. But the therapist had realized that the problem was really rooted below the surface, in Bertie’s youth; the fact that he physically had trouble speaking was because of his upbringing. It wasn’t a physical defect that was causing the stutter, but a subconscious fear that Bertie had been carrying with him that he was not up to the task of being a ruler.

You and I also have a conscious and a subconscious. And our subconscious affects us more than we know. Especially when it comes to things that we fear. We can consciously and logically think through our fears all we want, we can work on mastering our fears above the surface, but that doesn’t necessarily make the fears go away. Our fears are rooted below the surface of our consciousness.

In our reading today we have one of the most famous images of the Bible. Jesus reaches out to grab onto Peter as he sinks into the stormy sea. But just because you’ve seen a million different drawings of this scene in kids’ books doesn’t mean this is a childishly simple story. The basic meaning is simple, of course: Jesus is God and he saves. But our reading today also goes deep. It starts above the surface, in the world we normally see and touch and think about, but then it goes below the surface too, into the nebulous world of our subconscious, where our fears reside. As we dive into the reading today, we will see that Jesus is able to save you from your fears, both above and below the surface.

1. Above

This whole situation seems to occur for the sake of the disciples’ training. If you remember back to last week’s reading, the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus had done this incredible miracle which set the crowd into a bit of a frenzy, naturally. So we hear that immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. It’s like Jesus shoves the disciples into an escape pod, pushes them off, and barely gives them a chance to ask why he’s not coming with.

So the disciples have just heard about the execution of John the Baptist, they’ve tried to get away to spend time in mourning but were met with a crowd of thousands, they’ve watched Jesus teach and heal all day, then they see the miracle, they escape, and now they’re out on the Sea of Galilee and a storm is clearly brewing and yet Jesus still pushes them off on their own. Just when they’d like some time to breathe, the storm hits, the wind picks up, and they row all night long but can’t make any real progress into the headwind. You have to think the question crossed their consciousness: “Why is Jesus making us go through all of this at once?”

Then, Jesus walks out on the water to his disciples. At first, they think he is a ghost. Who can blame them? They’re sleep deprived, physically exhausted, emotionally rattled, there’s a lot of adverse conditions that they’re facing. But eventually, Jesus gets close enough to calm their minds, Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid. He showed them that despite everything that they had been through recently, the voice of their Savior could calm their fears.

What are the adverse conditions that you are facing today? Does it seem like you’ve been hurriedly rushed off into a boat and pushed out to sea with little direction? Do you feel like you have been rowing, rowing, rowing into a strong headwind? Are you struggling with physical challenges like sleep deprivation? Are you mourning the loss of a loved one? Has the question crossed your mind, “Why is Jesus making me go through all this?”

Jesus comes to you today to say you don’t have to fear. He says that he is with you, even when in your circumstances he seems like he is far. Take courage! Jesus isn’t some kind spirit, or your imaginary friend, or someone sending good vibes your way. He is your almighty God, he is the one whom the disciples could not help but bow down to and worship, and he is with you!

And your brain starts to reason and say, “Well if he is God, he could save me from what I am going through.” And you’re right. All of the things the disciples were going through, Jesus allowed them to go through: the storm? Completely under his control. We can tell that because as soon as Jesus steps into the boat, the wind stopped. Jesus allowed the disciples to spend all night fighting this terrible wind as a part of their training. He wanted to teach them that even in the most difficult times of their lives, Jesus has more than enough power to guard and keep them. He walked on the water. Whatever you are facing, he walks on that too. He uses that adversity to train you, to give you the knowledge that you can trust in him even when it seems like he is far away. Because he never is.

Early on in the movie The King’s Speech, Bertie storms out of a session with his speech therapist. He got so mad because he therapist had him read that famous Hamlet speech, to be or not to be, into a microphone, while a Beethoven symphony was playing loudly in the background. Bertie thought it was so pointless an exercise that he stormed out. But the therapist made sure he took the recording, and later on that day, Bertie listened to it and heard himself speaking perfectly fluently, with zero stutter. Because when he had recorded the reading, he couldn’t hear himself talk over the music, his brain didn’t think to stutter. And because Bertie realized that he had experienced speaking without a stutter, he had the confidence in the therapist to keep working with him. The therapist could and did tell Bertie all day long that his stutter was a subconscious problem. But until he gave Bertie the experience that he didn’t have to stutter, he couldn’t believe it above the surface.  

In a similar way, Jesus can tell you all day long that he loves you and cares for you even when you are facing fears. But when he allows storms to overtake you, he gives you the experience of him being with you through those storms so that you don’t have to fear. So that experience his words to be true for you. Jesus trains your mind to trust in him by allowing storms to come up and then being with you during the storms. Just like he trained his disciples to know, above the surface, they had nothing to fear, by calming them in the storm, Jesus trains your mind by calming you during your life’s challenges.

2. Below

And kudos to Peter, he understood this. Or at least he understood that since Jesus was around, he had no need to fear. After Jesus calls out to the disciples to calm their fears, Peter says, Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water. And Jesus tells him to come. Peter shows this immense trust in Jesus, that he not only has power over the wind and water himself but that he can hold Peter up as well. And sure enough, Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

But here comes the most shocking part of the reading. But when Peter saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Do you see the ridiculousness of this? Peter has immense trust that Jesus is able to work a miracle on command, to have him walk on water. And then his trust is vindicated! Peter starts walking on water. He has the initial mental trust, he has the experiential trust.

And yet he loses that trust. Why? When he saw the wind, he was afraid. This little phrase takes us below the surface. Every Christian knows with their brain that they can trust Jesus. Every Christian can point to examples in their lives when they have successfully trusted Jesus and he has kept his promise to care for them. And yet, every Christian still has fears. Why?

For the same reason Peter fears. He saw the danger. Did you realize the oddness of that phrase, he saw the wind? We can picture what happened, even if it’s impossible to see the wind. Even though Peter’s mind was focused on Jesus and trusted in him, even as his legs excitedly moved one in front of the other, below the surface in his unconscious he knew he was in grave danger. See, Peter was a fisherman. He knew the Sea of Galilee like the back of his hand. And from his earliest days, he, like every other Jewish boy, had it ingrained into him that the sea was untamable. The sea meant chaos. The sea meant danger. The sea meant death. And even the Sea of Galilee, which is only about 8 miles wide, is very deep. And Peter couldn’t swim. And so even though he saw Jesus and was walking right towards him, his unconscious took over and grabbed his attention and caused him to fear so much that he was more concerned with the wind than he was with Jesus.

And you know the feeling. You know what it feels like to know in your head that Jesus loves you, to feel your legs carrying you to church Sunday after Sunday, yet when trouble arises you find yourself obsessing over it to the point that you forget about Jesus. You know what it feels like to know in your head that Jesus promises eternal life, to feel your lungs sing “I Know that My Redeemer Lives” every Easter, and yet when that loved one passed you feel like the grief is drowning you. You know what it feels like to know in your head that Jesus gives purpose to even the littlest moments in life, to page through the old photobook, and yet that fear in your heart grows, the ugly idea that when you look back at your life from old age you will be dissatisfied.

This is why Bertie couldn’t get rid of his speech impediment with simple physical exercises. The symptom of his problem was physical: he couldn’t move his jaw the way he wanted to. But the source of his problem came from his childhood, how he lived this life where he had never had a true friend. He never once had an opportunity to express his real emotions to someone. And his breakthrough came not when his therapist found him the right technique to loosen his jaw, but when he started to see the therapist as his friend—someone to speak to not as Prince Albert, but as Bertie. The king’s problem was this huge knot of pent-up unexpressed self in his subconscious, so only when that knot began to unravel below the surface did it help his speech impediment above the surface.

Friends, Jesus does not just solve your surface level problems. When you see the wind, when you perceive the challenges of the situation around you, when you hold these fears, whether it’s of a loved one’s death or of your own wasted life or whatever it may be, when those things grow so great that Jesus seems small by comparison, Jesus does not abandon you. When Jesus allows these fears to fester in your subconscious, he does so to train you that you need more than a mental reset or a therapist’s tools or even a really friendly speech therapist. He allows you to endure these fears so that you are forced to yell out “Lord, save me!” like Peter.

And Jesus always saves those who call on him.

It’s interesting, Jesus’ final question to Peter goes unanswered. “You of little faith, Jesus said, “Why did you doubt?” I’m guessing Peter answered the question. But Matthew, who wrote this gospel, chooses not to include his answer. It’s almost like Matthew wants you to feel like Jesus has just reached down to pull you out of your fear, to save you from your swirling subconscious, and now he turns his face toward yours and his kind face makes the howling wind and crashing waves fade out of your perception, and he says: “Why did you doubt?” And you can’t remember why. Even though you’ve just heard a whole sermon talking about why humans doubt, and all the logical reasons we have to doubt, and all of the things that happen in our subconscious that lead to us doubting Jesus’ power to save, with this quiet question it seems so obvious. Jesus always, always saves from fear. And that’s how we avoid sinking like Peter. Instead of filling ourselves above and below the surface, our conscious and our subconscious, with our fears, we can fill ourselves with the truth that Jesus will save. In fact, he already has. And the more we focus on him, the more we hear his Word and drink in his promises, the more he will fill us, both above and below the surface, with calm even in the storm.