Listening to Jesus is one thing; trusting him when the waves are coming over the sides of the boat is another—and most of us know the difference from the inside. In Matthew 8, seasoned fishermen who have already followed Jesus into the storm find their faith put to exactly that test.

Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

The preacher contrasts “listening” to Jesus with actually “trusting” him. What is the difference in your own life between hearing what God says and believing it enough to act on it? Where do you find yourself tuning in without fully committing?
The disciples cry out “Lord, save us!” while still asking “What kind of man is this?” Jesus calls them people of little faith rather than faithless. What does his response tell us about how God treats us when our belief is real but incomplete?
The sermon notes that the Weather Channel tops the trust rankings partly because it transcends political division and can be fact-checked against reality. How is trusting Jesus different from trusting any news source? What evidence of his trustworthiness have you personally seen or experienced?
When have you faced a storm where your confidence evaporated the moment things got serious? Looking back, how did God meet you in that moment, even if your faith felt small or half-formed at the time?
The preacher describes his college professor choosing to guide him toward better sources rather than simply marking the paper down. How has someone in your life shown you that kind of patient, constructive discipleship? How might you offer that same grace to someone who is still working out their faith?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

He’s got you and me, sister, in his hands. He’s got you and me, brother, in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands.

I saw an interesting poll this week. It was a poll of how we as Americans—and I’m sure you could do a similar poll for our international family as well—but this was specifically in the United States—how we Americans feel about our different sources of news. It wouldn’t surprise you that, generally speaking, I think it’s pretty dismal. It wasn’t an overwhelming vote of confidence. If you looked for the old standard guards like ABC and NBC and CBS, they were all low on the list.

So it’s kind of interesting, though, which ones actually did get a decent rating. The fourth highest was, interestingly for Americans, BBC News. The British Broadcasting Company was the fourth most trusted. If you’re looking for the third most trusted, it was the Wall Street Journal. Maybe not overly surprising. It’s sort of become perhaps the paper of record in the United States at this point. So that wasn’t totally shocking.

Number two, this one I didn’t necessarily see coming, but it was PBS. That was kind of interesting. But who do you think would be the most trusted news source in America today? The Weather Channel. And they’re actually the ones I learned this from. They published this survey because they were obviously very proud of it, that they were the most trusted news source in America.

And I thought, well, that’s odd that a weather-focused outlet becomes the most trusted, especially because we like to poke fun at the meteorologists. But most trusted. Why? Well, I started to think about that list again. Most people that would be more inclined to get their news from PBS probably lean a little bit leftward. Most people that would go to the Wall Street Journal probably lean a little bit rightward. BBC, I’m not really sure on that one. It’s the accents. Yeah, it sounds so good. It always sounds good, whatever their broadcasting is.

But it struck me. The reason that you see these two up high but not the top is that you probably had a split based on people’s ideology on which one they trusted. And so neither one could be number one. But when you want to know the weather, you simply want to know the weather. And generally speaking, actually, I can say this, absolutely. I have never thought when I wanted to know if it was going to rain or not, I wonder if I’m going to hear from a Democrat or Republican. I just want to know if it’s going to rain. And if I want to know anything, was this meteorologist accurate yesterday when I wanted to know if it was going to rain? And so it breaks through that division that we have in this country, unlike all those other news sources that divide based on how you lean and then, of course, all the scandals and uncertainty in general that have pulled them down. None of those old guard standards are even on top.

Isn’t that interesting? I think that also probably indicates something about how we listen to them, that the only one that could claim the top spot is one that we explicitly, all of us, say we don’t trust half the time or more, right? I mean, no one says, I just love meteorologists’ accuracy. They’re always right. No, our most trusted source is one where we generally say, you know, a lot of times they get it wrong. And it goes down from there. Isn’t that interesting?

Because we listen. We probably listen to more news, watch more news, read more news, are bombarded with more news today than any other time in history. But we don’t know what we can trust. And it struck me that there’s a big difference between choosing to listen, even if we find, okay, this is where I’m going to listen. I’m going to listen to this source. There’s a big difference between choosing I’m going to listen and saying I’m going to trust. We can let a lot of things in, but what are we going to do? Are we going to act on it? Are we going to believe it? Are we going to actually think this is what I need to deal with in life? That’s very apparent today, but it’s not a new problem.

You see, a lot of the people that were following Jesus around—you couldn’t tune in to whatever cable news channel you preferred or go online and find your favorite influencer telling you what’s going on in the world or anything like that. You couldn’t do that then. But you had sort of the equivalent of influencers with the different roving teachers and rabbis that would go around and tell you how things were. Here’s what you need to do. Here’s what God has to say. Here’s what’s going to happen. You had to decide, one, am I going to listen to this rabbi, and two, do I believe this rabbi to the point that I’ll stake my life on? Two profoundly different things.

There are a lot of people we’ve seen over the last few weeks that would listen to Jesus, but were they going to actually believe Jesus? Last week, we saw a number of people who kind of fell into that iffy category, quasi-disciples, on the edge, trying to figure out what they’re doing, right? Because on the one hand, they’re there, right? They’ve tuned in. They’re listening to the Weather Channel. At least they’re listening to it. They say, you know, rabbis have about a 50-50 shot at being right. Sometimes they tell me it’s going to rain, and it doesn’t. Sometimes they tell me I can plan a picnic, and then I can’t.

So do I listen or not? Whether it’s the Weather Channel or the Wall Street Journal or PBS or whoever else, you know, you can go through your whole life like that, right? Because in the end, it doesn’t matter a whole lot. If the meteorologist gets the weather wrong, most of us have learned it’s going to happen part of the time, and what do we do? We use some common sense. If it’s getting dark outside in the middle of the day, maybe we should assume it’s going to rain, even if the meteorologist said it isn’t.

And if the news source reported some foreign conflict is what’s happening in it, and they weren’t exactly right or they withheld certain data, you know, you still have to focus on what you’re going to do today, right? So we can go through our whole lives distrusting these sources that we allow constantly into our minds, but still choosing to listen. And sometimes we try to do that with Jesus, too. I’ll keep, you know, I’ll listen to sermons. I’ll go to Bible studies or read the Bible, but I’m just going to listen. Jesus wants us to do more than listen. He wants us to do more than talk a good game. He wants us to trust.

Let’s pray tonight that as we come to his Word, we’re encouraged to do just that. Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for your Word. We do thank you for everything we find in it, that your mercies are indeed new every morning, that your faithfulness is written from the beginning until the end. Lord, would you encourage us not just to listen to your Word, but because of that faithfulness to respond to it today and every day, we ask in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.

Matthew 8, verse 23. If you want to go ahead and turn there in your Bible with me.

Remember, we’re right on the sea here. Jesus said they’re going to go to the other side to get away from the crowds last week. So here they are. And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves. But he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, Save us, Lord, we are perishing. He said to them, Why are you afraid, O you of little faith? Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.

So the leper, a few weeks ago, they asked Jesus for healing. How much did he believe? Well, clearly we saw some faith there, right? But if you look, it’s Jesus reaching out to him. If he’d had to risk being arrested to come to Jesus, would he have done it? No.

The centurion. Now, there is an example of faith, right? We know clearly because he speaks it. Although, again, had he been let down and Jesus hadn’t healed his servant, would anything have happened to the centurion that wasn’t already going to happen? No.

Last week, Jesus starts to challenge people. Okay, now, are you willing to actually see negative consequences to following me? Are you willing to give up everything and live without comfort and follow me? Are you willing to set aside all of your responsibilities that you’ve had in the past and follow me? Are you willing to do those things? And then it starts getting a little dicier, and that’s where we start to see.

Okay, we’ve seen these examples of faith. And I do believe they’re genuine examples of faith. And we may have even seen some sparks of faith. I mean, these are people that are choosing to listen to him, right? They’ve subscribed to the channel, and they watch it every day. They’re here. But are they willing for it to cost them something?

The twelve, well, they’re the inner circle, right? You expect a little bit more from them. And indeed, they’re the ones that get on the boat. So that’s something, right? They get on the boat. We have something of an idea nowadays of what this boat might have been like. There was a drought a number of years back that lowered the sea, and they were able to see approximately in the area that Jesus and his disciples were at this point, a boat that they think was a lot like the fishing boat that Jesus and his disciples got on. It was a pretty big boat, 27 feet long, 7 1⁄2 feet wide. Not a huge boat, but a decent-sized boat where a group of people and a catch of fish could all go on that boat. So it’s not like they got in a little canoe and they hit a storm. They’re in a boat that is a serious boat. A boat that probably has gone through a fair number of storms.

But this wasn’t just any old storm. The word used here in the Greek is a Greek word that doesn’t sound very foreign because we actually use derivatives of it all the time. It was seismos. And the reason I actually mention the word is you probably already know, if you hear that word, something that it relates to, right? We know when we’re talking about earthquakes, right? We’re looking at the seismic activity. That’s the word. Why? Because if you’re on a boat in a great storm, it feels a lot like being on the land in an earthquake. So you could approximately translate this, a great earthquake of a storm. It wasn’t an earthquake. It really was a storm. That’s the point here. But it’s incredibly violent.

And even seasoned seafarers like the disciples who have spent their lives on the boats fishing, and it’s not like it’s their first time on the water and they’re trying to get sea legs, they’re used to doing this. They fear for their lives because the waves are coming over the sides of this boat. This is a big boat, a nice stable boat, a boat that probably if you have a little rainstorm, you hardly even notice it. But boy, do you feel it with this storm. It’s shaking the boat. It’s rocking the boat. It feels like they’re going to sink. And that is the context that they’re in.

And what’s Jesus doing while this is happening? He’s sleeping. Come on, Jesus. We’re dying here. Jesus is sleeping. We see a very human picture of Jesus here, right? He’s both fully God and fully man. Part of that humanity, his body actually needs rest, right? He’s going to sleep.

God doesn’t sleep in general, but we can say in some sense God slept because Jesus is God and God in human form, he sleeps. It’s been a big crowd, a big day. We don’t know what time of year it is. Maybe it was really hot like this is. Maybe it was just like the heat just taking it out of you.

And again, that boat, the crowd can’t follow for a little while. It’s just the little trusted group and Jesus goes to sleep. But the disciples aren’t, if they were asleep at all, aren’t asleep for long because they have an earthquake storm hitting them. How does Jesus sleep through this? Well, apparently he was tired, but there’s also the part that he’s God. And God knows that God’s in control of this. He doesn’t have to worry.

The jostling of the boat wasn’t making Jesus wonder, I wonder if we can get across to the other side. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. Maybe I just gave my last sermon. No. Jesus is asleep. And all the disciples want to say to him is, Jesus, you need to get anxious here. This is bad. We’re going to die. Come on.

Maybe they felt a little bit like someone who’s not from the Midwest does when you move here and you’re around those of us who have been here all our lives and the big storm comes in. Every time you talk to somebody that’s new to the area. I remember when I was in seminary and most of the people in seminary were not from St. Louis. And the first time a severe weather hit while we were all in classes, those that weren’t from this area, I mean, they were just like, where are the tornado shelters? Where do we need to go to? And the rest of us, well, let’s go see if we can see what’s going on. Let’s walk outside. We’ll take a look around here. I mean, come on. It’s a storm. We need to go see it. What’s wrong with you people? Everyone’s like, it happens all the time. Come on. It’s not really a tornado if you don’t see it, right? I mean, come on.

I think those people that weren’t from here, and I think they probably felt a little bit like the disciples here. Because for those of us that are here, part of it is from a lifetime of experience that it doesn’t typically happen. A lifetime of experience that it doesn’t typically turn into anything bad. In fact, it almost never turns into anything bad. It does at times. We’ve seen that in our city, and some of us have experienced some of it. But generally speaking, I mean, how many times have the sirens, how many times have they gone off this year already? And thankfully, no one in this church has lost a home or lost their lives to that. Is that right? Maybe a little siding, right? That makes it exciting.

Yeah, yeah. It’s like, at least be enough for new siding and not just a repair, right? But those are the sorts of things, right? Oh, well, it didn’t work out like I got the right. It didn’t hit my deductible right, so I get all new siding.

We have a different attitude towards it. But if you actually end up being a little too relaxed on it, it does tend to change your attitude. I remember in 2011, the Good Friday tornado, anyone remember that one? It ripped through a lot of the city, did some good damage. And it was coming. It was finally clear enough that it was getting rough that it was time to go downstairs. And I was downstairs. And then I realized my hard drive that had all my photos on it was still upstairs. I thought, well, that can’t be. So I walked back upstairs, grabbed my drive and cabling for it. I remember walking back down the stairs and hearing this roaring sound. I thought, uh-oh, maybe I have been a little too relaxed. And in fact, the tornado did come through. And it didn’t do incredible damage, but it did take all the shingles off the one side of the roof and sandblast the car. I mean, it was really there, took two trees down. That was enough to kind of be like, oh, you know, huh, that’s interesting.

But I do remember that moment. It was like I was so calm going up and getting that hard drive and so not calm coming back down, wondering if I was going to die from my photos. Not my smartest moment, maybe.

It’s really good to talk a good game, right? I remember all those times that we’d be standing there at like the seminary library and there was this big overhang with brick columns. And you just stand there and just watch it, see what it’s doing. Well, don’t worry, it’s not so bad. It’s really easy to talk that when it’s not so bad. But what is it when it’s bad, right? Since it was all my own self-built confidence, it evaporated pretty quickly.

My disciples, they probably were talking a pretty good game as they got on that boat. And they’re watching these other people saying, ah, you know, I don’t know, Jesus. Foxes have holes, but you don’t have a place to stay at. Haven’t you heard of this health and wealth thing? It markets so much better, Jesus, than what you’re doing. Can’t you promise a little blessing for us that we follow you? We can do miracles. How about just a little miracle of some gold so we’re okay, right? Or even a few shackles, we’ll take that.

Jesus says, no, it’s going to be hard. And I imagine the disciples are remembering this and kind of processing it. Because as they’re standing on the shore, I’d imagine they thought, yeah, we’re the ones that said we’ll follow Jesus, we’ll do this. They’ve been listening to him and following him. But now they’re on the boat. And now the storm’s getting bad. And they’re saying, you know, all that confidence about storms of life, Jesus has them under control. We’ve seen his power. We’re starting to learn who he is. Now they’re going to actually have to face, what are we going to do? How’s this going to work? Because it doesn’t seem so good.

We have faith in those moments. That’s what Jesus is calling us to, is to trust him in the moments where it’s not just this theoretical thing that never seems to happen, but you hear the force of the storm and you wonder, where am I here? And unlike me being stupid and just trying to go rescue my photo drive, it’s actually something that matters. Life and death, eternal life and death, right? Are you going to follow me then? The photographers in here just felt a little pain because I said what really matters. And yeah, I mean, if you’ve taken a bunch of photos, it does really matter, right? But we know ultimately, ultimately anything that we put our lives into in this life is going to fade. But Jesus is saying, are you going to trust me about the things in this life because you realize something more is coming?

And just as God has done throughout all the pages of the book, he’s going to say, trust me about the things in this life because you realize something more is coming. And just as God has done throughout all the pages of scripture, he shows us that we actually can look to this power to have that faith. Take a look at verse 27. They cry out to him and what does Jesus do? He stops the storm and the men marveled saying, what sort of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him?

There’s two interesting steps to the process of the disciples coming to Jesus here on this boat. This is a literal come to Jesus moment, right? They’re actually coming to Jesus and they really think they’re going to die and it’s bad. And they think at least Jesus could wake up and tell them something, right? But Jesus doesn’t just say what’s going to happen. He rebukes the wind. He rebukes it. Doesn’t say he says some magical incantation that can overpower the storms. He disciplines the storms. What does that imply? It implies he actually has personal authority over the storms. It’s not just that he somehow can force them to do something. He can say, how dare you storms? You’re not supposed to be doing this. Stop. What do the storms do? They have to obey. The wind stops.

And there’s where Jesus departs from other things we wonder if we can trust. All those media outlets that we rank so dismally low and we resort to the meteorologists as the ones we trust. Why is that? Because the meteorologists, at least the right part of the time, the news media is wrong. Most of the time, it seems we don’t know what we can trust. Jesus says, no, I actually do it. I don’t tell you what I think the weather is going to be. I don’t have a little board at the side of the boat dock saying today’s sailing weather here it is. And hopefully it’s right. No, Jesus actually can say what the weather’s going to be because he’s going to say what the weather’s going to be and the weather’s going to obey him. Very different thing. It’s something that only one person ever can do.

Psalm 107, speaking of the Lord: “For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven. They went down to the depths, their courage melted away and their evil plight. They reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man.”

Disciples are called to trust Jesus in faith, but they’re also called to look to Jesus’s power as a part of that. How do you trust Jesus? You see, he’s the one who can actually command the storms. It’s not misplaced trust, right? He’s not going to just tell you what you want to hear and then end up not being able to do it. Jesus can do it. Jesus does.

I don’t want to be hard on disciples too much because after all, they are the ones that got on the boat. They’re the ones that didn’t walk away when Jesus said, it’s going to be really hard if you follow me. No, they’re there, but it’s sort of like if you’re a St. Louisan going down into that basement and you know, okay, I guess it’s bad enough. I should go down to the basement. And you’re still enough of a St. Louisan and you think, but it’s probably not going to do anything. And then that boat hits that with that storm and there’s no doubt it’s going to do something. And the question is now, where’s your trust? Can you believe it then when you’re actually faced with it?

And to a degree, they can, because what do they do? They cry out to Jesus. They want to know why he’s asleep. But what do they cry? Lord, save us. We’re not supposed to look at that and think they’re just being polite. They’re not referring—certainly the word Lord can refer to someone of a certain rank in society. It could be a respectful way to address him, but clearly here, it seems to be more. They realize they desperately need salvation. They desperately need at least salvation from the storm. And at least a degree, they seemingly mean it the way they say, the way it reads most naturally, which is that we need God to save us and we’re crying to you, Jesus.

Do they fully understand? No, clearly they don’t fully understand because they’re there. They follow up after Jesus does it with what kind of man can do this. We’re still wrestling with this mystery of who Jesus is. This mystery of the one who is both fully God and fully man, this man who was sleeping with a woman, this man who was fully God and fully man, this man who was sleeping on the boat.

When they wake him, utters a word and this once-in-a-lifetime storm just stops. What kind of man is this? I think we really get a glimpse into the wrestling and the growth of faith in the disciples as they say this. You have these two things that contrast here: Lord, save us, and what kind of man. They’re not fully there yet. They don’t have it all down.

But I think it’s important that we see that because what does Jesus do? He doesn’t say, you still think I’m a man, just a man. You cry out, Lord, save us. But you just think I’m a man. Because I know what you’re going to say when I do it. You’re going to say, what kind of man can do this? I already know that. I know you’re going to say that. And so, you know what? Why don’t y’all just drown? I’ll get some new disciples, ones that really believe. I can do better than this. I’ll make better disciples than this. I mean, come on.

But what does Jesus actually do? He saves them. He responds to their imperfect cry, a cry of people who can’t figure out why he’s asleep, who can’t really quite understand the full nature of who he is yet. But they understand that he’s the one they should cry out to. And Jesus responds.

I think it’s so important for us to understand that being a disciple of Jesus doesn’t mean that we have everything figured out. These disciples, the 12, the innermost, didn’t have everything figured out. They didn’t know everything. They weren’t sure how to apply everything. They had a sense they should cry out to Jesus as they should cry out to God. So they clearly got part of it, and yet they also can’t quite figure out because he’s also their friend who sleeps and eats. How does this work? They didn’t have it all figured out. But even in their little faith, they cry out to him.

It’s notable here, as Matthew retells it, he uses a very interesting word—this word we translate, “you of little faith.” Not “you faithless ones.” Jesus will accuse the Pharisees, for example, at times, and the others who are skeptical, of being a faithless generation. He doesn’t accuse the disciples of being faithless. He says, you of little faith. They have faith. They’re his. They’re just not there yet. But they know enough to turn to him.

And that’s what we need to know too. That whatever half-baked faith we have, it might not be where it should be right now. And whatever things that keep us up and we’re not sure what to do with them, that we can still turn to him. And because he loves us and cares about us, what’s he going to do? He’s going to respond. He’s going to strengthen. And his point isn’t to say, oh, you of little faith, go away, I have nothing to do with you because you aren’t good enough. No, what’s he going to do? He’s going to actually act on their cry, their prayer, so they grow and become more mature in the faith.

Through a series of odd coincidences that I later saw as providence, when I went to college, I was going to be a computer science—well, management information systems major—so like computer science and business fused together. And I ended up with a weird schedule that put me in one particular professor’s world religions class just as a general education requirement. I just had to check off all those boxes you have to check off.

I was already interested in theology, so I was kind of interested in it, but I wouldn’t have signed up for that class because I’ve never ever, ever been a morning person. And it was the earliest possible class on the schedule, but it was the only one that worked. And so here I was in this world religions class, and it was the best class I took that semester. It was so good, I got really excited about it and got to know the professor. We had some great conversations, and towards the middle or end of the semester, he came up to me and said, have you considered becoming a religion major?

He said, you don’t have to change majors, you can do a double major and you can become a religion major. And I thought, well, I’m really enjoying this class. That sounds pretty good. So I signed up for it, and the next semester, I signed up for another one of his classes, New Testament this time. And by the end, I took eight classes from him. I loved taking Dr. Alan Meyer’s classes. They were great. He was an incredible mentor to me throughout college and a dear friend in the time since and mentor as well. So I was so thankful for that, but it wasn’t like I’d been preparing to be in these classes.

And so I took this New Testament class and what did I know? I knew how to, I mean, I knew where the books of the Bible were and what generally was in them as someone growing up in the church and learning the Bible as you go does, and I was interested in it, but I didn’t really know what it meant to do scholarly research on the Bible. What sources you’re going to go to if you’re gonna write a paper on it.

And so I took what I did know and I wrote a paper at the end of the semester and I remember handing it in to him and towards the end, not quite at the end, and I remember handing it in to him and he came back to me with it and he’d been very kind and gracious and encouraging on the different things I’ve been turning in. But he gave me back the paper and he said, you know, there’s these sources here and these aren’t really the kind that you want to use in a paper like this. They’re not really up to the snuff. They’re dated and you’re not doing a historical research paper. You’re trying to say what the best current biblical scholars are thinking and so on and not really what should be in there.

Well, he could have just marked the paper down, but instead, because he had taken interest in seeing me go through this program and in a sense, in other words, discipling me, he said, here’s what I want you to do. Let me tell you some good resources. I want you to go over and get some of those resources and come back with a list and we’ll go over them and then revise the paper to use those sources. And so that’s what I did and I ended up getting a good grade on that paper and continuing to apply what I learned from over the time ahead.

But it would have been really easy, would have been easier for him simply to say, eh, you didn’t do it, go, right? Or you can stay in the program, I’m going to mark down this paper. But he was actually interested in teaching me something and not just, you didn’t do it, but here’s what you need to do and let me help you get there.

And I think we’ve all had those teachers that we’ve been blessed with that do that. How, if that’s true in our human experience, how much more so when we encounter our God? We have foretaste when people do that. When we actually get the chance to be that person that helps someone along, we’re showing a preview of how God is to all of us. And what God says is, yeah, you’re going to come to me sometimes or you’re not going to have the best citations. You didn’t do everything that you need to do because you’re not there yet, it’s half-baked, but I want you to get there. And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to nudge you a little bit, right? I might mark it, Jesus marks it, he puts some red ink on there and says, this isn’t what you were supposed to do, disciples. You’re supposed to actually, you’re not supposed to let this fear overcrowd your faith in me, you’re supposed to see what you’ve already seen in me and what you’re going to see and just believe that you can follow me.

But he doesn’t reject them, he helps them along so that next time they’re ready for a little bit more and a little bit more. And we see that over the course of Jesus’s earthly ministry. And then as the Holy Spirit comes to them at Pentecost, God continues to strengthen them until here at the end of their lives. You look at these disciples and they’re way far away from where they started. Because why? Because God, a God who disciples and strengthens.

He calls us to live in faith. But a lot of times I think we assume if we can’t muster it on our own, if we’re not fully there yet, if there’s still some places where you’re trying to put this all together, well then God surely isn’t going to want to hear you, right? He’s just going to put a bad grade on your paper of life and turn you away.

What does God actually do? He says, here’s the places I’m going to grow you now, here’s the places you need to work on next. I’m going to help you get there. He’s going to get you there.

Jesus does call us indeed. He called the disciples to live a life of faith. But even as he calls us to live a life of faith, he helps us when we’re of little faith. He helps us when we’re not there yet. Because Jesus is the one who gives us that faith. Jesus is the one who’s going to walk with you and with me every step of the way as we try to sort through our half-baked attempts until he brings us fully to where we ought to be.

Would you pray with me, please? Lord, we come before you as those who are imperfect. We don’t turn in everything we need to. We don’t always fully understand the assignment. And we can talk a really good game until we actually have to do it an awful lot of the time.

But, Lord, you are the one who comes to us even in our imperfect faith, even in our brokenness, even in our doubts and our uncertainty, and walks alongside us and brings us closer to you. Lord, would you help us in those places tonight that we are struggling, those places we feel uncertain, those places we feel like our life is on the line, those places we’re just not sure what to do, and that even when we cry out to you, it’s a cry that, on the one hand, is saying the right things and maybe even believing them, but on the other hand, still saying, but what kind of man can do anything about this? Lord, would you continue to grow us and show us that love and that mercy that you always do while making us into the men and women that you intend us to be, those disciples that grow and mature in the faith, because our God is the perfect teacher, the one who is patient and kind and determined to get us there. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.