SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/17/2021 12:06 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Panic”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 8:25-26a)
Message of the verses: “25 And they came
to Him and woke Him, saying, "Save us, Lord; we are
perishing!" 26 He said to them, "Why are you afraid, you men of
little faith?’”
One
of the things that we know about the disciples of Jesus who would later become
Apostles is that many of them were seasoned fishermen. They have fished on this lake all of their
lives, as they made a living doing that.
My point is that we can be sure that they did all that they knew to do
in order to stay alive and not drown. I
wonder what they were thinking as they looked at Jesus asleep on a cushion in
the boat, wonder why He could lie their asleep and not be awakened by what was
going on around Him. I have told the
story of a friend of mine who died a while ago from cancer and how I realize
now the great joy that he always seemed to have. He was dying, and yet he told me “were all
right.” We know that Jesus had that same
kind of joy in His life and that is why He could sleep when a storm raged on,
for He knew Who was in charge, and He also knew exactly the precise minute that
He would die, and how He would die, and it was not in a fishing boat in the
middle of a horrific storm. One thing
for sure is that these disciples were in the exact place where they were supposed
to be, even though at this time they probably wished they were not where they
were.
John
MacArthur writes “Sometimes the Lord has to bring us to a point of absolute
desperation before He can get our attention, and that is what He did with hose
disciples whose boat was about to be swamped or torn to pieces. They had run out of human solutions and had
only Jesus to turn to. Perhaps the One
who could cleanse lepers, restore sight to the blind, and heal every other sort
of disease also had power over the wind and the sea. Their great fear was mixed with a glimmer of
faith as ‘they came to Him, and awoke Him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are
perishing.’ Had they had the confidence
in Jesus that He had in His Father, they would have been as calm and
unconcerned as He.”
We
will conclude this SD with a story from John MacArthur and then another
paragraph after the story. “The story is
told of a hardened old sea captain who was quite vocal about his atheism. One night during a storm, he was washed
overboard and his men heard him crying out to God for help. When he was finally rescued, one of the men
asked him, ‘I thought you didn’t believe in God?’ He replied ‘Well, if there isn’t a God there
ought to be one for times like this.’
Many people turn to the Lord only when every other resource has been exhausted. When sickness, death, loss of joy, or some
other tragedy comes, they cry out to God much as the disciples did to Jesus.
“God
is always pleased when men turn to Him, especially for salvation. People can be healed, comforted, saved from
financial ruin, and helped in many other ways without God’s direct
intervention, but the person who is not saved has absolutely no resource but
the Lord. God loves to hear a sinner’s
cry of desperation, because realizing one’s own inadequacy is the first step in
turning to Him. He also loves to hear
His own people cry out to Him, even in desperation, because that is a sign they
remember to whom they belong.”
4/17/2021 12:27 PM
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