In Matthew 8:23–27, we read of the moment when Jesus got into a boat with His disciples.
Jesus stepped into the boat, and His disciples followed Him. No warning, no explanation—just obedience. And then, without announcement, a great storm broke out. The kind of storm that would make even experienced fishermen panic. The waves crashed over the boat, water rising around them like a three-story waterfall, fear thick in the air… but Jesus was asleep.
The hardest part of the story is not the storm, but the silence of Jesus in the midst of it. To the disciples, His sleep felt like absence. How could He rest while they were perishing?
And yet His sleep was not a sign of indifference, but of authority. Jesus was not asleep because He underestimated the storm, but because He knew it. He knew that no wave could rise higher than the limits God had set. The storm was loud, but it was not in control.
When the disciples woke Him, they cried out, Lord, save us: we perish.
It was a prayer filled with both faith and fear. They believed enough to call on Jesus, but not enough to trust that His presence alone was sufficient. That is why He called them of little faith—not because they had no faith, but because their fear spoke louder than their trust.
What is striking is that Jesus first addressed their hearts before He calmed the storm. He asked them, Why are ye fearful?
Only after that did He speak to the wind and the sea. By the time the storm outside grew still, a deeper stillness had already begun to form within them.
Then came the question that changed everything: What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!
The storm did not only pass—it revealed Jesus. At first, they followed Him as a Teacher, but now they began to recognise Him as Lord over everything, even over what they feared most.
We learn here that obedience does not spare us from storms. Sometimes, it is obedience that leads us into them. But in those moments we discover that even when it feels as though Jesus does not hear us, or as if He is sleeping somewhere, He is never powerless. The One who rests is the same One who can silence chaos with a single word.
The greatest danger is not that the boat takes on water, but that we begin to believe that God’s silence means God’s absence. The truth is: even when He seems to be asleep, He is still in the boat—in the midst of your storm and mine.
And that is enough.
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