And then, while he returns to the gospel of Matthew chapter 8, we're going to be looking at verses 23 through 27 this morning, Matthew chapter 8 verses 23 through 27. Last time we saw how Jesus must be first in your life, or he can't even be your Lord and Savior at all. Nothing, not the closest relationships, not the dear desires, can come between the believer and his Lord Jesus must be first. And yet at the same time, we saw how we have to consider the cost of following Jesus. His kingdom is not of this world. And so his light always makes this world's dark love of evil conspicuous and seen for what it is. And therefore this world of sin is always and will always be against Christ and against his faithful disciples. And so we have to count the cost. Jesus tells us this repeatedly throughout the gospel to count the cost of following him. Because to rightly follow the Jesus of the Bible really needs to put a glowing target on your back and the closer you follow him, the brighter the target. The alternative is spiritual and eventually everlasting death and overwhelmed by the evil of sin in this life. But our Lord promises to be not to reward us and to more than compensate for every single indignity, every ounce of suffering and loss that we endure. Therefore suffering for Christ, sacrifice for Christ is the best investment that you can ever make in this life. And if you ever thought of it that way, the rewards to those who suffer for him will be beyond our wildest hopes and dreams. In this morning's text shows us how we can endure both the persecutions and the trials and the tribulations and the injustices that Jesus promises will come to us in this world. Our text shows how we can do that and that is by knowing and believing who our Lord is. The more you know who Jesus is, the more you believe in him, as he really is, the more you can endure the trials and the tribulations that may come your way. Who is Jesus and why should we give up everything to follow him? That's what our text says. Let's take time now again to ask his blessing on his word. Father, if we are about to read your word, we know it is from you. It is perfect and it is powerful to change us. And so, I'll be pray you would bless the reading and the hearing and the preaching of your word for your glory and for our everlasting benefits. Father, do this because you promised to do it. And we ask in Jesus Christ, mighty name. Amen. Here now the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 8, beginning in verse 23, this is God's holy and perfect word. Now when he got into a boat, his disciples followed him and suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea so that the boat was covered with the waste but he was asleep. Then his disciples came to him and awoke him saying, Lord, save us, we are perishing. But he said to them, why are you fearful? Oh you of little faith that he arose and reduced the winds and the sea and there was a great calm. So the men marvel, saying, who can this be that even the winds and the sea obey him? And the Lord established this word and now he is blessing to us this morning to our hearts. Amen. I want you to know this first of all this morning. We must always follow Jesus. We must always follow Jesus. We know from Mark and Luke that Jesus actually gives a command to get into the boat and go into the other side where we read in verse 23. Now when he got into a boat, his disciples followed him. Matthew and his disciples give the surest of the accounts when the accounts were found in the other synoptic gospels. And it's difficult to know what was going through the minds of the disciples at this time. I want you to think about it. They know Jesus is a prophet of God. They know that he teaches God's word like no one else. They see him do amazing things. They know that God has given him power to heal. In fact they saw, they were there just the evening before when he was casting out spirits with the word. When he healed all who were sick and they were bringing to him people with us from all the surrounding region. And so it went on to no doubt for hours and Jesus is healing and he's casting out demons. Think of it those malevolence spirits that we'll look at. We're going in a future sermon but that we know a real that we have no power over. And that we could not resist or in any way stand against Jesus with a word. Command them. Just as with a word he raises the sick and cleanses the lepers. And they're seeing this great power in Jesus. And no doubt it would have been awe inspiring as they were seeing it. I was trying to think of some kind of an analogy. And I remember this time when I was a little boy of about six or so and my grandpa was taking me up to Mary Tom. Mary Tom was like the country for people from South Korea, the city. That's how much in the six Mary Tom was. So we're going up to Mary Tom to shoot. We're going up to the cat him road and he pulls off one of these trails. You know that you'd see all the time when we get down the road a little bit and we walk into the woods. And I think I said I was about six years old and I'm about to shoot for the first time. Not right for me. Come on I was six already. I shot right with a lot. But now it's in the country. I'm not a city kid. But we're going out for the first time to shoot pistols. I never saw a pistol before. So we go to this trail and walk into the trail a little bit. And he hands me this nine, nine shot revolver, 22 pistol. And he set up. Hey, man, you're not supposed to do this. But this is the 70s. He set up a bunch of bottles on the straight. And so I'm going to shoot as he bottles. You know, he told me how, when I knew how to aim by that point and so forth. And so I, I take aim with this pistol and it was so loud when I shot it. And I shot maybe two or three more times in my ears or when he didn't have your protection or anything like that. And I couldn't hit anything. And I knew it was terrible. And I, all I wanted to do was give the gun back to him. And so I did. He handed me a second pistol, which was a semi-automatic Ruger 22 pistol, which I have to this day. And I shot it. And it was not that loud. And I could aim it. And I hit a bottle. And then I hit another one. And another one. And I shot the whole clip. And I probably held 11 shots. And I think I had four or five hits in a row at one point. And I just was beating with this power that I could control. And then I could wield. And my grandpa, if I remember, he called me dead eye, the rest of the dead. I didn't know what that meant, but I knew it was a compliment. I knew it was a good thing. Get eye. Well, you know, that kind of power to a child. Can you imagine the power of Jesus as the disciples see it? As they see everyone who comes to him as Peter's house. They're in their home country, as it were. They're Peter's house. Everyone's coming. Everyone's getting healed. Everyone's excited. And everything's great. It seems why would you leave? And we know why. We saw this already in Mark and Luke. Jesus said he came to preach. And so he said, we have to leave. We've already preached to these people. What they need more than my physical touch. They need the spiritual gospel that will not just heal them for a moment, but for a month or for ten years. But forever will give them eternal life. And so Jesus gives the command to go. And true disciples always follow Jesus. What we see in our text. When he got into a boat, his disciples followed him. Think about it. It couldn't have been what they wanted. I mean, it couldn't have been what seemed wise. This movement is taking off all of a sudden. Everybody's coming. Everybody's saying good things about Jesus. And I think that's true in our lives. A lot of times we are called to do something that isn't what we want. It doesn't seem to be the right thing. And yet their purpose was to support and go with Jesus and follow him and obey him. And that's our purpose in all things. What does his word command you to do? It might not be what the world calls as wise. It might not be what you want to do. But it's God's will for your life. To follow him. To obey him. To promote, to live out, to believe in his gospel. That's God's will for your life. I know it doesn't tell you the future. It doesn't tell you what college to go to. It doesn't tell you who you should marry or what career you should choose or what city you should live in. All the things that we're consumed with. But it tells you what God's purpose is in all those things for you. Everything. Wherever you go. Whatever you do. What's his purpose? But you would believe in and follow Jesus and submit in this word and seek to glorify him. The first question of our catacombs is what is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And how do we glorify God by loving him and keeping his command? It's only by following Jesus and we must always follow him. Secondly, I want you to notice following Jesus means going through storms. Following Jesus means going through storms. What this world needs is the spiritual word of God. We must never think that somehow the world needs us. Or worse. What we can do to help people in the temple. What the world needs and what the only thing the world can be say through and actually really help is the word of God, the gospel of Christ. And it means as we promote that and follow Jesus it means going through storms, verse 24. And suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea so that the boat was covered with the waves but Jesus was asleep. For the sea of Galilee, when we'll know if you know this, it was interesting to me to discover this. It lies 680 feet below the sea level of the Mediterranean Sea. Did you know that? It's the lowest, the largest lake in the world. To see a Galilee, a 13 miles long, it's seven and a half miles wide and yet it's only 200 feet deep. It's been likened to the lake here. It's because of that. That's about how deep Lake Erie gets even though Lake Erie is a much larger body of water. But because it's so far down below sea level, it's also sort of sits in this depressed basin surrounded by hills. And on some side, the hills rise to over 2,000 feet on the east side and not far north of the Sea of Galilee is Mount Perman, which is almost 10,000 feet tall. And so because you have this tremendous difference in elevation, there's a great difference in air pressure and humidity and temperature and the air on the hills is cool and dry and the air down on the lake, or on what we call the sea, is warm and humid. And because the sea is so shallow, if you've ever been to Lake Erie here, you can see how quick the storms can turn up waves. But that's what happens in shallow water. Waves can be served up very quickly and the Sea of Galilee is shallow, but it's also in this unique depression. And we know that to this day, storms can arise very suddenly on the Sea of Galilee, so much so that small fishing boats can be put in great danger on that sea. Even today, with all of our technology and all of our ability to predict storms, they can come suddenly and look out warning. And that's what we read here in the text happens. Suddenly, a great campus arose on the Sea. Matthew or Mark and Luke used the word that means a wind storm. And it's interesting that's exactly the way scientifically we know with modern meteorology, that's how the storms formed on the Sea of Galilee by the wind. The wind rolls off these hills that's cool and dry and comes out through these narrow channels and valleys to the sea where it's hot and humid. There's two air mattress collides and storms will just come out of nowhere and cause great waves and wind. And so they're driven by the wind just like Mark and Luke described them as wind storms. And so they're unexpected on the one hand, because you never know when they're going to happen, but they are expected on the other hand because you know the Sea of Galilee is like that, that storms can arise on that sea. You know that danger is there. And it seems to me that's exactly the way trials and tribulations come in this world, or even sudden persecutions or difficult times of injustice or threats to our lives, right? You wake up in the morning, everything's calm, everything's wonderful, and yet you know you live in a dangerous world. Anything can happen at any time. And sometimes we're amazed and dumbfounded by how quickly trouble can arise in our lives without us looking forward, without trying to or doing anything necessarily simple. Storms can just come. That's what it means to live in this world of sin. And yet the disciples, I want you to see, they meet the storm because they're following Jesus. It's because they follow Him that they're put in the midst of this storm on the sea, because they follow Him. It wasn't some, in other words, random, natural event as we think of the storm that came upon them, the storm came to them because they're following Jesus. Now we don't live in Muslim countries or China where persecutions, life-threatening persecutions can come upon us at any time. We still have the right to worship more or less in America. But how many of us face difficulties at work? Will you have to really be careful of how you express your faith, or you could be fired or considered a hater or intolerant or something like that? How many of us have difficulties among family members, at family events around the holidays? Will you know that your belief of what's right and wrong would be condemned if you expressed it, or to your neighbors? And it seems to me that we do have to make a choice many times. Am I going to follow Jesus? Am I going to speak publicly when I should? Am I going to share what I believe is right and good for all people, even for those people that I think don't want to hear, or am I going to be silent? Am I going to play a safe? Am I going to say that we're stay on the shore and not follow Jesus? You know, the only way those people in our lives that can be hostile to us are going to be changed as if they hear the word of God. And maybe we're the only ones who would bring it to them. First John chapter 4, verse 5 says, They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. We are a God, He who knows God hears us. He was not a God, does not hear us. Together think that unless someone would speak to them, maybe they don't even have the opportunity to hear. Maybe God will call them or would call them if we would speak up. But that might mean putting ourselves in the storm, what all in Jesus means? Going through the storms, because this is that kind of a world. Thirdly, I want you to notice, followers of Jesus have nothing to fear. Followers of Jesus have nothing to fear. Well, we think about the storm. We think about maybe speaking up. We don't want to speak wide because we're afraid of what is going to happen to us. But that's where we need to remember that if we're following Jesus, we really and truly have nothing to fear. Look at verse 25 in our text. Then His disciples came to Him and awoke Him saying, Lord save us. We are perish. I want you to think about something here. You know, we read this text and it seems silly to us. Jesus is with them on the boat. And they're all scared and afraid. The disciples were chosen by Christ. We know that from the gospels. They were serving Him. They weren't perfect, but they were following Him, believing in Him, serving Him, living for Him. That was their intention. They were trying to do that. And He was with them in every moment of the storm. Was He not? He was on the boat. There was no way for Him to not be with them. They simply had to call out to Him and He would save them. In fact, there was no way Jesus was going to allow them to not fulfill all of the purposes that He had for them. There's no way. And so I think we can have some sympathy for the disciples. And they're still in this. Because you know what, if you're a Christian today, you were chosen by Christ. And if you're living for Him, that is if you're not living in open sin, but you're reading a Bible, trying to live for Him, praying, not as much as you should, not as well as you should, but you're trying to live for the Lord. Right? Here you are in worship. You want to worship Christ. That means you're serving Him. You were chosen by Him. You were serving Him. That means He's with you every moment. All right, let me get rid of your living in some sin, and you're denying it, and your back-slighting, and God has to sort of call you back to them. And maybe you're inviting some judgment. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about you as a Christian fighting the good fight. Right? You have things in your life that you're fighting against. You're trying to live for the Lord. You're serving Him. You were chosen by Him. Guess what? He's with you every moment. And if a storm comes your way, all you have to do is cry out to Him, and He will save you, there is no way He's not going to allow His purposes to come to pass in your life. Jesus is with you, just like He was with the disciples. You really do have nothing to fear. And you know the disciples knew a little bit about Jesus, but they don't know as much as we do. We know so much more than they did. They had an idea that He's a prophet, that He's from God, that He has power and so forth, and they knew it so much. That when the storm came, after it got to the point where the... I mean, literally it says, save us, we are perishing. They're not saying we might perish. They're saying it's happening. I mean, the waves are coming over. They're both going down. We're going to die. They're saying we are dying. We are dying, save us. Just think of that thing, that they go to Jesus. They're in a hurricane. I can tell you this. I never went on any of the lignair cruises, but if I had to take a person who I most, you know, sort of looked up to in the face, it would be RC's fall, a living person in the RC's store now. And then what's really taken that man's place in my life. But he's the one who I most honored as a scound creature of the Word of God, knew the Word of God. You know, you could look up to and teaching the Word of God. And yet, if I ever did go on a lignair crew, I can tell you this. If it's just starting to get in trouble, I would not go running to RC's store. Yeah. Even if you had a lot of not a cool knowledge, I still wouldn't go running to him. There's nothing he can do in a storm. Right? Because there would have been some great surgeon on the boat who saved tons of lives. I'm not going to go running to the surgeon. Oh, help us. There's a hurricane. The national power has no ability there. I mean, some think of the faith of the disciples that they would go to Jesus in the midst of a hurricane. They had some idea that he could do something. That's really significant. Jesus doesn't say, why are you not believing? He says, why is your faith so small in effect? Why are you fearful? Oh, you have a little faith. You have a little faith on us. There's clearly a review here. But it's not in the little faith ones. They had faith in Christ. They thought somehow he could do something in the midst of a hurricane. Think about that. They had some idea that he could do something. They had something. But the review comes when he says, why are you fearful? That's not the ordinary word for fear that we get. Kobach, podium. You can hear it in English, right? Kobia. This is the word they lost. It means coward. It only appears two other times in the New Testament. One, the parallel path is in mark. But the other time it appears in the book of Revelation chapter 21 verse 8. But the cowardly, unbelievable murder, sexual moral sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars. So I have the part in the light that burns with fire. The cowardly is that word. This is not your afraid. This is you are being a coward. You are way too timid. You are timid, cringing. Their fear was beyond what it should have been. Gone Calvin goes into great detail at this point in his commentary, about how there are many things that we should be afraid of. There is a good what we call good healthy fear, right? A good healthy fear of things. I need more of a fear of eating at night, especially potato chips. That's my weakness. If I seared that more for my out, I probably wouldn't have the heart burden when I go through a lot of times. But I mean a lot of good, there's a lot of good fear, right? You get in a heavy traffic situation. The suffering you are alert and paying attention. And that fear keeps you from getting into an accident. There's a good fear. Calvin goes into great detail talking about how many fears are good. And fear is a good thing from the Lord. And it's good for us to be afraid of the lion, right? Or afraid of swimming out too far away from the shore if we're not a good swimmer. Things like that can save our lives. But their fear goes beyond what it should have been. And it was because of this simple fear that their faith was so small. Their fear was inhibiting their faith. And that's what happens when we don't trust in the Lord as we want to. It should not have been that fearful because why? Because Jesus was in the boat with them. And isn't it interesting in the text? It says, look at it. But he was asleep. Some are two reasons it seems to me why someone can sleep soundless. One is that they work hard that day. The book of Ecclesiastes says that the sleep of a laborer is sweet. To give a really work hard or some of you have manual labor jobs, right? And you do those jobs and man, you are tired at the end of the day. I remember one my dad. He was a letter carrier in Southford. He talked about six or seven miles every day. And his knees were so bad that all the steps he had to go up. And I want to go golfing with him on the weekend. He stated, he's golfing is what people do who don't work real jobs. I'm not going out on the golf course and walking with you when I walk 30 miles every week. That's not going to happen. So I never got to go golfing with my dad. But working hard like that. When I did work this construction a few years in the summer, I think that's part of the reason why it is harder for me to sleep. My job is sitting down. My job is studying. My job is reading. My job is driving somewhere and visiting with people and training with people. And there's a mental stress that comes. And it shows up in different ways. And a lot of that comes not so much from the first reason here of being able to sleep calmly, which is you work hard. It's the second reason that I think I struggle with more. And that is not trusting in God enough. Like the Jesus sleep so calmly on a dangerous lake, because he had full faith in his Heavenly Father. He's not afraid. His Heavenly Father is Lord of the Sword. He is Lord of the Sword. He goes to sleep on this dangerous lake because if you look at it, the text, if you study the other gospel, you see he did work hard. The day before was his Sabbath day. He placed in the synagogue. He taught. He interacted with the people. Then they went to Peter's house. He does all of those healings. All these people are coming after, even for they come late into the night. He's casting out demons. He's healing people. I don't doubt that. Exertion of power was real for him. And then early in the morning the other gospel tells us, when no one else was away, he went off to a solitary place to pray. So he probably got almost no sleep over 24 hours. After being constantly engaged with people, Jesus is tired on the boat. No doubt he goes to sleep. But I think also because he trusts the Lord. He trusts the Lord. I think a lot of our sleep issues are that we wrestle and we hold on and we worry about things and we're not really trusting God. It's so hard for us to sleep. And I think again that's something. If I could trust the Lord more, with the ministry, with his church, with the sleep better, it's not a sin to be afraid. It's not a sin to have a healthy concern for things that we shouldn't have a concern for. But we need to trust and God to the point that we never allow fear or the concerns of this world to crowd in on our faith who really have nothing to fear. We have nothing to fear. And so Jesus reduced them with this cowardly word. Why are you being cowards? You can't play that that way. You know what? We need a review. Even when we're afraid. When we're simply afraid we need a review. I think in our world today, especially in the church, a lot of the church, we don't want to ever review this. In all of us sinners, he needs somebody to help him now. The first part of the health is a review. If I don't have a review for my own sins, how can I turn from them? How can I condemn them? How can I see myself as being able to be freed from them? If somehow I identify with them or I make them part of me so they're reducing my sins as somehow being mean to me, then I'm never going to be able to distance myself with them. I need to be able to separate them from me. And I need to hear the review of Christ. And this is the review. Because the only way in which I can be delivered from my sins is by a myth that those sins confess them to the Lord and pray for His deliverance from them. Not see them as part of me. Not see them as who I am. Even when there's sins of weakness like fear, Lord God, forgive me for my sinful fear. I repent of it. Lord, help me to repent. What if you can't repent? Then ask Him and confess that. Or I can't repent enough. Help me. Confession is always the answer. Confess the weakness, the struggle that you're having. And God will give you the grace. And that's where I want to note. It's 14, lastly. followers of Jesus prevailed because of this story. Followers of Jesus prevailed because of this story. You know, this text, a lot of commentators, see that this text is all about who we are. And you can see a lot of psychology about who we are. In fact, I heard one preacher, a pen call for preacher, say, when Jesus rebukes the disciples in verse 26, he was rebuking them because they should have called this story. You know, or you can do this. You can do whatever I can do. The power of faith. You know, that kind of idea. And that was a review. He's rebuking them. Why didn't you do it? Why didn't you call this story? If you have any faith? A lot of this text is not about that. We cannot be the son of God. And that's the point of this text. It's not about who we are or who we can be or the power of faith. This text is about the power of Jesus and who Jesus is. That's the point of the text. The disciples get it after he does this. Look at verse 27. So the men marveled saying, who can this be? Literally, what kind of man is this? What kind of man is this? The same thing that John says in first song chapter 3, oh, what kind of love the father has loved us. It's another kind of love that we should be called the children of God. What kind of love is this? It's not an human love. It's not an earthly love. That's what they're saying about Jesus. What kind of man is this? This is not a man. This is not a normal human. Yeah, this one is beyond human. If you see that in our text, the Lord of the Storm is God. That's what he's had to call the worship from Psalm 107 and he had the scripture reading from the book of name. And you see God is the one who calls this one. God is the one who sends this one. God is the one who calls this one. No one does that but God in scripture. He's known as that. He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea. And there was a great call. One liberal scholar said, by an astonishing coincidence, this will stop the moment Jesus spoke. He's not kidding. H. E. Robertson, the great voucher scholar, who's very ironic and never really criticized anybody very harsh. He says, calling on that comment said, some people can't get past their own stupidity. If you're willing to believe that. Wow. That's not the point in the text either. And you know what? That doesn't work. You can say that. And maybe there are times where winds can stop very suddenly. Think of a hurricane, maybe this fact moving in that eye wall, once the eye wall passes through you. And if you hit by the eyes and want to understand it, it gets very still very quickly. But that doesn't work for waves. Once waves are stirred up by wind, it's even if the wind would suddenly stop. It takes a time. It takes minutes, hours for the waves to get calm because all that kinetic energy and inertia is in the wave. And even if you take away the source, it's already there. And the waves have to slowly get less and less. And it takes time for the waves to go away. And that's not what happens in our text. He arose and rebuked the winds in the sea. And there was a great call. Infinite. The laws of physics were overcome. The winds stopped. The waves stopped. This was a miracle. As I mentioned, only God stopped the storm. That's the point. Others have said, well, it's fear that fuels the invention of the gods. You can think of Marx and H. He's talking about this kind of thing. You know, we have these impersonal forces like storms and hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and, you know, disease. At least for the ancient world, they had no idea why that came the way it did. And so we invent these gods, right? And we feel like we have some control between crying out to them and maybe they won't let this storm get us to something like that. And we can appease them. And we can have some sense of control in our lives. Maybe that's true when it comes to false religion and false gods. And then invent false gods that they can control and dominate them. Please, and so forth by their works. But no one would invent the God of the body. Because he isn't just some impersonal storm out there that you don't have to fear. Really, it's really the opposite, right? Psychologically. Nobody faces the storm as out to get them. If the storm hits you at this stage, you just happen to be unlucky. So what if there's a god who sees every single blemish as an act of cosmic reason against him? Every sin, as worthy of his eternal condemnation and he knows everything he's ever thought or done. And he's the god who sends storms. Now you've got a problem. Now the storm that it vibes you is not because the storm is some spirit or something. Sixty cause there is a god who's going to judge. And he will send much more than earthy storms. Scripture teaches that and then know that in their consciences. And what you see in the text, if you take that concept of the true god and you apply it to the text, if you look, you see there's a great storm that comes. It's written verse 24, a great tempest. Megas. Megas. You can hear it like a mega storm, we could say. A great storm. And the disciples are afraid. And then Jesus speaks a word and it says, notice it, verse 26, there was a mega call. Same word in the text, a great call. There's three graces in this text, so if you turn the mark. The disciples were afraid when the storm arose, when the great storm arose. But when Jesus speaks in this great call, Mark says they were mega afraid. They were mega afraid of a man who can say to the storm, peace be sell. And it stops. They were very afraid now. Because it works like a lot of strength. Christ is showing the authority of his word over nature, even as he previously showed his authority over disease and over demons. And if there is a storm in your life. And if you are walking faithfully with Christ, why would you be afraid? Isn't, isn't he able to stop the storm? Doesn't he know that the storm is happening? You know, Jesus is not asleep. The disciples had some reason in the sense. The only place we know he's not asleep. He's with us. Does he care enough? Maybe we think he doesn't care. He dies on the cross. Not you've died, but takes the wrath of God for us. You think the little trial in your life right now is that significant when he spoke the wrath of God. Do you think he's going to let that trial cause you real harm? When the only thing that can really cause you harm, the wrath of God he's always taken. The Bible says he's inscribed best on his poems. He has those scars. Very minor. Ah, so how much he loves us. He cares. He loves. He knows. He sees. In fact, not only is he with you in the storm according to what we know about God in the Scripture, he sent. Whatever in your life right now that the trial, that the struggle, that the storm, that the persecution, it's not just happening by some force of nature. All the bad people have overcome what God wanted to do in your life. Nobody believes that. God is the one who sent it. And he's done it, ultimately, for your good. Now, if you're looking for some temporal deliverance, or some temporal thing, if that's your good, then maybe yes, the storm may look like it's going to do some real damage or keep you from this thing you want. But if what you want most of all is God. If you want his will for your life, then that storm not only is a lot of us, not only is it not going to keep you from achieving that purpose. It's going to be the very needs by which God brings His will to pass. In your life, know that your Jesus is God. That's the point of the text. He's with you right now. He's not asleep. He sends storms for our good. Father, how we pray. That you would have mercy upon us when we sinfully fear and worry and stress about things in our lives. Lord, it may be that we are walking in sin and we need to repent and therefore we need to wrestle with something. We know that can be the case oftentimes. And yet Father, if we're walking faithfully with you, not perfectly, but really faithfully seeking to follow you. We have no reason to ever fear. And what even when you do face enough because we've strayed, even then we know that your wrath only comes as a corrective because you are disciplining us as a father, discipline his children, who he loves, who he wishes to correct, and restore and not to destroy. And so Father, we really have no reason. If we believe at all, we have no reason to sinfully fear and we confess that. Lord, I want to confess that to you that I sinfully fear and it is not a weakness and it is not a little honey blemish. It is a rebellious act of sin in my life. And I pray that all of us would own and name our sin for what it is. It is evil. We confess it to you. We plead for your forgiveness because of the blood of Christ and he asks you to rescue us from it. Restore us, deliver us, make us those who would trust in you who would not fear praying because we know you're with us and you're the God who makes storms only for the purpose of blessing your people. Help us to believe that. We pray in Jesus' name now.