Be Bold, For the Lord Our God is With You

Jesus Walks on Water


"Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke to them and said, 'Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid.' Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves [the five loaves of bread that in the previous chapter had fed the five thousand]; their hearts were hardened. When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went--into villages, towns or countryside--they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed."
--Mark 6:45-56

We take this scene for granted. Truly, we do. We read it, we go, huh, they overreacted. And Peter (see Matt. 14:22-32) should have had more faith anyways. But humor me for a moment. Pause and completely clear your mind. I need you to use your imagination on this one. You are a simple Jewish fisherman. All you have ever known is a small community, you have little education, you follow the Jewish faith, but you are also full of the superstitions that follow your profession, and your culture. You are in a boat, a boat built by hand, a boat not meant to contain twelve men and weather a storm well. And so, when the wind picks up and you begin to feel the boat be tossed, insignificant like a leaf in a flowing stream, you are afraid, you are sick because the boat is tossing your stomach around just as much as the waves are tossing it. You know that one thing only needs to go wrong, and you will all be lost. And then, something you have never seen because appears in the distance and begins to move over the water, the figure of a man, an apparition, his robes blowing in the howling wind, eerie, otherworldly, supernatural. The myths and superstitions of your childhood, of your occupation spring up and your level of terror has reached a new pitch. What are you supposed to think? How are you supposed to feel? All that you have ever known in life has not really prepared you for this, and all you are left with to rely on is superstitions, old wives tales, legends of old.
And then the apparition, the spirit that surely is unnatural, harmful, speaks out to you: Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid.

What are you thinking at that moment?

Last night, I was reminded of a song we sang to our campers as they left camp. "Be bold!" We cried, "Be strong! For the Lord our God is with you!" We fear the unknown. As humans, we shy away from anything that we don't know the outcome of. It's why we will order our favorite dish again and again at restaurants, why we are far more likely to re-elect the incumbent in the presidential office. Dealing with something bad that we know has to be better than someone, something we don't know, right? But the truth is, we will always be facing the unknown in life, we will always be walking towards something we don't know the outcome of, and we will always in some way or another be tossed around by the storms of life.

"Take courage!" Jesus says, "It is I. Don't be afraid." It is I...we aren't alone. We aren't facing the unknown alone, with no direction. We are facing the unknown with our God, our Savior by our side, and He is urging us to remember that He is with us. He is challenging us to take courage. Be bold! Be strong! For the Lord our God is with you.

The second thing that stuck out to me in the passage was the small phrase: They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think I might get a clue if there were five loaves of bread and two fish and miraculously five thousand people were fed. Adequately fed. In Matthew 14:20 it says they were satisfied. Satisfied. Do you even know how much twenty people eat? Logistically planning a party and cooking for twenty people single handedly is a nightmare. So what about five thousand? Five thousand fed? From five loaves and two fish? And this wasn't enough of a sign for the disciples? You kind of just want to go back and look at them and go, "Come on guys, get a clue!" But no, it says that their hearts were hardened. And I think to myself, okay...so what was the purpose of that? What was the purpose of hardening their hearts to something that was so obviously beyond a miracle it was ridiculous? Apparently, the answer lies in the following passage.

Disciples alone while Jesus prays. Storm. Fear. Ghost? Intense fear. What, Jesus, on the lake? Understanding and amazement. A lesson learned.

But what lesson?

Unless... think about a time your "heart has been hardened..." Or, if you want to rephrase it, think about a time something just totally clicked for you, something that you had been struggling to understand forever, and the knowledge of it made you want to smack yourself upside the head. I bet you never forgot that epiphany though. For me, one of my moments was math. I HATED math. I struggled for years. I cried, I was in anguish over it, I hated myself for how dumb I was when it came to the much loathed subject. I tried and tried and had tutoring and nothing worked. And then, one day, BAM, I understood it. And I couldn't believe how easy it was. I was seriously blessed with an amazing teacher who explained it in a way that for some reason, made more sense than all the years of pain and tutoring that I had had. But after that, I was just blown away by the understanding that was granted to me, and I had (and still do have) so much sympathy and empathy for those who still struggle with math, who don't quite get it yet. And that, I think is a definite purpose of having a hardened heart for awhile. When you get it, man, you really GET it. And then you are equipped with understanding from both sides, your eyes are not only opened to the sudden epiphany, but you look at it from a standpoint of "hardness." If I had understood math from day one of my education (like most math teachers), I wouldn't have sympathy, or empathy, or the patience to help tutor when needed. That's actually why a lot of math teachers are so impatient and unsympathetic. They just don't get why you don't understand the simple concept. It's why having a teacher who has actually struggled with the subject in the past is actually better than one who has always understood it. "Getting it" can be a really long road, and one filled with mistakes, with the hardening of your heart, with disbelief. But whew, when you get it, it's going to be a lesson that you never forget. And I'm not saying that you should purposefully harden your heart either, because we should always seek out his will and His desires, we should always crave and seek to know God, but there are times when, seemingly beyond our control, it is going to happen. And to a certain extent, I do believe that God allows our hearts to harden so that He can show us just how awesome and mighty He is, and so He hammer home a point to us that He has been trying to communicate for ages. It's usually something we'll never forget.

But, to summarize...

Be bold. Take courage and strength in the Lord, for we don't have to face the unknown alone. We have faith in Christ, faith that we don't have to walk this lonely path alone, for He is with us, and He is telling us to take courage, take heart, for He is with us and we no longer have to fear. How awesome is that?

Our hearts may be hardened, and that is unfortunate, but God will use that hardening of our hearts to teach us things we were blind to before. There are powerful lessons, there are powerful words that He has in store for us. And think about the impact that awaits us in them. Wow.

That is all for tonight. I think I strayed from the topic I originally wanted to talk about/thought about, but all is well.

BE BOLD! BE STRONG! FOR THE LORD OUR GOD IS WITH YOU.