Matthew 14:22-32
22 Immediately Jesus [a]made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes away. 23 And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. Now when evening came, He was alone there. 24 But the boat was now [b]in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary.
25 Now in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went to them, walking on the sea. 26 And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out for fear.
27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, [c]“Be of good cheer! [d]It is I; do not be afraid.”
28 And Peter answered Him and said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.”
29 So He said, “Come.” And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. 30 But when he saw [e]that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, “Lord, save me!”
31 And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32 And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased.
It has been said that when you get to the end of yourself, you get to the beginning of God. Often, when we’re going through a hardship, we have plans A, B, C. And after we’ve gone through those, we find ourselves saying, “If God doesn’t come through, it’s over.”
It may seem horrible, but that tragedy, that difficulty is actually an opportunity for God to show His glory.
When the disciples found themselves in the middle of an intense storm, Jesus came to them when the time was right. Matthew 14:25 tells us, “About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came toward them, walking on the water” (NLT).
Think about it, Jesus did not come to them till 3in the morning, on a lake, in the darkness of night. Do you understand how out of the ordinary this event was? First of all, fishermen did not venture out on the water at night. They did not have adequate lighting to be able to see. And, the dangers of the water are intense when you cannot see. At best they might have had a torch and it would only light up a small area around the boat. Not enough light to be able to see any obstruction in the water or to clearly identify a direction.
Now here they were in the dark, in the middle of a lake and in a storm at that!
That means the disciples had been struggling against this radical storm for about nine hours. That is a long time to be stuck in the middle of a dark scary lake. Do you think they were praying for deliverance? Wouldn’t you?
God is never late, but sometimes it may seem as though He is. Maybe Jesus arrived when He did because He was waiting for them to completely exhaust their resources.
It is amazing how we will go through all of “our” plans before we get exhausted from the struggle and then, only then do we turn to God. God sometimes does not show up when we think God should because God is wanting us to exhaust ourselves in the struggle.
It may have seemed like the last moment, but the time was just right.
One time in my early ministry I had an old Buick car. It had an overhead value system. I knew nothing about that kind of motor and one day it would not start, so I kept cranking it over and over. As I did, the value stems fell and the more I cranked the worse the damage was. I finally gave up and had a local garage come and get it. I was told by the mechanic that it would cost $1850 to fix it. I just didn’t have that kind of money and I needed the car. I had a job to go to, I was full time student, and I had two churches to preach. I needed that car.
The mechanic said I would need to do something by the next Wednesday or they would scrap my car. I prayed, my spouse prayed, we just didn’t know what to do. A church member let me borrow the car for Sunday so that I could meet my church obligations.
Monday rolled around and still had no way to pay. Tuesday, the same thing. Wednesday came and I waited as long as I could to call the mechanic with the sad news we couldn’t afford to get the car repaired. I was dialing the number and Debbie, my spouse, went to get the mail. She came running into the house yelling, “Stop. Stop!” She had a letter in her hand and in that letter was a check for $1800. It was $50 short of what I needed but it was enough for the mechanic said he would fix my car for the $1800.
What seemed to me the very last moment, God showed up! The letter was from someone I did not know but heard me preach at his church one Sunday filling in for their preacher. He explained that God told him to send me the money, he didn’t know why, he just obeyed what God told him to do.
You might doubt that, but it is true. You might say God does not care about whither I have a car that runs, but I would say you are wrong. God cares about all and any struggle you are going though.
What’s interesting is the Bible says that Jesus walked on the sea toward them. Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus walked like everyone else. He faced exhaustion, hunger, and all the other things a human would experience.
But on this occasion, Jesus walked on the water. Perhaps this was to show His disciples that the very thing they feared was only a means for Him to come to them. The thing they feared was the pathway for their rescue.
The disciples, however, were terrified when they saw Jesus. They thought He was a ghost. So, why did they not know it was Him? They weren’t looking for Him.
If they had been walking by faith and waiting by faith, they would have recognized Jesus immediately. Instead, they jumped to a false conclusion.
All too often we’re not looking for the Lord in our times of crisis. The Lord is there speaking to us. He is there wanting to lead us. But we don’t hear Him. We don’t see Him because we’re not looking for Him.
In our world today, we have so much chaos, instability, and conflict. And what did Jesus say? “So when all these things begin to happen, stand and look up, for your salvation is near!” (Luke 21:28 NLT). Look for Him.
The Bible tells us in Hebrews 9:28, “He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him” (NLT).
Are you looking for Him? If you’re in a crisis right now, look for Jesus because He is here.
We can only know so much and experience so much in our lives at a given moment. Job said, “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes” (Job 42:5 NLT).
In other words, “I heard how You deliver people, Lord, but now I know.”
And that is the thing that often will happen in the midst of a storm. The Lord will come to us in a way that we have never known Him before. We have heard, we at times even witness the Lord at work but when we experience His presence, then we know because we have seen with our own eyes.