Mark 4:35-38 (NIV): That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
Jesus never did anything that God the Father did not specifically tell Him to do. He never went anywhere that God the Father did not specifically tell Him to go. He never even said anything that God the Father did not specifically tell Him to say. It was not that He was a robot or lacked a mind or will of His own. Instead, He was completely surrendered to the will of His Father (cf. John 5:19). Therefore all of God’s power was able to flow through Jesus’ humanity constantly. It would never have occurred to Jesus to decide on a course of action and then ask God to bless it. He would never have come up with an idea, and then tried to tell the Father what He needed to do to make it happen.
So when Jesus said, “Let’s go over to the other side,” it was because God had told Him that that was what He wanted Him to do. And because it was God’s idea, and because Jesus was confident about when and where God had planned for His journey to end (on a cross in Jerusalem), He had absolutely no fear for His life (or the lives of His disciples) when the storm clouds arose. He just lay down in the back of the boat and took a nap.
But His disciples had not yet figured all of this out. When the storm roared out over the sea, to the point that even those with years of experience in boats on the Sea of Galilee feared for their lives, they couldn’t understand how anyone could just sleep, as if nothing important was going on. Didn’t He know that people often died on the Sea in storms like this? Wasn’t He aware that their boats were filling up with water faster than they could bail it out? Didn’t He care that they were all going to drown?
But they had not yet learned how Jesus operated. (Remember that this was early on in their relationship with Him.) They had not yet understood that Jesus always walked in God’s ways, fully in accordance with His will, so that nothing outside of God’s will could touch Him. They didn’t realize that as long as they stuck with Jesus, going where God sent Him, doing what God told Him to do, that they were kept by the same power that kept Him. If it wasn’t Jesus’ time, it wasn’t their time either.
Father, how easy it is to still miss those points. How easy it is to not live our lives like Jesus did. All too often, I’m afraid, WE set our agenda, and then ask Your blessing. WE come up with a plan, and then inform You how You need to work in order to bring it about. Help us instead, Lord, to yield ourselves, our agendas, and our whole lives completely into Your hands. Then, no matter what storms arise, we can rest secure, knowing that we are right in the center of Your will. Amen.