Tag Archives: storm

Jesus in the Boat Is Waiting on You

That viral little meme with the cute rowboat and the glowing words floating around social media? Adorable. Solid vibe. It nails the Luke 8:25 punchline: “Having Jesus in the boat means no storm can sink it.”

Cute. But let’s crank the volume and get biblical.

Even that meme doesn’t go far enough. Exodus 23:25 flat-out says God will “turn off” sickness for those who worship Him—like flipping a garden hose from full blast to zero. Click. Done. Isaiah 54:17 adds the mic drop: weapons will form, but they will not prosper, because you will condemn them.

Jesus didn’t pat the disciples on the head and whisper, “Hang in there, guys—Daddy’s in the boat, so just endure the waves.” Nah. He stood up, rebuked the wind and the raging sea, and everything went dead calm. Then He hit them with the lightning-bolt question that still slaps every faithless excuse in the face:

“Where is your faith?”

There are straight-up Old Testament examples of faith bossing the weather around (hello, Elijah). A faithless spirit might bark back and say, “But that was Elijah, and we are not him.” Yet the New Testament quotes this specific example to show it wasn’t a one-off story for us to merely admire. James’ logic, as Vincent Cheung has shown us, doesn’t call us to rise up and become like the great Elijah. Instead, James brings Elijah down to our level. Because Elijah was just like us, and we are just like Elijah, we can do the same—such as commanding the weather.

James picks the exact weather-commanding miracle and uses it to prove the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective—then immediately moralizes this to healing the sick. Scripture interpreting itself shows us that examples like Elijah commanding the weather are intended for all disciples to emulate.

So where does this leave us—and the disciples with Jesus in the boat? The big idea is that even without Jesus physically present, He would have been justified in calling out their unbelief amid a deadly storm, because it was something they could have commanded to be calm.

And yet, they were sitting right next to the living God in the flesh and still defaulted to fear and sensory panic.

 Think about that for two seconds.

We don’t even have to wake Him up anymore. He lives in us. We are seated with Him in the heavenly places right now, and the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead is empowering every single believer.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James drops Elijah on us as the example, and the man was just like us. He prayed it would not rain for three and a half years, and it didn’t. He prayed again, and the sky poured. Weather obeyed a regular righteous guy who knew how to speak in faith. Thus, if you are a regular righteous person in Jesus Christ, you also have command over deadly storms and sick bodies.

James drops Elijah on us again: the man prayed it wouldn’t rain for three and a half years—it didn’t. He prayed again—the sky poured. Weather obeyed a regular righteous dude who knew how to speak in faith. Therefore, if you are a regular righteous person in Jesus Christ, you also have command over deadly storms and sick bodies.

Having Jesus does NOT mean your boat won’t face storms. It means with Jesus beside you (and inside you), you will rebuke the storm and it will obey.

Becoming a Christian gives immediate new creation benefits. One way to visualize this is by meditating on Colossians, where Paul says the Father has transferred us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love. At one point, you were truly inside the kingdom of darkness—demons, curses, and all. You lived there. Like a sick, abandoned beggar lying in a forgotten muddy alley. But God created you in Jesus and placed you in His kingdom. He relocated you.

Picture Solomon’s Jerusalem on steroids. Silver was so common they threw it in the streets like discarded McDonald’s wrappers. You already have a house in this kingdom. Even if your pathetic little brain can only picture yourself homeless on a golden bench, look closer: that “bench” is solid gold, your robe is fine linen, and silver coins are scattered everywhere like loose change. Just scoop some up, buy food, and start living like the royal priesthood citizen you already are.

The point is simple: you are God’s workmanship. The gospel is God giving to you, not you giving to God. You are a treasure and a beautiful inheritance God made for Himself, to show off how awesome you are. By showing off how awesome you are, He shows off how awesome He is. God works and gives to you; you don’t give to God. Thus, in your new creation, a lot of things are automatic in the sense that you are already in the kingdom of God. A muddy beggar in some alley in 1800s London is very different from a citizen of Solomon’s Jerusalem, where silver was commonplace.

But don’t turn that into lazy fatalism. Jesus’ faith doctrine is radical on purpose: “You will say to this mountain… and it will obey you.”

Faithless people today hears that and screams, “Disgusting!” “Jesus is in the boat—why doesn’t He just handle it and command the damn storm to stop?” “Let’s just wait and say ‘whatever God wills, and I will trust Him no matter what.’”

Jesus contradicts that nonsense every single time. In the boat the disciples are shaking Him like, “Do something!” But Jesus’ extreme faith command is always the same: You speak to the mountain. You speak to the sickness. You speak to the storm.

Jesus says the mountain will obey us. It is not because we have inherent power in and of ourselves, but because Jesus will be faithful to back up our commands with His power—so faithfully that the power will seem as inherent as ours. Like me using my hands to type out this essay. (Even then, God causes all things, so on the ultimate level I don’t have inherent power to move my fingers to type—but God is so consistent in using His power on the occasion of me thinking and my body moving that it feels like it’s my inherent power.)

Picture Jesus in the boat with His hand on your shoulder, grinning: “I want you to command this storm to shut up. I’ve got your back—watch Me make your words unstoppable.”

So why settle for “Just endure the storm with Jesus beside you”?

You are the righteousness of God in Christ. You carry His Name, His authority, His unstoppable power. The weather obeyed a regular guy like Elijah and it obeyed Jesus, but we are a new creation in Him now. How much more will they obey the new creation who is wide awake, filled with the Spirit, and commanded to walk exactly as He walked?

Stop focusing on how loud the wind is and start focusing on the Word that is louder. Speak to that sickness, that financial wave, that relational hurricane—speak to it. It has to obey because reality itself obeys the faith of a righteous person who refuses to limit God.

“Peace. Be still.”

Watch what happens when you believe what He already finished. The same Jesus who calmed the sea now lives in you and has handed you the mic.

Use it.

The calm is waiting on your word of faith—not God’s.

Do you finally understand why your life has been such a mess?

Time to fix it.

Speak.

Why Are You Afraid?

It was a real storm. Waves crashing over the boat. Disciples thinking, “We’re toast.” Jesus? Snoozing like it’s nap time. They wake Him in panic: “Lord, save us! We’re drowning!”

His reply? “Why are you afraid? You have so little faith!”

Then one word from Jesus and the wind and waves shut their mouths. Dead calm.

Humanly speaking, from a starting point of empirical observation, yeah, fear made sense. However, it only makes sense if you are without God and your worldview is human limitations based on human observation. But here’s the punchline they missed—and we can miss too if we are not watchful: you’re not just human anymore. That old man is dead and gone. You’re a child of God, blessed with Abraham’s blessing (Galatians 3:13-14), baptized into the same authority Jesus carried. You carry the Name that makes demons flee, sickness bow, and creation obey. That changes everything.

Picture it: you look up and a tornado is dropping on your house. You cry out, “God, help! Can’t You see I’m about to die?!” And Jesus opens a window to heaven and looks you dead in the eye—in front of your family and friends—and says, “Bro… why are you afraid? Don’t you have any faith?”

Ouch. Here is a question. Would you still follow Him if He rebuked you like this? I mean, Jesus didn’t even acknowledge your intense feelings; rather, Jesus was dismissive of them as stupid. The man Jesus is telling you to calm your emotions down. He says your faith is pathetic; and it is the cause of your fear. Because He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. That same rebuke is also coming to you when you face a deadly storm or deadly whatever it is. He’s not being frank for mean’s sake—He’s reminding you of your identity in Him.

Here is the kicker. This is before the book of Acts, where we see the matured Peter, baptized in the Spirit and knowing his true identity in the enthroned Jesus, not merely the earthly Jesus, saying in Acts 3, “What I do have, I give, in the Name of Jesus. Get up.” He had the privilege, not as an apostle but as a believer, to use Jesus’ name to do what he so wanted. It was something Peter had and could give as he so wanted. But in the context of the storm, it is before the enthroned Jesus and the baptism of the Spirit. So what was Jesus presupposing to rebuke them for fear?

Psalm 91 specifically says that those who are hidden with God are not to have any fear. The Psalm lists all sorts of dangers and saying you are not to be afraid of them, then gives a situation like a bomb goes off and ten thousand dead bodies surround you, and even this is nothing to fear because God will protect you. The Psalm is not saying for you to bear the pain and destruction of the thing you fear, under the hand of God. No, it confesses you will be protected from them and nothing will touch you.

However, what we have in Jesus, in His promises to ask anything and get it, to do greater works, to speak to mountains and make them obey us, and the baptism of the Spirit with Jesus sitting at the right hand of power is greater.

Jesus’ presupposition is average, not wild: He expects you to stand up, speak to that “deadly” thing, and tell it to chill out and shut up. Because you’re special, a co-heir with Jesus and a royal priest with royal authority to use Jesus’ authority; because the promises already belong to you. Faith isn’t wishful thinking—it is agreeing with God that protection is your legal right to command the mountains to bow.

So next time the waves hit, skip the unbelief panic party. Believe Jesus and rebuke the wind. That’s your new normal as a Christian.

Let me press this deeper because Jesus’ question cuts straight to the heart of our new reality in Him. The disciples saw crashing waves and felt the boat filling with water. From pure human observation that fear felt right. But Jesus did not operate from observation. He operated from the Father’s word and the authority given Him. He expected the same from them even before Pentecost. How much more does He expect it from us now that we are new creations identified with the resurrected and enthroned Christ?

The problem was never the storm’s size. The problem was their little faith. They evaluated the situation from the old human point of view that Paul later condemns in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17. “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” The disciples had not yet fully grasped this shift. They still measured danger by sight and feeling instead of by the finished work and the promises that define us. Jesus slept because He knew reality submits to a man with faith, and it must obey the word of faith. When He rebuked the wind and waves, He was not begging the Father for help. He commanded creation directly. That is the model, and it is now ours in greater measure.

Today we have something far beyond what those disciples possessed in that boat. The old man is dead. We are new creations seated with Christ far above every storm (Ephesians 2:6, Colossians 3:1-3). The same Spirit that empowered Jesus now lives in us for greater works (John 14:12). The promises are all “yes” in Him (2 Corinthians 1:20). Psalm 1 guarantees success in everything when we meditate day and night on God’s word instead of the waves. This includes success over every storm that rises against us—literal or figurative.

Yet many believers still live like those pre-Pentecost disciples. A medical report comes like a sudden gale. A financial crisis hits like rogue waves. Relationship trouble crashes over the bow. And the first response is panic: “Lord, don’t You care that we’re perishing?” Here comes the frank truth—Jesus is still asking the same question: “Why are you afraid? You have so little faith.” He’s not being harsh. He’s being precise. Fear is unbelief wearing emotional makeup, trying to look spiritual while denying every promise God has spoken. It confesses that circumstances are bigger than the promises. It denies that you now carry the authority to speak to mountains and have them obey.

The correction is simple and powerful. Stop focusing on what your eyes see and your body feels. Relentlessly fix your mind on who you are in Christ and the promises that define you. You are the righteousness of God. You are seated far above every storm. The authority to say “peace, be still” belongs to you because it belongs to Him and you are in Him. Jesus did not just start your faith—He is faithful to finish it (Hebrews 12, 1 Corinthians 1:30). Your job is agreement. Speak the word.

This is your new normal. The storm no longer gets a vote. Faith does. When the next wave rises—and it will—remember Jesus’ question. Then give Him the answer He is looking for: bold agreement with His promises that proves great faith. The wind is waiting. Creation is listening. Your words, rooted in His promises, carry the same power that once calmed Galilee.

The disciples were basically giving Jesus a one-star review on the “Miracle Uber” app while He napped through the whole crisis. Meanwhile He expected them to realize the storm was the one that needed to submit. That same expectation lands on us today with even greater force. We are not evaluating Christ from a human point of view anymore. We know Him now as the enthroned King whose Name we carry. Every storm must answer to that Name when we speak it in faith.

So let the storm throw its tantrum. You have the remote control now. Open your mouth and give the same order Jesus gave: “Peace, be still.” The waves will obey because they already obeyed Him, and you are identified with the resurrected Christ who finished the work. Fear has no place here. Faith has the final word. This is the brilliant life God has given us.