Do you hold onto God’s promises because you trust Him, or because you are afraid? God is always in control! By faith you can put your trust in Him.
by rev Piet Venter
Have you ever come across something great and intriguing in nature and suddenly realized how wonderful the Lord is? We live consciously of the Lord every day, but the moment you are confronted with something great, you really become aware of His greatness.
Yet it does not work the same when we are faced with a major life crisis. It is then that we forget about this greatness of the Lord and his omnipotence and power. Suddenly your life crisis seems so big and unconquerable that you become scared and think it is going to overwhelm you!
In the Bible, especially in the Psalms, we find an abundance of verses that assure us that God is with us, and that He protects us. By faith you can hold onto to these promises of God. Make sure your motivation is right: Trust in true faith, do not hold onto God’s promises because you are afraid.
Storm at sea
In Mark 4:35-41 we read of the disciples of Jesus who end up in a boat on the sea during a storm. The disciples had already witnessed with their own eyes Jesus’s miraculous works, but the moment when they themselves get into a crisis and experience the storm at sea, they forget about all these miracles and become very scared and anxious. At least their faith in Christ was such that they knew they had to go to Him. However, they were not sure if He would save them. They thought Jesus did not care because He was lying peacefully asleep.
Do you have a fear-driven belief or a trusting belief?
Is it not often our fear that drives us to Jesus rather than our faith in Him? We can always – even in the fierce storms of our lives – trust in Jesus because He is God! He is omnipotent and He is in control of your life. He will save and help you. Do not be afraid and let your fear drive you. You must believe in Jesus and let your confident faith drive you to Him.
A faith out of fear
There is actually no such thing as a fear-driven faith because faith implies that you trust in God and that you know that He will help. Because of our small faith and our small thinking when it comes to God, we allow fear to drive us to Jesus instead of the knowledge that He is capable of doing anything.
It is fear that convinces you that the crisis in your life is unconquerable. Fear convinces you that God does not really care about you, because if He cared for you, He would have given you deliverance long ago. Fear robs you of peace and brings worry. You go to the Lord and you pray – but actually it is fear that controls your life.
A life of confident faith
In contrast, a life of confident faith drives you to the Lord. It is to have the firm knowledge that the Lord is there for you, that He will take care of you. Even though He may “sleep” in the back of the boat in the sense that He does not give an immediate deliverance – you know He is in control and He can and will give deliverance in His own way. A life of confident faith brings peace.
The storm calms down
Jesus gets up, He calms the wind and makes the waves go down. He brings absolute calm to the stormy sea and saves them. When the wind and the sea listened to him and became quiet, the disciples were convinced that Jesus is more than a mere man.
“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” asks the disciples in Mark 4:41. He is God who is in control and He will save you. This is who Jesus is. This is how we should think of Him and believe in Him. That is why Jesus became man, precisely to convince us of Who God is and what He can do. This is how Jesus is portrayed to us in these events: The Great God who can do everything – this is how He wants us to believe and trust in Him.
Trust completely in God’s promises
We can always trust in the Lord. Not just in the big moments of your life, but also in times of crisis when everything seems lost. You must pray that the Holy Spirit will always convince you anew of God’s greatness in Jesus Christ and that He is truly in control of your life. He can and wants to help, you just have to trust Him. When the storms come, you can stand firm in your confident faith and on that basis go to Jesus and know that God the Father will save and preserve you through Him.
In the midst of the storm you can be calm and hold onto God’s promises.
