Matthew 14:22-34  [NIV] |  ²² Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. ²³ After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, ²⁴ and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

²⁵ Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. ²⁶ When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

²⁷ But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

²⁸ “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

²⁹ “Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. ³⁰ But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

³¹ Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

³² And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. ³³ Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

³⁴ When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. ³⁵ And when the men of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him ³⁶ and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.

During a concert, singer-songwriter David Wilcox responded to a question from the audience about how he composes songs. He said there are three aspects to his process: a quiet room, an empty page, and the question, “Is there something I should know?” It struck me as a wonderful approach for followers of Jesus as we seek the Lord’s plan for our lives each day. Throughout Jesus’s public ministry, He took time to be alone in prayer.

After feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, He sent His disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee by boat while He dismissed the crowd (Matt. 14:22). “After sending them home, [Jesus] went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone” (v. 23). If the Lord Jesus saw the need to be alone with His Father, how much more we need a daily time of solitude to pour out our hearts to God, ponder His Word, and prepare to follow His directions.

A quiet room—anywhere we can focus on the Lord without distractions. An empty page—a receptive mind, a blank sheet of paper, a willingness to listen. Is there something I should know? “Lord, speak to me by Your Spirit, Your written Word, and the assurance of Your direction.” From that quiet hillside, Jesus descended into a violent storm, knowing exactly what His Father wanted Him to do (vv. 24–27).

—David McCasland

Action Plan:
Taking time to be with God is the best place to find strength to press on.

Mark 10:46-52 (NIV) | ⁴⁶Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. ⁴⁷When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁸Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁹Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” ⁵⁰Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. ⁵¹ “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” ⁵² “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you. ”Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

On the day before a major surgery, I shared with my friend that I was really scared about the procedure. “What part scares you?” she inquired. “I’m just so afraid that I won’t wake up from the anesthesia,” I replied. Immediately, Anne prayed: “Father, you know all about Cindy’s fear. Please calm her heart and fill her with Your peace. And, Lord, please wake her up after surgery.”

I think God likes that kind of specificity when we talk to Him. When Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, called out to Jesus for help, Jesus said, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the blind man said, “My Rabbi . . . I want to see!” Jesus said, “Go, for your faith has healed you” (Mark 10:51–52). We don’t need to beat around the bush with God. While there may be a time to pray poetically as David did, there are also times to say bluntly, “God, I’m so sorry for what I just said,” or to say simply, “Jesus, I love You because . . . .”

Being specific with God can even be a sign of faith because we are acknowledging that we know we’re not talking to a far-off Being but to a real Person who loves us intimately. God is not impressed by a flurry of fanciful words. He is listening for what our heart is saying. —Cindy Hess Kasper

The heart of prayer is prayer from the heart.

Psalm 42: 9-11  [NIV] |  ⁹I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?” ¹⁰My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?” ¹¹Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

THE STORM – Part 2

Thoughts and feelings will come like waves on the sea and seek to capsize us. When these thoughts and feelings flood our hearts and minds and like water into a boat, we are barely able to stay float. You may be afraid to face a new day troubled with thoughts and feelings like:

• A strange sense that the there is an abominable sea monster lurking beneath the surface, circling around and waiting for an opportune moment to emerge from the depths and ruin your day.
• The feeling that since you struggle with anxiety there must be something “wrong” with you. If you were a good Christian you wouldn’t have this problem, right? You struggle with the idea that having anxious feelings or thoughts means that you are failing or that you area failure.

• A subtle dread of what seems to be inevitable and the temptation to do whatever you need to do to avoid dealing with it. This avoidance can take the form of keeping distracted with social media, projects, tasks, to-do lists, shopping, self-medicating, etc.

Jesus taught that we would have trouble in this world. Each day would have trouble enough of its own. Not only will the world bring us trouble, but we have trouble residing within. Even when we have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and accepted Him as our Lord and Savior, our sinful nature remains and that nature is at enmity with the Spirit of God. So we don’t have to go anywhere to find trouble. Trouble is within and without. This is enough to make anyone anxious! Is there any hope?! YES! If you are in Christ, He is in you and you are in Him. Because His Holy Sprit lives inside of you, there can be calm within.

The truth of God and His Word is not only our anchor in the storm. In Christ we can actually experience calm in the storm. In Psalm 103 David sets a good example for us as he instructs his soul to praise the LORD and bless His name. He reminds himself who he is and reminds himself not to forget who God is. Although he is aware of his sin and his weakness, rather than fret and worry, we see him worship. We can learn from his example how to train our hearts and minds in the storm. In fact, the way to care for our hearts is by caring for our minds. We must keep our minds fixed on the truth of God’s Word. When we do, we will begin to experience the calm of Christ.

Love in Action:
God is my Rock! I will put my hope in Him and receive His peace.

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Ephesians 3:14-21 [NIV] | ¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Paul’s main prayer for the Christians at Ephesus is that they would know Christ’s love for them. He did not mean that they should know Christ’s love in their heads but in their hearts. Paul feels so strongly about this request that he gives it a three-fold emphasis:

• “Being rooted and grounded in love”

• “To comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth”

• “And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”

It seems like Paul does not have the words to express how deeply he feels about this request. These believers simply must know how much Christ loves them.

Why? Why is this so important?

Well, God’s love for us is the most important thing in our lives. If we do not feel loved by God, then we will not love God back. At best, we will have a religious duty, but we will not have a love affair with Jesus. We will not fulfill the first commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). If we do not feel loved by God, we will not trust him, not for the big things. Will you trust God if you don’t believe he loves you and that he wants the best for you? Not a chance. If we do not feel loved by God, we will not obey God. We’ll obey the easy commands, the ones we would do anyway, but not the hard ones. We won’t obey God because we don’t believe that he has our best interests at heart.

We could go on and on. Every aspect of the spiritual life hinges on the love of God for us. If we do not know, in the deepest places of our soul, that our God loves us so much, then we will not love him, trust him, obey him, serve him, enjoy him, worship him, rest in him, or seek him.

This is the foundation of the spiritual life. Nothing is more important.

No wonder Paul’s greatest prayer focuses on Christ’s love for us. No wonder Paul places such inordinate emphasis on this love that he wants others to know the “breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

No wonder.

Love in Action:
If you pray only one prayer for your loved ones, if you pray only one prayer for your church, if you pray only one prayer for yourself, make it this prayer: “O Lord, may we know how much you love us.”

Ephesians 2:1-10 [NIV] |  ¹ As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Helen, 8, and Brandon, 5, squealed excitedly at the sight of a small petting zoo set up in the middle of the mall. “Can we go, dad? Can we? Please?”

Smiling, their dad gave them each a quarter, and then stepped into the hardware store to pick up the items they had come to purchase. A few minutes later, Helen wandered into the store. Mildly alarmed, he asked, “Helen, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you in the petting zoo?”

“Well, the entrance fee wasn’t a quarter, it was fifty cents,” replied Helen. “I knew how much Brandon loves baby animals, so I gave him my quarter and let him go in instead of me.”

They walked back out to the petting zoo and watched Brandon playing with the baby animals. The dad knew he had two more quarters in his pocket, but he didn’t give them to Helen. He wanted her to understand that love requires sacrifice.

Now that is a great display of love from a sister to her brother. Love costs; if it doesn’t cost, it isn’t love. That story gives us a small glimpse of what God is like. His love was willing and sacrificial, without thought of what we could give to Him in return.

In this story, we also find all three people being blessed. The dad was blessed to see his daughter give out of love. The daughter was blessed to watch her brother play, and of course the boy was blessed to be able to go in and play with the baby animals. That day, all three caught a glimpse of what love looks like.

Love in Action:
Which of the three people in the story do you connect with the most?