Listening to Jesus is one thing; trusting him when the waves are coming over the sides of the boat is another—and most of us know the difference from the inside. In Matthew 8, seasoned fishermen who have already followed Jesus into the storm find their faith put to exactly that test.
We can be inclined to delay approaching God, too busy obsessing on our doubts to come, much like Thomas in John 20. But Thomas did come and so should we.
When you prepare a small dinner and twenty guests arrive unannounced, you wish you’d known what was coming—yet knowing what to prepare isn’t the only kind of readiness that matters. Luke 1 tells of a righteous priest who knew exactly what God expected of him, yet when God himself appeared with news he’d prayed decades to hear, he found himself unprepared to simply listen.
How you respond to Jesus depends entirely on whether you’ve truly grasped who He is—and in John 6, as Jesus walks across the sea to His disciples in the dark, He makes that question impossible to dodge.
Have you ever spoken boldly about your faith, only to find yourself later asking if any of it is real? Even John the Baptist, who once pointed everyone to Jesus as the promised one, sends messengers in Luke 7 to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
Blessed are the merciful—it sounds really good when we are the ones receiving mercy. That call suddenly sounds a lot worse when we’re the ones called to show mercy. Jesus calls us to that mercy, against our natural inclination for payback.