FAITH OR FEAR

Do you ever catch yourself becoming fearful of things out of your control? If you do, you are not the only one. In Matthew 8, we see this feeling of great fear that comes over Jesus' disciples. Jesus and his disciples had climbed onto a boat and found themselves in the middle of a "furious storm." Jesus has fallen asleep and once a storm started to brew they ran to wake him up. They cried, "Lord, don't you care if we drown?" Jesus wakes up and replies, saying to them, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" He follows this by rebuking the waves and wind saying, "Quiet! Be still!" The Bible says that at that instant, the waves died down and everything was calm. Often times in life, we find ourselves in the middle of furious storms. In the world around us it is easy to focus on the storm; waves crashing, the thunder rolling, and the water that is overtaking our "boat." This is exactly what the disciples did. I find myself thinking this more times than I would like to admit. "Lord, don't you care if I'm hurting? Don't you care that this is happening to me?" I quickly forget that He knows everything and everything is in His control. Why would I worry when he is the one who set the earth into motion? Jesus has the right to call them, and us by extension, people of little faith. All of them had just watched Jesus heal a man with leprosy, heal a man who was paralyzed, heal a woman with fever, and drive out demons in many. They watched him perform all of these miracles, yet still told Jesus they were going to drown. We are no different! We watch Jesus work in our lives, yet assume He has forsaken us at the slightest inconvenience. God does not change. God does not forsake us. People will fail us and people will let us drown but Jesus will calm the storm. Jesus will never fail us, even though we do not always believe it. This story is a great example of how often times we forget the things that Jesus has done in our lives and we only focus on the storm at hand. Keep your eyes on Jesus and the storm seems small and insignificant compared to the power that Jesus holds over the storm and over our life. So, fear clearly has a lot of power in a negative way, so let's look at faith. I would like to drift to a story that us found in Matthew chapter 9. This is a story about Jesus healing a paralysed man, and in the second verse of the chapter, it gives a scenario of these men bringing this man who needs to be healed. Before the men even say anything, Jesus sees their faith. This is a notable thing encase where faith is present, fear is not. Jesus saw the faith of these people because they were willing to bring this man to Him, knowing fully that he could heal him, they had no doubt. Do we have this kind of faith? Often times in life we pray for the outcome of a situation, "I pray that they don't have cancer" or, in this case, for friends and family of this man it might have been, "I pray he won't be paralysed." But what happens if they are? What happens if they do have cancer or they are paralysed? Do we still have that faith? Do we still believe God can heal them, even though the doctor said he may never walk again? Or that she only has a year to live? In order to live out this kind of faith it speaks about all throughout Matthew 9, we have to be able to see the bigger picture. God created us, He created our bodies and He has total power over everything. Why would we stop praying because someone else, other than God, says that something is certain? Keep praying for that person, and pray with faith knowing that God hears you and God cares. Pray with faith knowing that God can when we cannot. Faith or fear will have much power over your life so choose wisely which one you want to live out.