• Redefine God: “Maybe God isn’t really good after all.”
• Reject God: “If this is who God is, I want nothing to do with Him.
• Resent God silently: Staying in church, mouthing belief, but carrying bitterness.

• A crucial time; a turning point in the course of anything.
• Medical definition: The moment in the course of a disease when a change occurs for the worse or better.

• Presence – Look for His presence. He comes to us in the storm.
• Identity – Remember Jesus’ identity. He is “I Am.”
• Faith – Trust His grip. Even when we are sinking, He saves.
• Worship – Let the storm lead us into worship.

We are in a sermon series called Name Your Shark. And two weeks ago we talked about naming your fear. What is that fear in your life that you are scared of That, that when you are going to bed at night, that is the thing that you think about. And then last week we talked about anxiety. And anxiety. Are those fears that we have that are unrealized fears, that we’re scared that something might happen? It’s those big what ifs. What if this happens? Or what if that happens? And studies would tell us that there’s more anxiety right now in our culture than in any other point that they’ve done those studies. Well, today we’re gonna take a little step further and we’re gonna talk about what do we do when the thing that we’ve always feared actually happens. That thing that we are scared of. What happens when it shows up in our life?

To put it a different way sometimes the shark doesn’t just circle the raft. Sometimes the shark bites. And what do we do when that happens? Those moments when it feels like the bottom of our life has fallen out. That relationship that you’ve been in for a really long time and all of a sudden the other person walks away in that relationship disintegrates, or that job that you thought you were gonna be there a really long time and then all of a sudden you get fired, you get laid off and your world starts to spin in circles. Or that phone call that you get, that a test result has come back different than you were hoping for. Or that moment that you’re at a funeral or maybe even a graveside and you just don’t understand that sometimes the what if is no longer a what if.

The what if becomes what? Now what? Now given all the things that I’ve got going on in my life, the emotions, the feelings, what do I do now, if you know a little bit about my wife and i’s story part of our story is that we had a daughter who was born sick, who ended up dying. Well, we’re not gonna unpack the whole story ’cause we unpacked the whole story. Then I cry and then you cry. It’s a whole lot of crying. But, but I am gonna talk about what do we do in those moments where life doesn’t turn out the way that we want it to? That when we were in the hospital, the verse that we always went back to was in Isaiah chapter 43, verse two. And this became the verse that when we were going through a really difficult season for four and a half months at the nicu, like this verse was everywhere.

We, we put it all over our, our hospital area. We had it in our house, we had it on our mirror. And, and it was this reminder that in the midst of this, that, that God was with us. So if you’ve got a Bible, Isaiah chapter 43 certain, in the second half of verse one, it says, fear not for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you. Now pause for a second because let me unpack why we love this verse. ’cause The verse doesn’t say, if you walk through waters or if you walk through fire, the verse says, when it is helping us to understand that in this life, we all will walk through seasons of challenge, seasons of discomfort, seasons of pain.

And it’s in those moments that there’s this promise that God is with us, that in verse three, he gives us the explanation for why four, I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your savior goes on to say, because you are precious in my eyes and honored and I love you. Then in verse five, he says, fear not for I am with you. If, if you’re someone who underlines your circles, that’s a key phrase we’re gonna see in the New Testament. This same phrase, get reused intentionally by the author and Matthew trying to point back to this passage, fear not for I am with you, verse seven, everyone who is called by my name whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. And in verse 11, it says, I, I am the Lord. And besides me, there is no savior.

And so that was our verse, like we were walking through this challenging season, and that was the verse that we would go to and we would pray over. And, and that whole time that she was sick we continually were encouraged by this verse. And then she died. And that was the moment where, man, it just felt like our life fell apart. That all of a sudden there is this grief, this real grief where it felt like this tidal wave of just wave after wave smashing against us. And it was a dark season. And and it wasn’t just dark days, it was dark weeks into dark months. And the, the best way someone described it to me is that when you go through tremendous loss like that, it’s like you have this open wound in your heart or your soul, and that wound never heals you.

You eventually figure out how to learn to live with it. But the wound is always there. And maybe you’re in that moment right now, maybe right now, whatever you’re walking through in life, you are struggling with this pain, this wound. And man, for us, we go into that season and we were, had all kinds of emotions. There were moments when I was angry at God and I was crying out to God, God, why would you let this happen? There, there were moments when I was just crying to God and sobbing to God. And here’s the good part. If you look in scripture, you know, there’s a whole book of lamentation. There’s a lot of scriptures where people are angry at God or crying to God or yelling at God. They’re sharing their soul with God. And our God is big enough to take it. But there are moments when that happens in life that it causes cognitive dissonance.

That’s a term that psychologists invented in the 1950s. But it describes those moments when there’s mental discomfort or attention that a person feels when there’s two things that are contradictory beliefs or values or attitudes that are being held simultaneously at the same time. And so you believe this thing, you’ve always believed this thing, and then all of a sudden something happens that causes you to believe this other thing. But those things contradict each other. It causes this cognitive dissonance. And so in our relationship with God, we, we see that happen a lot. That something bad happens to you and your belief is that God is good. And maybe you grew up in a church that sometimes the pastor would get up there and the pastor would say, God is good and all the time, let’s try it one more time. ’cause That was clearly some of you didn’t grow up in that kind of church.

Let’s try it one more time. God is good all the time and all the time God is, and, and that’s like happy and joyful and amazing until it doesn’t feel true. And so this belief that we have, that God is good, God loves me, that God is in control, God is good all the time, all the time. God is good. Like I cognitively believe that. And then our daughter died. And guess what? It didn’t feel that way. And so that was the dissonance. The, the experience that we had, the reality that we had was contradicting that belief that we felt like this hurts. It feels like God has just completely abandoned us. If God is good, then why could he let this happen? And so there’s this friction that happens, okay, I believe that God is good and God is love and is God’s control, but it doesn’t feel like that in this moment.

And so what am I supposed to do with this feeling? And so when we have this cognitive dissonance and we start to internally struggle with it, we start to, to fight with it. And so we have to figure out, okay, what does my path forward look like? Unfortunately, a lot of the paths forward are unhealthy paths. And so one of the paths forwards that you see a lot of people take is that they redefine God. They say, okay, well, I’ve got this cognitive dissonance. I believe that God was good, but, but I don’t feel like God is good. And so therefore they say, okay, well, well, maybe then that means that God just isn’t good after all. Maybe I was just wrong the whole time. And so they redefine who they believe God to be. Another unhealthy path would be just to reject God.

Say, well, I I thought he was good and, and now my life experience says that he’s not, and therefore there is no God. Or, or maybe I believe that God is there, but I don’t want anything to do with him if this is going to be what he allows to happen in my life. Or maybe you, you’re someone in the room right now that you’re walking through or you’ve walked through that, that dissonance and the unhealthy path you took was to resent God. Maybe it’s even silent, maybe even on the outside. You go through all the motions and you do all the right things, but inside you’re bitter and you’re angry and you’re frustrated, and you don’t really want a relationship with God. Here’s what I want us to unpack. That when what we believe about God and what we feel about God, when those two things collide, we have two choices.

We either we, the pain define God or we let God redefine our pain. That, that in those moments, we are in a crisis moment. That word crisis, if you look at the, the Latin root definition of crisis a crisis is a turning point in the course of something. Or if you look at the medical definition, the moment in the course of a disease when a change occurs either for the better or the worse, that’s the point of crisis. And so when we have experiences in our life that contradict who we believed God to be, or who we were raised God to believe, when those things collide with each other, it causes in our theology, in our life and our relationship with God, it causes a moment of crisis. And in that moment, we’ve gotta decide which direction are we going to go. And in that moment, sometimes it feels like the easiest thing to do would be either to reject God or to resent God or to redefine God.

But there’s this other path that exists as well. Say, okay, in the midst of this, how how do I wrestle and struggle with this in a healthy way? I think one of the biggest challenges in life is when we are in moments and there’s just lots of uncertainty. I I don’t know which direction this is gonna go. I I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t, I don’t know what my future looks like. Being born and raised in Houston, Texas. Every few years we would get this big hurricane and hurricanes, as you’ve seen watching on the, the news, that can be really destructive. But the, the crazy part about a hurricane is, you know, a week ahead of time before it hits. So for seven days straight, you are watching this little thing out in the middle of the ocean, slowly get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

And then as it gets closer, meteorologists have this phrase called the cone of uncertainty, which feels like if they were in a back room, it feels like a meteorologist was like, I just feel like meteorology isn’t exciting enough. What if we came up with a term that was just really elusive and scary? And, and that’s what they came up with. And so, so for a week straight meteorologists, if you live in an area where a hurricane is coming your direction, they talk nonstop about the cone of uncertainty. And the code of uncertainty basically means they have no clue where this thing is going. Like basically, we, we are pretty confident within about a thousand miles left or right of where you live right now which is really challenging because basically your options are this hurricane could destroy your house or it might not rain.

And we don’t know it’s gonna be one of those two things. Now, what’s interesting about Harvey in 2017 when Harvey hit Houston, massive destruction made national news flooded everything. But two days before the cone of uncertainty was pointing towards Houston, it was pointing towards Mexico, totally different place. And then it actually ceased to exist. So Harvey stalled out in the Gulf of Mexico and basically started to die, and then it picked up steam, and then all of a sudden it went from the cone of uncertainty going over there to now the cone of uncertainty is coming right at you. And it caused, I mean, everything about that is just anxiety and panic and anxiety and panic anxiety. But is it going to, is it not going to? And then it does hit and it caused massive destruction. It had people, their whole lives were wiped out.

I mean, so many houses ended up getting flooded because basically what happened is the hurricane stopped on top of Houston and it was circling around where it was, it was gaining momentum and the Gulf of Mexico and is just dropping all of that water on Houston. And that happened for an entire week straight. Just did not stop. Crazy flood goes from uncertain to now disaster. And everybody’s looking at each other with this idea of, okay, what do we do next? Where do we go from here? Let’s flip over to the New Testament and Matthew chapter 14. And we’re gonna see where the author Matthew intentionally points back to Isaiah chapter 43 and the verbiage and the language that he uses. Now in Matthew chapter 14, very famous passage that said passage where Jesus walks on water. And probably if you’ve been around church very long, you’ve heard someone teach on Jesus walking on water.

But I want you to pause for a moment, and I want you to think, typically when you hear someone teach this passage, what’s the point of emphasis? What’s the thing that we always go to and say, well, hey, the point of this passage is this. Like I will tell you for a long time, even when I taught it, my point of emphasis really was the second half. And the second half is when Peter gets outta the boat and then he, he goes towards Jesus, and then he starts to shrink starts to sink into, that’d be weird. If he shrunk he sinks into the ocean and then Jesus pulls him back up. Like that was a lot of the emphasis. But if you look in the Greek, the emphasis really isn’t that moment. Their emphasis is on the very center of the story.

And now, if we understand what’s happening in Matthew 14, in total context, at the very beginning of the chapter, John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus gets to beheaded and dies. And so word of this comes to the disciples and to Jesus, and they go off to mourn, and they’re wanting to spend time alone in order to grieve the fact that this really close friend of theirs is dead. But instead, the crowds now at this point, they’re following Jesus everywhere he goes. And so when he goes off to grieve and mourn, instead of being by himself and the disciples hanging out by themselves, all of a sudden this huge crowd of people find Jesus and follow Jesus. And that leads to the feeding of the 5,000. So Jesus ends up breaking bread and breaking fishes and loaves and everybody eats. And so if you’re a disciple you have this friend who’s just died, you don’t have any time to mourn and grieve, and now you’re physically working all day. I mean, they, they were doing a lot of stuff. They were, they were passing out baskets and picking up food and handing out food. And then it’s after this, when the disciples would be emotionally wrecked, physically wrecked, spiritually wrecked. It’s after this that the story picks up in verse 22. Immediately He, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he dismissed the crowds. And after he dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone. But the boat by this time was a long way from the land beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night, so pause for a second, understand a little bit of the context. A Sea of Galilee is really not a sea. It’s It’s a giant lake, but a really big lake. And they would basically commute across the Sea often. So they’d get into a boat and they go across go the other side. It would only take you a few hours go go from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And it says that Jesus sends them out in the boat before he goes up to the mountain in the evening. So we’re not really sure

Exactly how much time passes between that moment and then when Jesus shows

Up, which Jesus shows

Up in the fourth watch of the night, which we know is somewhere between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM.

But if

We do the math, it means that the disciples have been on the boat

For

Somewhere around 10 hours, a give or take. And now they thought they would’ve been on the boat for a couple

Hours to just get across the

Sea. But instead

They are there hour

After hour after

Hour. Why? Because this

Big storm shows up.

And so because

Of this storm, which is very common on the Sea of Galilee, they,

Because of the

Geography and the region, storms can just show up outta nowhere. And so now they’re battling the storm. So, so imagine you’re a disciple.

You, your

One of your best friends has died.

You physically work all

Day, you haven’t had time to grieve. You’re in this boat, you’re trying to get to the

Other side of the sea,

And the storm shows up, which means you’re fighting the storm nonstop, nonstop. Now it’s somewhere between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM They have not slept.

They’re tired physically,

They’re tired emotionally, they’re

Tired spiritually.

And in the fourth watch of the night, he,

Jesus

Came to them walking on the sea. But

Verse

26, when the disciples saw him walking on the sea,

They were terrified

And said

It is a

Ghost. And they cried out in fear

Now in the Greek that the scariest word

That he can possibly use

Is this word terrified

That Matthew’s trying to paint this

Picture that they were terrified

And they cried out in fear.

There was a

Superstition in the first century that if somebody died in the water, that they became a ghost to haunt that water.

So they’re, it’s

Three o’clock in the morning, they haven’t

Slept, they’re tired, they

See somebody walking on the water and they think this is a phantom, a ghost who died out here, who’s coming to haunt us. And, and he’s trying to describe this moment where they feel as scared as he can possibly describe. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said it is a ghost. And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them saying, take heart. It is, I do not be afraid. Now, if you’re someone who underlines or bolds or circles that phrase, take heart, it is, I do not be afraid is the most important phrase in the passage. And now that’s not me saying that, that’s according to Matthew, the author. And so we’re, we’re going to, we’re gonna geek out a little bit on the Greek side of things. So, so in the first century, the way that the authors often wrote, especially in Greek, is they, they would use the structure called a chiasm.

So what they would do is they would, they would take a passage and they would start layering it, pointing it towards something, and then this was the moment, there was the pinnacle moment, and then there would be falling action afterwards. So it all points towards this moment. If you take that phrase and you look in this passage and you counted the number of Greek words before that phrase, and the number of Greek words after that phrase, they’re equal. This is the middle. If you wanna go a little bit crazier there are 28 chapters in the book of Matthew. We are in chapter 14. We are halfway through. And in the middle of this passage, in the middle of this chapter is this one phrase. In addition to that, the author Matthew, is intentionally quoting things from the Old Testament. Now, oftentimes when we see an author in the New Testament quote from the Old Testament, they are quoting from a version called the Greek Sept.

So the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, then you had a bunch of translators that translated it into Greek. And so primarily both, when Jesus quotes the Old Testament, and when the authors of the New Testament are writing, they’re quoting from the Greek sep agenda. So in Greek, the phrase, when, when, when we often translate it, Jesus saying It’s me or something like that, the actual Greek phrase is ego. Me, ego me in Greek literally translates as I am in the Old Testament when they’re translated into Greek, that moment when God, Yahweh is revealing his personal name to Moses, that’s the Greek phrase, ego. And me, I am. So. So if you take a step back and understand what’s happening what Jesus more literally is saying is, take heart. I am do not fear. Now. Now why would the whole passage? And in some ways, the whole book be pointing to this one phrase, take heart, I am do not fear. It’s because this is a revelation. This is a statement that is a really, really big deal that

Jesus is

Declaring to

The disciples that he is God.

He’s using the personal name of God,

Yahweh to say, take heart,

I am

He’s God.

And then on the heels of that saying, do not fear mean you look back in the passage we looked at in Isaiah

43, that there’s a few phrases that

He’s picking up on, that someone in the first century, someone who was a

Jew would’ve

Instantly said, oh,

Hey, I,

I recognize this from the book of

Isaiah

And Isaiah chapter

43 those two

Phrases. One says, when you pastor the waters,

I will be with you. The other

Says, fear not for I am with you. That phrase fear not for I’m with you, that

There’s

This connection, there’s this

Correlation where,

Where they’re trying to get us to understand the author of Matthew’s trying to get us to understand that Jesus

Is

Proclaiming to

Be God. Let’s keep going.

Matthew,

Right after Jesus says this,

Verse 28, it says, and Peter answered him, Lord,

If it

Is you, command me to come to you on the water. He said, come. So Peter

Got outta the boat

And walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, he cried out,

Lord,

Save me. If you wanna understand what salvation looks like in a

Really brief way, it’s that phrase right there that Peter

Recognizes, he’s incapable

Of

Saving himself.

So he cries out to Jesus, Lord,

Save me. And then verse 31, Jesus immediately

Reached

Out his hand and took hold of him saying, oh, you of little

Faith, why

Do you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased and those in the boat

Worshiped

Him saying, truly,

You are

The son of

God.

And, and now here’s what I think one of the main points of this

Whole passage

Is, and that is that God’s presence doesn’t prevent the storm, but he meets us in it. I, I think sometimes because of some bad false teaching that exists in the church, the prosperity gospel, which is not biblical at

All, but but it’s so

Pervasive in our culture

We have this idea that if I

Love Jesus and I follow after Jesus, then nothing bad ever happens to me in my life

That, that I should be healthy.

I should never get sick. No one around me should ever

Die. I

I should have lots of money and I have no problems.

The issue with that

Is that it’s not true. Not only is it not true, it’s it’s not in the Bible. The

Bible is very clear

That it’s not going

To be that way. But what the Bible does

Say, the promise it does

Give is that we will face troubles, we will face

Storms, we will

Face

Challenges, but in those moments, we don’t have to face them alone.

Jesus is with us.

Now, something really

Beautiful

Happens

At

The very end there of the passage of Matthew chapter 14. It, it says that the disciples do two things. We have not seen them do at any point up until this moment in the book of Matthew, they worship Jesus and they declare that he is the son of God. Now, what happens with us typically is the way we read the Bibles. We read certain sections. So like you read that section and you kind of self-contained it, and then you read a different section. But if you were to read the whole thing as a book, as a narrative, so you start in Matthew chapter one, and you, you keep going all the way to this point. It, it means that this moment holds way more weight, more weight than sometimes we give it credit for. Because up in this moment, Jesus has done some amazing things.

In chapter eight, he calms the storm. That’s the story where Jesus is in the boat, he’s asleep, he calms the storm, he wakes up, but they did not worship Jesus. And chapter nine, he raises someone from the dead throughout multiple chapters. He’s healing people, he’s performing miracles, he’s doing all these things, and yet they’ve seen him do all these things. And it has never responded with worship or understanding the identity of Jesus. It’s in this moment, the moment of their desperation, the moment when they feel alone and scared and frightened and terrified, they’re emotionally erect. They’re spiritually erect, they’re physically erect. They’re at the absolute bottom. Their best friend has died. They’re at the absolute bottom. And it’s at that moment in their life that Jesus shows up and Jesus says, I am. And Jesus declares to them his identity, that he is Yahweh. And the result of that is that they worship Jesus for the first time and they recognize who Jesus is.

And when we go through these challenging moments in life, there’s a lot of unhealthy paths that we could take. But there’s also a healthy path. What the disciples did in this passage, I think there’s four key things that we can replicate in our own life when we have these moments where it’s, okay, God, I believe this about you, but I feel this. What do I do? I think there, these are these four things that we should do. First is to recognize Jesus’s presence, that we’ve gotta look for his presence, that Jesus shows up in the storm, that multiple times in this passage, you see the word immediately that Matthew’s trying to get us to, to understand that Jesus, he, he’s not just far off in distance, that he is there immediately when there’s trouble. And when Peter starts to sink, he’s there immediately to hold him up.

That when we, the bottom falls out, it might not feel like it at the moment, but Jesus is there immediately. But we’ve gotta look for his presence. The second is identity. It’s who Jesus is. Jesus says that he is, I am the Jesus is God the creator of the universe that wants a relationship with us, and he shows up. And then we’ve gotta have faith. We’ve gotta trust his grip. Even in that moment when we are sinking that he is the one that saves that. That’s, that’s the, the powerful part of the exchange between him and Peter is that Peter cannot save himself. It’s not the strength of Peter. No. It’s the strength of Jesus that Jesus grabs onto him and effortlessly lifts him out of the water. Gotta have faith and trust. And then lastly, we’ve gotta worship that in those moments when it does not make sense.

When we don’t feel like it. We’ve gotta let the storm lead us towards worship. And here’s the challenge, is we don’t feel like we wanna do that. I mean, I, I remember when, when our daughter died, it, it felt like the bottom had fallen out and we were angry and we were frustrated. And, and the best way to describe that whole season is it just sucked. And that’s not a word that a pastor’s supposed to say on stage, but can I just tell you that describes it? It sucked. And we could have very easily gone to a really dark and lonely place, but instead it was, Hey, we’re gonna lean into worship because we’ve got nothing else to hold onto.

And can I tell you something crazy that happened is that the depth of our faith and our relationship with Jesus became far more intimate as a result of that than it ever had before. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still wouldn’t trade it. Like if I could go back and choose for my daughter to be alive, I would trade for my daughter to be alive 10 outta 10 times every single time I would still choose that. And yet there is a hope that we have in the person of Jesus that the death is not the end. That, that our hope to one day see our daughter again, is that Jesus died. He conquered death, he rose from the dead, that he is a risen and raisin reigning savior. There’s an old proverb, it’s not in the Bible, but it’s an old proverb that says, A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.

And it’s this idea that that man, when life is good and life is easy, that that’s a wonderful season to be in. But we don’t learn very much. But what if we take our pain and our sorrow and those moments where we don’t understand when we say God, hey, I, and you can be angry, you can be honest. You can say, God, I don’t get this. I don’t understand this. But I’m going to give it to you and I’m gonna trust in you. It doesn’t take away the pain, but it does mean that God can use it. He can redeem it in ways that we could never understand by ourself. I love how Paul writes in Romans chapter eight. He says this, for I’m sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers nor height, nor depth nor anything else and all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Our Lord Jesus in the middle of the storm says, take heart. I am do not fear nothing can separate us no matter how emotionally it might feel. That way nothing can separate us, you, me, away from the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And no matter how challenging a season you might face, Jesus is saying that same thing, take heart. I am do not fear. Let’s pray Heaven. Father God, I pray specifically right now for those people in this room that are walking through a dark season, a season with questions, a season with unknown, a season with frustration. God, I pray right now in the name of Jesus that they would hear you in their heart saying, take heart. I am. Do not fear that we are gonna go through so many different emotions in this life where we don’t understand the pain or the struggle, and you actually tell us that we will, in your word, go through those seasons. God help us instead of dealing with it in an unhealthy way, to use those moments to lean into our relationship with you. God, even when we don’t understand God, that you are present and you love us, you are here. God, I pray for anyone in this room that has not gone through a season like that, God, but you know they will. God, I pray that they will take this to heart, cherish that this message, this, this concept, so that when they do face those challenging times, that their faith in you could be renewed and restored. It’s the name of Lord Jesus we pray. Amen.