As we look forward to our Texas District Annual Gathering in Victoria at the end of July, we continue to look at the story of Jesus calming the seas in Mark 4:35-41. In this story, Jesus’ disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee when a great windstorm arose and began swamping the boat. Fear struck the disciples, but Jesus was sleeping through it all. The disciples woke Jesus up: “Teacher! Don’t you care that we are going to die?” Jesus then got up, rebuked the wind and calmed the sea.
This year’s theme is “All in the Same Boat.” We all face challenging “storms” both as individual followers of Jesus as well as communities of disciples gathered into our local congregations. In this series of Mission Moment articles, we are unpacking this Bible story as we discover the hope we have in Jesus through every time of trouble. Last month we focused on our first lesson, that Jesus was in the boat with the disciples the entire time! At no point were they alone in their situation. But that raises an important second question: Has Jesus fallen asleep? Let this be our wake-up call (pun intended). Our second lesson to learn from this story: Keep Jesus awake!
I think it is great that scriptures record moments like this. It reminds us that Jesus was fully human: Jesus would get hungry and so he ate. He would get tired and so he slept. But I also love it as a metaphor for the state of our relationship with Jesus. Have we left Jesus alone and disengaged with him? Has our faith become sleepy and are we taking Jesus’ presence for granted? Have we forgotten about him? Do we have an attitude perhaps like the first disciples: “We got this… after all we are fishermen and are the experts!” And as the storm raged around them, Jesus was right there. But because the disciples left Jesus to drift off to sleep, it was almost as if he wasn’t.
One of our common mistakes in the life of faith is to not activate Jesus. While Jesus is right there, so often we drift off to do our own things in life and leave Jesus be. We neglect reading the Bible or spending time in prayer or listening for him to speak. We approach our lives as if we are the experts and are in control and only call on Jesus in a panic when all seems to go wrong. We cry out “Don’t you care!” Of course, Jesus cares. But the Lord also wants our faith to be active and engaged, not sleepy and withdrawn.
Living as a disciple is seldom easy. And ministry as a congregation is full of new challenges. And we remember that we are All in the Same Boat! And Jesus is with us… but have we left him to fall asleep? As we seek to weather all the storms of life, I pray that we remember to keep Jesus awake. And as we live more deeply into an intimate walk with Jesus, we will not ever doubt the Lord’s care for us in perilous situations.
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Pastor Bryce Formwalt is the Director of Mission Growth for LCMC Texas District and Program Director of Harvest Workers, an online ministry training program (learn more at www.harvestworkers.net). Residing in Georgetown, Pastor Bryce is available to coach congregations on mission. Please contact him with any questions or comments: 512-942-7776 or bryce@lcmctexas.org.
© 2025 Bryce J. Formwalt, All Rights Reserved.
