Fifty Shades of Unbelief: Fear

Imagine you’re coasting on the serene waters of the Sea of Galilee. You feel the wind blowing against your skin and hear it filling out the sails of the fishing boat you’re on.

You look beneath the water and see the occasional fish darting along their watery way. You also hear the sea birds calling to one another as they wing about against the backdrop of a brilliant sky streaked with the most dazzling shades of red you’ve ever seen.

You still feel the wind against your skin now, but it’s more insistent. The boat is beginning to rock about a bit more than you like. The wind comes at you again, this time blowing your hat right off your head. As you stand from picking your hat, you look up, and where there were once dazzling streaks of red, there are now ominous grey clouds.

The wind is no longer suggestive: it wants to take your clothes off you. In fact, it now wants you to join the tempestuous dance it’s doing with the sea. The sea is now one with the wind, and it wants you and your wooden cork of a boat to partake in this most inconvenient alliance.

Before you can say “Davy Jones”, the waves begin to breach your boat, and it seems like it is about to be upended.

That’s when you remember that you have Jesus with you on the boat. So you go ahead to call on Him, just like the disciples did when they were actually in the situation we’ve just imagined. So they did the right thing, right?

Eh well, it didn’t seem like Jesus was impressed with them.

“Jesus responded, ‘Why are you so afraid? You have so little faith!’” 

Matthew 8:26a (NLT)

But, but…they called on Jesus! Why would He then accuse them of having little faith? Was it because they were afraid? Probably not. I mean, fear is a physiological defense mechanism necessary for learning and survival. That couldn’t be why Jesus was a tad cross with them, could it?

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” 

Hebrews 11:6 (NIV)

Prior to this time, Jesus had performed several signs and wonders with the intent of showing His disciples that He was actually Him — God in the flesh. But somehow, His disciples hadn’t quite gotten the message.

So in that moment of tribulation, they came to Him with fear in their hearts — fear that they were going to die — rather than faith in His ability to save them.

In fact, when the other synoptic gospels tell the story, they give a sense of the disciples waking Jesus up so that He would have time for a “last prayer” before succumbing to the waves: “How can you be sleeping? Don’t you see we’re all about to die?!” Of course, Jesus saved them, but He wasn’t pleased with them one bit.

When we find ourselves in dire circumstances, it is human (read: normal) to feel fear. But what we must do is remind ourselves of the times that God has come through for us, and let these memories be mixed with faith. We must then call to God for help with faith that He is God and that He will save us, because He has done it before, and can, by all means, do it again.

This is one way we can please God, even in frightful circumstances, and not allow our hearts to be shaded by unbelief.

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Read also:

Fifty Shades of Unbelief: Laziness