Each experience should be helpful to us. If at first we were fearful and cried aloud, by and by we received the succor, with perhaps the reprimand, "O, thou of little faith"; but as lesson after lesson has come to us, the Master will expect—and we should expect of ourselves—greater faith, greater trust, greater peace, greater joy in the Lord, greater confidence in His presence with us and His care over us, and in His power to deliver us from the Adversary and from every evil thing, and to bring us eventually in safety to the port we seek—the Kingdom.
Sometimes the storms that the Christian mariner meets, as he sails over the sea of present evil conditions, cause the ship of his faith almost to capsize; at other times they cause it to fill with the water of distress, endangering its remaining above water; and nearly always they cause it to pitch to and fro by their violence. In such storms let us not forget that the Lord who commands wind and wave is near as our Protector. This will free our hearts from the fear that our ship of faith will sink. Like the Galilean storm, our tempests of trouble, subject to His mighty "Peace, be still!" will subside into a perfect calm. Knowing this let us neither fear nor lack faith, for He is with us.
Psa. 31:22; 42:5, 6; 77:7-9; Isa. 49:14, 15; Matt. 6:30; 14:29-31; 17:17; Mark 4:38-40; 5:36; Luke 8:23-25; 17:5; John 14:1; Gal. 6:12; Phil. 4:6, 7; 2 Tim. 4:16; 1 John 5:4.
