Does God Lead Us Into Trouble?

If we read the scripture without a social or commentary bias, this story about Jesus sending his 12 disciples to the next city when evening was approaching is very interesting. Little did the disciples know there would be a strong storm coming that evening, though they knew the sea of Galilee was known for storms happening quickly. The question I have is: did Jesus know he was sending the disciples into trouble or did this just happen?

Mark 6:45

Immediately after this, Jesus made his disciples get back into the boat and head out across the lake to Bethsaida, while he sent the people home.

Things to remember in answering this question is remembering Jesus always was led by what he saw the Father do.  In other words, this was the Father’s will to send the disciples into this storm.  Doesn’t that bring comfort to your heart! Secondly, Jesus often would put problems in front of the disciples in order to evaluate their heart and perception about doing God’s will. Often, these problems exposed hidden issues in the disciple’s hearts and their thinking.  Jesus wanted to address things they should have learned earlier and facing problems helped to sort out where the disciples trust was weak in their Heavenly Father. Without tests, there is no true evidence of faith.

Within this story, scripture says Jesus went to pray alone while he disciples herded for Bethsaida, which was about 4 miles along the coast. Considering what happened to the disciples, was Jesus praying for them or just praying about other things? My best guess is he knew this would be a test and they would either lose ground in their spiritual walk because of it or they could advance in their walk with God, which I believe is always God’s heart for us. So, I think Jesus was interceding for them to pass the test the father had laid out in this storm.

Here is the thing. Somehow many believers think that if they pray for safety or protection then nothing bad will happen to them. In some cases that is true but certainly not in all cases. Sometimes God has to let us walk independently into harms way in order to awaken us to our need of him. Our personal independence from God often is a problem for every believer and thus the Holy Spirit develops ways to manifest it to us so we can address it. The sad thing is the more we get to know God and his word the tendency is to act more independently because we “Assume” God is always with us and therefore we don’t need to pursue him as hard as when we were more immature.  It is paradoxical how knowledge can make us foolish or wise.

This story is in all four of the gospels so it must have greater importance than other stories or principles in scripture. That being said, I think we all have heard this story in sermons and thus it’s easy to think we know all it has to give us and therein is another problem. Shutting down our hunger to know more prevents us from seeing more, especially when it comes to our self reliance in reading scripture or hearing God’s voice. If our souls are not constantly adjusting to new revelation from the Holy Spirit we get stuck in religious thinking instead of flowing in the spirit. We fool ourselves into thinking we are more mature than we really are.

Verse 48 contains one important fact.   It says Jesus was going to them but then he started to go past them. Why? Why go to them and then seemingly decide to go past them? Maybe the disciples’ ability to overcome their fear of the storm would be exaggerated by the fear they saw a ghost. Fear is the opposite of faith and they were swimming in it with the storm.

Mark 6:48

He saw that they were in serious trouble, rowing hard and struggling against the wind and waves. About three o’clock in the morning he came to them, walking on the water. He started to go past them,

Is it possible Jesus felt they would just freak out by seeing him walking on water so much so he figured it’s best to pass them by and then just meet them at their destination? I wonder how many times I didn’t have an encounter with the Lord because my heart and mind were so captivated by my problem or my trial?  Likely more than I realize, just like the disciple seemed to be. Maybe your fear clouds your ability to hear and feel the presence of the Lord, just like it did the disciples on that stormy night.

Near the end of this story, I think there is a hidden truth that applies to the disciples and to us. It states that the disciples didn’t get the “Significance” of the previous miracle of feeding the 5,000. Scripture literally says their “Hearts” were hard, which means not open to what God was trying to teach them. Again, they often react to miracles like you and I do. We forget the significance rather than having it build our faith and relationship with God.

Mark 6:51-52

Then he climbed into the boat, and the wind stopped. They were astonished at what they saw. They still didn’t understand the significance of the miracle of the multiplied loaves, for their hearts were hard and they did not believe.

I hate to say it but many times my heart is hard or resistant towards what God is trying to speak to me.  Therefore, he has to allow hardship or trouble or great struggle to happen so that my heart becomes broken and moldable all over again. I’m sure the Lord doesn’t desire harm to come to us yet he knows if it does it will help us have a soft heart so he can teach us the secrets of the kingdom.

Psalms 34:18

The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit.

You and I have the ability to have a “Teachable” spirit or a stubborn one. We can stay moldable in the Father’s hand or we can become stiff and resistant to what he wants us to learn.  Sometimes we are ignorant because we want to be and sometimes we are ignorant of what God is saying because we have become entrenched in our habits and ways of thinking.

I hate to say it but the disciples were just like us in some ways. They wanted to understand the words of Jesus but there were times when Jesus spoke and thy just couldn’t comprehend his words.  An example of this is when Jesus told them that the son of Man was going to be killed.  They heard his words but didn’t understand them because in this area they were not moldable because it went against what they wanted. They wanted a king that would overturn Roman rule, not a king that would be sacrificed for their sin.

Mark 9:32

But they didn’t understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant.

That inability to understand Jesus hurt them more than they understood because when the time to stand up for their messiah came in the garden, they all ran away.

I pray you and I will constantly ask God to help us be moldable like clay so that his words to us will be understood and we will bless his heart because of it.

Questions:

1) Can we point out troubles that have come our way because we lacked the ability to see some weakness in our character without it? Confess your desire for God to make your heart soft and pliable like Isaiah did ( Isaiah 64:8)

2) Do you regularly ask God to keep you from testing? The Lord’s prayer encourages us to pray that we would not be led into temptation – that word is about “Testing” (Matthew 6:13)

May the Holy Spirit help us to keep soft hearts and open minds so our tests would be few rather than great,

Pastor Dale