So I want to tell you this story. I don't know the exact date, but it was around the year 2000 or 2001. But we took a trip as a youth group from Flint, Michigan, down to Haynesville, Ohio, if you know where that is. My youth pastor's old friend that he had gone to college with lived there, and he was a youth pastor, and this guy. Their church had burned down.

There was still, like, one part of a building, but the rest of it had burned down. And they were in the process of getting ready to rebuild, or maybe already rebuilding. But we went there on, like, a mission project to go, you know, just kind of help clean up some things. Not with the building so much, just projects around the rest of the property. And to be honest, they didn't expect much out of teenagers, because that's their reputation.

But we ended up doing all their work that they had on the first day. And so they said, we don't have any more work for you. So the next day, we just went up to the beach, Lake Erie, and had a good time there and all that. Well, that night, we came back from having a good time at the beach. We were camping in tents out on the back part of this church property.

And it started raining really, really hard, like, a lot of rain. And I had a cabin tent. Not one of the dome tents. I had this cabin tent that had the one post in the middle, that bar that went across, and the two on the side. And so it was kind of pooling up on there.

So I had to go and just kind of move the brackets down a little so it would run off the back. And I did that and went back in my tent, and I was staying pretty dry. Some other people, one of them forgot to zip their tent shut. Another one was some girls that were staying in a suburban that their parents had loaned the youth group to ride down. And they had left the windows down, but they didn't have the keys.

The youth pastor had the keys, so they didn't roll the windows up. So their car soaked. And everybody's just getting pretty wet out there and not having a great time. And so there was this one big tent that had most of the guys and the youth pastor. And then there's one helper named richest and rich was in this great sleeping bag made by a company named Slumberjack.

It looks like a little mummy coffin thing, the way it's shaped. It's real narrow, and it comes up around you. There's a strap that closes it around your neck so that you can stay like really warm in cold, cold weather. It was rated for, like, zero degrees or something. I've got one similar, but it's not as good of a brand.

But it also has, like, these sealed in zippers. Like, that keeps the water out. So they got two inches of water in their tent, and everybody in there was like, they're like, this is ridiculous, you know. And there was still some small part of that church building. And so they opened it up for us to go in there.

I was okay in my tent, but they made me come with them, so I said, fine. And so we moved in whatever dry stuff we had or what stuff we had moved into the church building for the rest of the night. Well, they woke rich up in his really nice sleeping bag. It had the top part that went around your head. And they woke him up.

They said, rich, come on, we're going in the building. He's like, why? And they said, because it's soaking wet in here. He's like, huh? And he, like, reaches a handout, he's like, splash, splash, splash.

He's like, oh, I'm dry. His sleeping bag was so good that it was waterproof. It was dry. And then later he got just a little bit of water in, like, up by the top of the zipper. And he says, I'm gonna write the company and tell him it's really good.

Except I didn't like that one little bit of water that got in there. I think you could improve that design a little bit, you know. And so, you know, I'm just thinking, like, there's rich in the middle of this storm, everybody's soaking wet, and they're going inside so that we could stay drowned. And he's like, I didn't even know there was a problem. You know, he was just sleeping right through it.

He didn't even come in with us. He stayed in that sleeping bag, slept the rest of the night in there, and had a great time all by himself in that tent. That leads us to mark chapter four, and we're going to look at verse 35 through the end. On that day, when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, let's go across to the other side of the lake. By the way, this is the sea of Galilee that we're talking about here.

So after leaving the crowd, they took him along just as he was in the boat. Maybe this was a time where he was already in the boat, teaching from the boat or something, we're not sure. But somehow they took him in the boat, and there was also other boats along with him. Now a great windstorm developed and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was nearly swamped. But he, Jesus, was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.

They woke him up and said to him, teacher, don't you care that we are about to die? Or some translation say, don't you care that we are perishing? Like they said, we are in the act of dying right now. So he got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, be quiet. Calm down.

And the wind stopped and it was dead calm. And he said to them, why are you cowardly? Do you still not have faith? They were overwhelmed by fear and said to one another, who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obeys him now.

I've fallen asleep really? Well, in a lot of scenarios, I mean, there's been a lot of places that I have been able to just fall fast asleep. Movie theaters, not a problem for me. They start putting these recliners in some of them, and if I get dragged to a movie that I don't care about, I will go to sleep, no problem. I've fallen asleep at friends houses back in the day.

You know, when you're in your twenties and thirties, you'll go to people's houses. When you start getting closer to 40, you're like, I don't even know if I want to meet you somewhere. You know, like. So I assume when you get a little closer to the, like, sixties, you're kind of like, oh, we like hanging out with people again, you know? But anyway, we.

We would go over to friends houses, and eventually you turn on a show or a movie, and I'd fall asleep. It didn't matter whose house it was. I'd fall asleep. I'd fall asleep when people would come over to our house. And, you know, I just.

I was. I worked hard. I had these hard outdoor jobs. I'm tired, you know, I'm gonna fall asleep. I've fallen asleep at concerts.

I mean, there was this one, this music festival called ICFU. So it was a christian music concert in Kentucky, in Wilmore, Kentucky. We'd go out there, and you'd set out these big tarps on the lawn, and your group would have your tarp, and you'd hang out there, and I would fall asleep on that sometimes because somebody was assigned tarp responsibilities to take it up at night. You had to remove your tarps every night. And so one night I had the responsibility of picking up the tarp.

And the last concert of the night, the headliner was Michael w. Smith. I'm not a fan. Like, I never was a fan of his stuff. And I had to endure through that whole concert, and I just fell asleep laying down on the tarp.

25,000 people out there having a good old time. His music's real loud. I'm asleep on the tarp. Fortunately, this one girl taps me on the shoulder and says, nick, we're leaving. I'm like, are you kidding me?

Like, I stayed out here for you guys to not even hang out for the whole concert, you know? So I pick up the tarp and go with them. Like, they couldn't help, you know, I had to do the whole thing aggravating, but I fell asleep. One time. Amy and I went to the Skirmerhorn Symphony center in Nashville.

They spent $125 million building the symphony center building state of the art. And they had this concert with Randy Travis playing along with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Pretty cool. She loves Randy Travis and said, let's go. There was these couple guys sitting next to us that were from a local college, and they had to take in a cultural event, and they got it approved.

Because a symphony is cultural. It didn't matter. There was also a country music star there with them. And so there they are. They had a little flask.

I figured it was country music, so you got to have something to drink. And that was easier to carry a flask in than a beer bottle, you know? But anyway, I'm asleep there, just kind of leaning on my hands, and they dropped their flask straight down on the floor just a foot and a half or so, and that woke me up. But I can fall asleep at just about anywhere. I've fallen asleep on lawns outside.

I've fallen asleep. I've never quite fallen asleep on a ladder, and I don't think I've taken a nap on a roof before, but I'll fall asleep just about anywhere, no problem. I don't know that I've ever fallen asleep in a small boat in a big storm. I just don't think I've ever quite been at that place. I did almost fall asleep on a lawnmower once after I had been out to visit my brother in Oklahoma.

Drew back to Nashville, drove back to Nashville all night. Got 45 minutes of downtime between when I got there and when I had to start work. And I'm onto college campus and I'm running a mower, and I almost fell asleep while I was mowing, and I had to mow out by the highway, so I just parked it behind some bushes. And fell asleep on my mower, like, shut it off where nobody could see me, and fell asleep for about 30 minutes there. So I did fall asleep on a mower, just not while it was running.

But I don't know why Jesus fell asleep in that boat. I don't know why they even left at night, you know, like, why was his schedule that busy where he had to travel across the sea of Galilee at night? But somehow Jesus fell asleep there. And I don't know if he did it to prove a point. I don't know if he did it because he was just that tired.

Now, there's something interesting. The Greeks, if you're familiar with any, and I never really studied this stuff, but the Greeks had this deity, this God named Poseidon. There was kind of this, like, seafaring, sea controlling, you know, deity, God, whatever. And the Romans had their version of it that was Neptune. You know, the guy with the trident thing, and he could crack rocks with it.

He could make swells and storms rise up. I don't know how much the disciples knew about these guys, either, as far as the. The lore about them or the beliefs that the Romans had about them. But here's what I'm thinking. There were people around them, especially on the gentile side of the sea of Galilee, who were quite aware of this God.

Perhaps they had overheard some conversations about some roman gods, as Jesus is teaching some of these people. Perhaps the conversation came up and they overheard some of it. I don't know if it was in the back of their mind that there was a possibility or that other people believed there was something else in control. But it's quite likely that nearby there were people that believed that there was some little g. Some God out there that had power with his little trident thing, had power over the sea and kicked up this big storm.

I don't know about that, but perhaps they were aware of that and they probably didn't put any stock into it. In fact, they were probably quite aware. They might not have known. The meteorological and geographical oddity that is, the sea of Galilee is 700ft below sea level. And, you know, because of, like, warmer air than the cooler air down low, like we were talking about with this hurricane, sometimes when those mix, it changes things up.

Well, because of the way those would work, a lot of times just something would blow in and there would be these big, violent storms that came out of nowhere on the sea of Galilee, probably still is today. And because of that, you know, this was fairly common. But these guys that were disciples that were many of them were fishermen, and they were used to this. They might have been the ones that were, like, really calm and at peace during this storm. There were some disciples that were really freaking out.

They were really getting worried in this. They're the ones that are shaking Jesus awake and saying, don't you care that we're dying? I imagine there was a couple of them, you know, Peter, James, John, some of these guys that were fishermen that probably were trying to say, guys, it's okay. We're gonna be fine. I confess.

I'm that guy with hurricanes. I'm like, listen, we're gonna be okay. No, don't evacuate. Come here. Stay in a block building if you want, but don't.

Don't try to leave. You're gonna be okay. I'm that guy. But I also know that sometimes it's a little worse than we planned. Aaron, you were saying it was not as bad as they said it might be.

For me, it was worse than I thought it would be. I was really saying, it's gonna be less than what it was. So I went around, I said, okay, I was wrong this time. This storm was a lot worse than I thought it was gonna be. And yet, at the same time, we still were here.

We've survived. We've made it. So I'm thinking there were some guys in the boat that were on that kind of. They were more like, nick, you know, like, it's gonna be okay. And there are some that are saying we're gonna die.

And then there's Jesus. Not even getting involved in it because he's asleep. I'm also that guy. Like, I could fall asleep through it, no problem. I did wake up during the hurricane.

I tried to sleep. I got a couple hours of sleep, and then it got real intense, and then I did wake up, and I was awake the rest of the night. Checking outside, looking through windows, going outside as much as I could without getting soaked in about 12 seconds because the wind would just blow it straight at you. I would be the weather guy that's out there, you know, that they send out, like, you know, I would be that guy, but I don't want their job, you know? So I wonder, though, sometimes, like.

Like, you're going to immediately say no, because you're like, we don't believe in roman gods. We don't believe in other deities. But. But there's times where I think many of us, we're going to think that there's something else that's got some kind of leverage or power over us. Demonic activity things like that.

We're going to say, well, how many times have you said or heard somebody say, well, Satan's really attacking me. I always want to say, probably not him directly. Like, you're not that important to him, you know, but maybe, like, maybe he said an evil spirit. Absolutely. That's scriptural.

That happens. That still happens today. But I wonder so many times if we're like, man, you know, there's some evil force that's at work sending some harm our way. Sending damage our way. Kind of like was, you know, Poseidon or, or, or Neptune somehow at work on the Sea of Galilee.

The disciples might have had some questions about that because we see them saying, like, after Jesus calms the storm, did you see what they said? Who is this? Like, he's not just teacher. He's not just a comforting friend. He's not just guy asleep in the back of the boat.

He can actually say the word and everything goes calm. Like, if there is Neptune, he's got nothing because this guy can stop him. If there is just meteorological, geographical combination of forces in that region, he can overcome that. Who is this? I get chills when I hear that statement.

When I put it into context. If you don't have an awe, like, this awesome feeling about who Jesus is, you need to get one. If you're not like saying, okay, who is this guy? Who is this? That can not only calm the sea or calm the hurricane.

Like, the hurricane didn't go away. But we do believe that there is a hand of God at work, not just in calming it, but also in protecting people during the storm, in bringing relief to people after the storm. I think we need the faith to pray away a hurricane. We need the faith that says we can pray and believe that God can do something to move this away from us, not just to send it. I really get frustrated when people say, oh, I'm just praying for that spaghetti model when I see this track where it moves a different direction away from us.

Are you kidding me? Like, I'd rather it hit here than there. You know why? I don't know. Because I'm not selfish enough to wish it on someone else.

I'm either going to say, God help us in the middle of the storm or God stop the storm, but I'm not going to wish it on someone else. But I look at that and I think, can we be so much in faith that we can pray away a hurricane? But if God still sends it our way to accept that, to me, that's the big thing, accepting it, accepting the thing that God gives us or allows us to walk through. It's like, can you be so at peace during that? Even if you prayed that it would not come here and it did, can you be so at peace that you could be asleep in the back of the boat?

So, and I know, like, we're thinking, okay, like, jesus is God. What if Jesus did die on that boat? Okay, let's just go with me for a second here. Like, this is, this is, this is the 02:00 a.m. brain from Pastor Nick.

This is where you get from me. This is what you get from me at 02:00 in the morning. If Jesus died, well, we know he's going back to the right hand of the father. He's going back to heaven. I don't know if he gets born again from another virgin.

You know, like, I don't know. I don't know how God would have handled that, but it's irrelevant. But just go with me here. My daughter does a lot of what if questions, and it gets aggravating. That's where some of my attention came from this week was like, child, shh.

I'm, like, trying to think through important thoughts here, you know? And, and she's like, what? What if this. And she's making up these crazy scenarios, and I'm like, okay, and so, like, just play along. This is cute.

Let's go. Let's go for it. And imagine this with her. Jesus dies. He goes back to heaven.

You know, great. No problem. We're not Jesus. I don't want to die in a hurricane. I don't want to die in a storm.

I don't want to die from this thing or that thing. You have faith in God that not only you have salvation, but you know where you're going when you die. It's no different. Jesus goes to heaven. Guess what?

So are you too. Like, that's my point. That's my whole point, is it doesn't matter on that. Ultimate peace comes from knowing who God is and knowing what God has promised you both in this life and in the life to come. Ultimate peace comes from there.

In fact, like, God has called you to live for him and trust him every day in every situation. And I saw this play out in my life yesterday. I had started out, I can't even remember if it was yesterday or the day before, but I started out just saying, God, just, however I can help, use me. I don't want to be like, I don't want to waste the time not being helpful to somebody that's in need. There's people who, even if I can just do one small thing to alleviate the stress or the pain that they're going through, I want to be able to do that.

And so yesterday, I get this call from someone that I know. Her name is Yvonne. Her husband's a pastor. I think he's retiring pretty soon, or already has. But he's the chaplain out of the Zephyrs Correctional Institute down there on 301.

And her son works for some agency or organization that's bringing in a truckload of, like, food and water and maybe baby formula and diapers. I don't know what they're gonna have on it. They're trying to bring some generators in. And so one of the things that they're going to be doing is they're going to need help getting the word out for distribution. That's something that you can help with if you know somebody that's in need of some of those basic supplies, like, get them connected to me somehow, and I'll get them connected to the thing.

But it's supposed to be the trucks probably coming in tomorrow. They're not sure just when it'll arrive. And it'll be going over to Zephyr Hills. First assembly of God on 54, over by the wind dixie over there on the other side of Zephyr Hills. And that'll be kind of the drop off and the distribution point.

Well, the truck, they said, we need unloading help. And I said, we're not hand unloading a 53 footer. No way. That's going to take forever. With 100 people even.

We're getting pallet jacks and a forklift or something. And so I immediately, like, within a minute or two after talking to her, I said, meals on wheels has a pallet jack. I remember seeing it in there. I'll call Beth. That part's easy.

No problem. We need a tractor. And I didn't even, like, I'll say, commit it to prayer. I didn't really stop and think, okay, God, show me a tractor. I literally just had my eyes open.

I was driving around, I'd actually picked up Ed, who I think is upstairs helping with the kids right now. But I picked up Ed because I was in the neighborhood where they were visiting their kids. And I said, you want to ride with me to do this thing I was about to go do. And so he came along, and so he's riding with me. And I was kind of like, we were talking, but I'm just.

My head's on a swivel. As I'm driving, because I'm looking for machinery. And he just kind of looked at me like, what's going on? I said, I'm looking for forks, like, to lift pallets with. I'm looking for a tractor.

Two minutes later, I'm looking out, and I see this flooded yard, and I see a kubota with forks on it. Now I got to figure out how to get in there. I can't even figure out where their driveway is. I had to pull off on the side road and look at Google maps. I said, their driveways literally right here, you just can't see it.

And. But as we stood there, they started driving over. We talked with them. You know, I said, here's the situation. And I said, literally, like, it's right there.

I can see the church where this is going to get dropped off. He's right next to it. And I said, could you help unload this truck? He's like, no problem. God answers these prayers.

The prayer that I didn't even take the time to pray, but I had started out my day saying, lord, just. I want to just make these connections happen. I want to do this. I think, do we trust him every day in little things, in big things? Do we have this trust in God that says, like, while I'm going out and serving, he brings peace?

I had just the most overwhelming, like, the disciples saying, lord, don't you care that we're dying? And then he calms the sea, and they say, who? Who even is this in this boat with us? I think of Peter when he had that big miraculous catch of fish early on, when he hadn't even been a follower of Jesus yet. And he says, lord, please leave from me.

I'm a sinful man. I don't deserve to have you around me. I'm scared to be around you. So many times we're missing that kind of awe, that sense of awesomeness about who Jesus is. He's our friend.

He's our savior. He's the propitiation for our sins. He's all these things. He's the one that we pray to, that we trust in. But so many times, I think we lose that sense of.

Of just overwhelmingness of who he is. I needed that moment to say, okay, just. It couldn't have been five minutes after I got off the phone and was looking for this, that God provided the machinery and the willing people behind it. And I was like, wow, we don't have to rent anything. We don't have to truck something over there.

We don't have to get 100 people to unload a 53 foot semi trailer. God's already got this. He knew the answer before it. But if I hadn't picked up ed and gone at just that exact moment to look at this house that somebody from Michigan asked me to look for, for their boss's parents and all these things that just aligned at this one moment, if all these things hadn't happened, if I hadn't gotten my chainsaw when I was picking Ed up to help cut up the brush in their front yard, and then the neighbor asked me to cut up theirs. And just this right timing, these people would have been inside their house because they were done with their work, with their tractor, and I wouldn't have seen it.

But all these things fell into place just at the right time, at the right moment, because God was saying, we've got people that I'm caring for. God loves these people, and he wants his church and he wants his people to work to bring the help that they need. And God's doing these things, I found this overwhelming sense of awe in that moment. I'll tell you, I was at peace. You see, as we serve others, as we live out the gospel calling on our lives, we can experience that peace.

But then I think there's another thing. Because even before the storm hits, you already have. Have to have committed your life. Everything that you are, everything that you have, you have to commit that to God. You have to commit it to him in faith and trust that he is both powerful and benevolent.

He's strong and kind. He's strong and he loves you. He's strong, and yet he wants to reach out his powerful hand in the gentlest of ways to bring peace and wholeness to your life. So when the storms come, I wonder, do you already know why you're here? Like, do you already know what your purpose is, what your role is, or what God's purpose for you is?

And do you enter into those storms with a sense of awe of who God is and what he wants to do because you have to make a conscious decision not to just trust him? I think most of us would say, well, I trust God, but do you entrust yourself to him? In other words, have you committed everything you are to him? And said, God, I'm laying this all out there, and I'm in trusting it all to you. If it gets blown away, washed away, burned away, whatever it is, have I trusted, entrusted all that to God?

When you get a cancer diagnosis, do you trust that to God when your child dies or the roof blows off or the electricity is off for days, or like somebody I was talking to yesterday who lost their eyesight in one eye, but it reminds them of the tumors that they had that God healed them of. And he says, every time that I realize I can't see out of my left eye, I just thank God that I'm still alive. When you lose your job or when the car quits running or any number of things that happen in our lives, when those things happen, have you already entrusted yourself to God in such a way that you can trust him in that storm in your life that you can say, okay, God, I don't know what's going on in this situation, but I trust you. And I entrusted to you, I give it over to you in that trust. See, each and every day, when we start out our day that way, when we live our lives committed to trusting God in every situation, moment by moment, we realize that he's faithful.

When we do that, we're looking for the hand of God at work in our lives. And when we see that hand of God at work, hopefully it's like those disciples after Jesus calms the storm. And they say, who even is this? Like, my prayer for me, for my life, is that I would have this. This sense of not just awe about who Jesus is, but that I would love him more for it.

Because, like, the thing that I feel like would be a danger for us is to be so, so in wonder and awe of Jesus that we forget that he also is our brother. See, we've been adopted as sons and daughters of the king of heaven, of the father of Jesus himself. We call him our father, our loving heavenly Father. And as such, Jesus is our brother. And he loves us like no brother ever could.

And our father in heaven loves us like no father ever could. And because of that, we can have this ultimate peace even in the midst of the storm. So my encouragement to you today is simply that you, moment by moment, can trust God no matter what, because he's faithful, because he loves you, and because he's already proven himself time and time again. And my prayer for you is that he would prove himself in your lives this week and in the weeks to come.

If you're joining us online but you have never attended in person, let us know that you're watching by leaving a comment. And please give us a thumbs up on the video. If there's any way we can pray for you. Or if you would like to know a little bit more about this church or relationship with Jesus, text us at and be sure to check out our website@cfnfamily.org. dot thanks for watching and we pray that God blesses you this week.

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