My church small group has been taking passages and walking through them in a storytelling method.

This past week we read Luke 8:22-49. The first half is that passage where Jesus is napping in the boat while the disciples are freaking out in a huge, sudden storm.

They finally decide to wake Jesus, pleading, “Master, Master we are perishing!¹”

He wakes up, ‘rebukes’ the wind and raging waves, and suddenly all is calm.

“Where is your faith?” He asks.

***

I realized I functionally believed (barely consciously) that Jesus was kind of a jerk when, as an anxious and depressed newlywed, I got myself into counseling. My counselor had me close my eyes and imagine Jesus was with me — a first for this girl who grew up in a head-on-a-stick² environment.

What would He say?

How was His countenance? His body language?

Two versions played side-by-side in my mind’s eye: the version I usually pictured day-to-day—an exasperated, impatient, grumpy Jesus waiting for me to get my ‘ish’ together—and a version that my soul knew wasn’t too good to be true, but didn’t have much listening to—the gentle, lowly Jesus with not an unkind bone in His body.

It turns out, the jerky “Jesus” of my subconscious wasn’t Jesus at all. It was some version Frankensteined by out of my own perfectionistic tendencies, internalized harshness from fallen, human teachers, and years of reading the Gospels through that angry, ashamed lens. That Jesus was just as fickle as me…as fickle as others around me who ran hot and cold in unpredictable rhythms.

I will say this: Holy Spirit was ready and eager to help me learn to listen to His voice. In fact, I know He painstakingly ordered the last decade+ of my life to help me melt that insidious shame-inducing-idol to the ground and turn up the volume of Jesus, my good (like, actually GOOD) Shepherd.

***

Reading the Gospels is still a bit tricky for me, I won’t lie. Jesus’ words often come in terse questions or statements. It’d be so easy to read Jesus as exasperated with the disciples, even contemptuous³, like a grumpy parent asking a forgetful child, “Where is your brain?”

But I’m pretty sure Jesus doesn’t do contempt. At least not for His image bearers. The incarnation surely rules out contempt for any human person.

As some of my small group people offered thoughts on Jesus’ question, “Where is your faith,” I had to ask Holy Spirit to search my heart…and I’ve honestly still been searching it for the last week and a half. If you’re like me, and you come to a place where Jesus may be correcting or disciplining, you have to take some extra time to remember that Jesus is a gentle disciplinarian.

HERE’s what I keep coming to about Jesus ‘posture’ towards His disciples in this passage.

They are terrified and they had every right to be: the text tells us, “they were in real danger.” That’s the biology God built into us⁴.

If I wake up in the night to my child screaming for me and I find her terrified from a nightmare, I do not shame her into shushing. I hold her, I tell her I am here, I tell her she is safe. As she calms down, I may try to remind her of some truths…the nightmare wasn’t real, she is safe in her bed and home with mom and dad close by, etc.

I think Jesus’ posture is an “I’m here” posture. With a side of, in case you haven’t realized it yet, yes, I created this world and have dominion over everything in it.

Which is sobering. Maybe a bit scary, as the disciples demonstrate⁵.

But while I’m often tempted to read it as a cutting-them-down-to-size scornful question, I feel confident that it’s a build-them-up (build their faith) moment.

Can you hear it? The voice of your friend Jesus who can calm the storm? Who doesn’t mind being woken up (maybe the question was even, “why did you wait so long to ask for help?”), who is ready and willing to give you His attention.

His gentle, powerful attention.

***

Have you ever stopped to notice the voice you assume is Jesus?

I invite you to try it — or do it again if you haven’t in a while.

Maybe you could close your day today with a little check-in with Him.

Tell Him about your day. What emotions you felt that day. How you treated others. How they treated you.

How does He respond? What’s His countenance like?

And IF you notice any hint of contempt in your imagination, I invite you to mark that with a big question mark. Is that really what you believe HE thinks of you? Or are other forces distorting His voice?

I submit that He wants you to not only hear His voice of love, but fully ingest His love. Let it sink deep in your bones. Let the balm smother all your wounds. Let it set you free. Let it transform the way you encounter storms.

Where is your faith? He’s right here.

PS. I haven’t kept my promise to keep cross-posting here as well as I’d hoped! I’m sorry. As a reminder, you can find me over at lauraway.substack.com — there are just a couple of extra posts over there 😉

1. I kinda love when people exhibit huge feelings in the Bible. Some favorites are Jonah, asking God to take his life twice (the first because God didn’t destroy his enemies, the second because he gave him a shady tree and then took it away…as a Floridian this is very relatable), Elijah when he asked God to take his life and God arranged for him to get a nap and a meal, Jesus when he cursed the fig tree after it didn’t have fruit, and even Peter with all his rash pronouncements (and even violence). I’m not saying I love it because it was always ‘right’ (though sometimes they do represent totally appropriate human reactions), but because it shows the reality. And they make me feel less alone. ↩︎
2. Borrowing this phrase from James K.A. Smith’s life-changing book, You Are What You Love ↩︎
3. Oh Jesus, rescue us all from the evil poison of contempt! For ourselves and for others. ↩︎
4. I’m really suspicious of Christians who teach that fear is never appropriate. ↩︎
5. This is a thought to be explored at another time, but I have a feeling all the varying responses to Jesus’ power in chapter 8 are connected to the Parable of the Sower at the beginning of the chapter.
   – The disciples are terrified, but not scared off
   – The man healed of demons begged to leave everything and follow Jesus (but obeyed when Jesus asked him to be a faithful witness at home)
   – The townspeople beg Jesus to go away and leave them alone
   – The bleeding woman thought simply touching Jesus’ clothes would change her life
   – the synagogue leader humbled himself before Jesus and had faith Jesus could resurrect his daughter from the dead
   They all needed Jesus (though some didn’t know it, per se). They all saw Jesus’ power. Some handle it better than others. ↩︎