Changing Your World through Faith
Mark 4:35-41
[Shared with the people of Friendship Church, June 22, 2003]
[The themes for the messages I’m sharing with the congregation I serve as pastor these days are suggested by materials provided by the staff of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Burnsville, Minnesota]

I know a man whose mother was a professional worrier. One day when this man was a little boy, he was tired and decided to take a nap. (This is an absolutely true story.) While he was sleeping, a storm began. It was a loud one: thunder, lightning, torrents of water pouring from the sky. Mom was in a panic and had the little boy’s siblings in a panic too. “Where’s Todd?” one of the kids asked. “Todd is taking a nap,” another voice answered. Todd’s mom was appalled! So, she went and woke the sleeping boy up. “Todd,” she said in a reproachful tone, “how could you sleep through something so terrible?” “I was tired,” the yawning boy explained. To this day, Todd wonders what good it did for his mom to wake him up and invite him to panic along with the rest of the family.

Panic is a pointless way to react to life. Panic accomplishes nothing. If we want to change our worlds for the better—our own personal worlds and the world in which we live, panic won’t get us there. Nor will fear. But another force, a positive force incited by God within us, can help us change our worlds!

In our Bible lesson for this morning, we have a famous incident involving Jesus and His first disciples. To a point, it’s very much like what happened to Todd as a boy. Jesus has spent a long day teaching and knows that on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, a lot of work awaits Him. Exhausted, He tells the disciples to set sail. Even today, the Sea of Galilee is subject to sudden, fierce storms. And that’s what happened during this trip. Our Bible lesson says that the storm was so ferocious that the boat in which Jesus and the disciples rode was being swamped. Most of Jesus’ first followers were familiar with these waters; they were fishermen who knew how awful a Galilean storm could be and presumably, should have been seasoned in handling what happened. The old pros were overwhelmed by this storm, though. They thought for sure they were going to die.

But Jesus was asleep. The disciples were as appalled as Todd’s mother had been. So, they did the same thing that worrying mom did: they woke Jesus up. I think they did that without any expectation that Jesus could do anything about the storm at all. Their low expectations show in their question of Jesus, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” “Jesus,” they’re saying, “how can you sleep at a time like this? Don’t you care that we—you included—may be drowned by this storm? Wake up and panic with us!”

Here’s where this true incident gets really interesting. Jesus yells at the wind and sea and says, “Peace! Be still!” The wind stops and the sea calms. Filled with awe, the disciples consider what they have just seen and wonder whether this teacher they’ve been following isn’t just a man, but also God. (That’s why they ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and sea obey Him?”) But after calming the storm, Jesus turns to them and asks His own questions: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

What was Jesus saying in asking those questions? Was He saying that if you have faith in Him, you’ll have no storms in your life? Hardly! After all, Jesus was riding in the very boat being swamped by a storm. But maybe that’s the point: If you’re going to have storms in your life—whether they’re emotional, psychological, spiritual, relational, physical, whatever, it’s good to have Jesus along for the ride. He promises to do no less for those who believe in Him and follow Him. “I am with you always,” He tells us.

Nor does Jesus mean that He will make the storm go away always. He did at this particular time. But each and every one of us can name people—people who trusted Jesus with their whole heart, mind, soul, and strength—who nonetheless found their lives swamped by the storms that can ravage any member of the human race. Yet, they pressed on and kept trusting Christ. A man I once knew had so many adversities and illnesses before he finally died that he might have been aptly called Job Junior after the Old Testament man who endured so much suffering. But he kept trusting in Christ. He faced everything with a calm I could hardly imagine. From him I learned the truth of that old saying that says, “Sometimes, Jesus calms the storms and sometimes, He just calms us.”

I think Jesus was saying this to His panic-stricken disciples: When we follow Christ, no matter how overwhelming our circumstances, we have all we need to face anything in life. We can even confront death and know that for always and ever, we belong to a God Who gives forgiveness of sin and everlasting life to all who trust in Jesus Christ above all things. Panic and fear in the face of life’s storms won’t help us change our worlds or to change the world around us. But faith in Jesus Christ can do just that!

But it’s fair for us to wonder, can faith really change the world? I believe that it can!

During World War Two, a young couple living in Poland found their world and all their dreams collapsing around them. The husband was sent to fight in the war and didn't return. As years passed, friends of the wife told her that she should proceed with her life because her husband had obviously been killed in battle.

But this young woman’s faith was so strong. God had convinced her that her husband would be returning. And God did bring her husband back. He had been a prisoner of war, but now he was home.

That wasn’t the end of that couple’s storms, though. They wanted to have children, but learned that they couldn’t do so biologically. So, the wife prayed that God would send them a child they could adopt. She promised God that if God would give them a child, they would raise the child to be God's servant.

One night the wife felt as though God were calling her to go outside. It was a cold night. When she looked down the street, she caught sight of a woman pushing a baby carriage. In it was a newborn baby. It turned out that this woman had many children at home and couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. She was on her way to an orphanage.

The wife was convinced that God had brought this little newborn to she and her husband! They adopted her and named her Jasia.

Jasia turned out to be a very intelligent little girl. Her parents raised her to know and follow Christ, but Poland was a Communist country. Atheism was official government policy. The Communist regime though, sought out bright young people like Jasia. The best opportunities came to young people involved with the Communist youth leagues. Jasia became a leader in these groups.

But her parents didn’t give up on their promise to God, though. They basically tricked Jasia into going to a Bible camp. In the midst of a Bible study, Jasia bolted from the camp and ran into the forest. What she heard overwhelmed her in a way reminiscent of the disciples’ reaction that day on the Sea of Galilee. Jasia came to see that she couldn't run from God anymore and offered her life to Godto be God's servant.

Eventually, Jasia became a leader in the underground Christian church in Poland. Today she is the Director for Children's Ministry for the Lutheran Church in Poland.

Faith can change the world! Jasia’s parents’ faith changed her world. And through her faith in Christ, God continues to use Jasia change the world around her. She touches the lives of hundreds and thousands of children each year in the churches and camps of Poland.

I want to say a word to you parents today. For many of you, I know, helping your kids have a personal relationship of trust with Jesus Christ is the highest priority of your parenting. And it should be! But sometimes, our children reject faith in Christ. I want to offer you a word of encouragement. It may take years and years for your kids to embrace Jesus Christ. But if they’ve observed you closely and seen you following Christ, no matter how imperfectly you may feel that you have done so, you can be sure that the Good News—message of the great God of all loving us so much that He became one of us and died for us and rose for us to give us new lives—has gotten through in some way. Of course, all of us must decide for ourselves whether we will follow Jesus. But if you’ve shown your kids that Christ is real for you and if you have prayed for them and done your best, you can be at peace. It just may be that when a storm hits in the life of your rebellious child, they’ll remember your faithfulness and decide that they too, want to surrender to the love and grace of the God we know through Jesus Christ.

Faith can change our worlds. That starts to happen when we realize and live with a simple but powerful reality: Jesus Christ is bigger than all our storms!

[The true story of Jasia was told by one of the pastors at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Burnsville, Minnesota, and was shared in that congregation's Thematic Worship toolkit.]