Will you kindly turn to the Gospel recorded
by Saint Mark in chapter 6, and the
passage that is to occupy us this morning
begins with verse 45 and proceeds to verse
52.
We have entitled our message, How He Watches
or His Own, a phrase that you will
now notice that really finds its origin in
the hymn we have just sung.
Now, I don't think it's necessary for me
to read this passage again.
It describes what is commonly referred to as
the incident in which Jesus walks on the
sea in order to come to the rescue
of his disciples.
But you'll find it useful, I think, to
have the passage open before you.
Now, you will probably remember that this is
the second storm mentioned in the record in
Mark's Gospel in which our Lord's disciples have
been involved.
We have the record of one storm, a
way back in Mark chapter 4.
On that occasion, our Lord Jesus Christ was
with his disciples in the little boat as
it became involved in a very terrifying storm
on the sea of Galilee.
On that occasion, they thought that he didn't
care because he was asleep in the stern.
And they wake him up and they say,
Master, don't you care that we perish?
They were not perishing at all.
They could not perish whilst they were with
him and whilst they were his.
But they thought they were.
And he brought peace to their souls as
well as peace on to the waters of
the lake.
Now, here in Mark 6, we have another
and a distinct episode, quite different from that.
On this occasion, Jesus is not with them
in the boat.
He had dismissed them in the first place
and sent them away, sent them actually to
Bethsaida.
Telling them that he was coming after them
and arranging a rendezvous with them there.
So he sent them across the lake to
Bethsaida whilst he dismissed the large crowd that
had congregated on the occasion when he fed
the multitudes, the 5,000 men beside women
and children.
And then according to what John tells us,
proceeded on the basis of that miracle to
teach extensively.
Jesus then, in due course, finds himself on
a hillside.
He dismissed the crowd eventually.
He got alone.
He got a part and he finds himself
on a hillside overlooking the lake.
And here are the disciples on the lake
in the boat and they're caught in this
rather terrifying storm.
Now, I believe that we have much to
learn from this incident.
First of all, of course, we have something
to learn about Jesus of Nazareth, about his
claims to deity, about the kind of thing
that he did historically.
The kind of thing that ultimately persuaded those
who were with him that he was none
other than Jesus Christ, the Son of the
Living God.
Lord of nature, Lord of destiny, Lord of
all.
They became persuaded of that and among the
many persuasive strands in his life and teaching,
you find an incident such as this.
But I want us to come now and
look at the incident before us and see
perhaps three main webs that we may separate
and examine them in due course.
Examine them, I trust by the help of
the Holy Spirit.
And then we shall see what this has
to say to us.
Now, the first thing I would like you
to notice is in verse 45, Jesus separates
the twelve from the crowd.
Immediately, Jesus made his disciples get into the
boat and go on ahead of him to
Bethsaida while he dismissed the crowd.
Now, we notice here as we go on,
and especially as we read this narrative in
the light of what John says about the
same episode, we notice that there was a
peril which Jesus perceived.
The disciples were oblivious to it, but he
saw a peril of which they were unaware.
It's good for us to see and to
recognize this.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, being the person he
is, can see things that you and I
can't.
He can see dangers where we cannot.
And when he bids us do something, he
may have reasons of which we are totally
unaware, but he has good reasons for what
he demands or requires of us.
Now, there was a peril that he perceived.
What on earth was that?
Well, the peril that he could see is
described by John quite clearly.
In John chapter 6 too, having fed the
multitudes with a few loaves, a few cakes
really, and a couple of little fish, the
crowd became so obsessed with his mighty power
that they concluded that surely, surely this is
the king who was going to come into
the world.
This is the prophet who was going to
come into the world, the prophet like Moses.
Now, they didn't fully understand the meaning of
messiahship, but they concluded that really Jesus is
the prophet that was to come.
It was based on a lot of ignorance
at that stage, but there it is.
And then they came to this further conclusion,
he surely, he surely is unique.
And we can, we can do no other
at this point in our national history than
get people behind us and organize a popular
movement and make him our king.
Now, mark their reasons.
Insofar as they could see and understand he
was the prophet that should come into the
world, two, they realized that he had power
that no one else had.
And if we rightly conclude, then on the
basis of what they knew and what they
believed, they thought that he was the one
who would deliver them from the yoke of
Rome and bondage to Rome as a nation.
Jesus then hurriedly, and there's a sense of
hurry in the passage here, hurriedly, Jesus tells
the disciples, you go before me to Bethsaida,
I'll dismiss the crowd, I'll meet you there.
Now, why?
Well, you see, the point is this.
At this period in his life and in
his ministry, our Lord Jesus Christ was in
process of weaning his followers, his disciples away
from a false view of his messiahship and
from a cross materialistic view of his kingdom.
And here is this very cross materialistic view
involved in the fact that the multitudes now
want to crown him as king and even
take him by force if possible and make
him king.
And what our Lord sees is the danger
of his disciples becoming embroiled in this when
he's trying to wean their minds away from
this false concept.
And so he says, fellows, you go away
quickly across the sea and I'll follow you
in due course.
At other times, Jesus had them to dismiss
the crowd whilst he went ahead first.
You read your Gospels.
Here he does exactly the opposite.
He acts as it were out of the
ordinary way, what was ordinary for him.
He dismisses the crowd and he sends them
away because he doesn't want them to linger
in that atmosphere any longer.
The peril which Jesus perceived and the prayer
which Jesus desired.
After leaving them, he went up into the
hills to pray.
Now what we need to realize is that
this popular movement to make Jesus king was
a real temptation to him.
This was a time of real temptation and
if for no other reason, there were other
reasons of course, but if for no other
reason than that, he wanted to become, he
wanted to be alone with his father in
prayer and in fellowship.
Satan, you see, does not easily give up.
Haven't you found that out, Christian?
I hope you have.
He does not easily give up.
Jesus had met this temptation basically at the
very outset of his ministry.
But Satan doesn't give up and he brings
it up again in a different setting, in
a different atmosphere altogether and you might not
recognize it at first, but it's the same
thing as he's met and conquered a little
earlier on in his ministry.
He overcame what was basically the same temptation.
You read the record of way back there
in Matthew chapter 4 verses 8 and 9
for example.
It's in Luke 2.
Let me just read.
Now let's try and get this.
Let's try and put ourselves back there for
a moment.
Let's try and go back across the centuries
in imagination and see what's going on here.
Jesus has come into this world to make
the kingdoms of this world his own, to
gather men and women out of every kingdom,
every realm, every nation, every tongue, and make
them his own people, that eternally they should
serve him, serve him day and night in
his temple, having first served him day and
night, summer and winter, in season and out
of season, as Paul says, here upon earth.
That's what he's after.
In order to do that, the triune God
determined that it was absolutely necessary for the
Son of God to become incarnate and to
die.
There is no turning of the kingdom of
Satan upside down.
There is no rescuing the dupes of Satan
saved by the death of the cross.
That's the mind of the Godhead.
So that Jesus came forth into this world
to die in order to liberate the slaves
of a bondage far, far greater than ancient
Egyptian bondage.
Now comes Satan along in Matthew chapter 4
and he says, Jesus, he says, look, come
up with me.
Let's have a look at what we can
see from this high mountain.
And he showed him the kingdoms of the
earth.
I don't know whether this was in the
imagination or whether it was real.
I can't tell you.
Whether they climbed a literal mountain, I don't
know from what mountain they could have seen
all the kingdoms of the world.
They may have climbed a hillock.
I just don't know.
But at least he showed Jesus all the
kingdoms of the world in a moment of
time.
And there he saw them.
And he said to Jesus, now look, he
says, you don't need to go to the
cross.
You just bow down and do reverence, do
obeisance to me and I'll give you the
whole thing.
It's as easy as that, he says.
Why make things difficult for yourself?
Why come into this world to die when
if you and I come to terms, then
your cross will be over.
You don't need to die.
I'll give you the kingdoms of this world
all in a moment of time.
We'll strike a bargain.
And you only need to bow down and
acknowledge me.
That's all.
You remember our Lord's words?
Get thee behind me, he had said before.
Now he says, thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
And so the implicit statement to Satan is
this.
Look here, I'll have no truck with you.
You get away from me because I am
determined to worship my Father in heaven and
him only and to serve him.
And I am going forward to the cross
because it is part of the service that
he has given me to do.
My meat is to do the will of
him that sent me and to finish his
work.
Well, you remember what happened.
But he comes back again, you see.
And he comes back at a most strategic
moment.
Here's a popular movement that want to make
Jesus King.
Correspondingly, the cross is that much nearer now,
and it's looming much more in the mind
of the Lord Jesus.
You go back to John 6.
If I did this, then our time would
have gone.
You go back to John 6 at your
leisure, and you will see that Jesus spoke
of himself as the one who was the
bread that came from heaven, who had to
be broken for the life of the world
and had to be given.
In other words, in John 6, after the
feeding of the multitude, Jesus is speaking of
himself as coming to die for the life
of men.
Jesus knows what he's talking, and Satan knows
what he's talking about, even if some of
his disciples didn't.
He's talking about his death.
His death is looming large in his thinking.
Now, says Satan, look, look, here surely is
the moment.
Why, why, why insist on your death?
Why go forward to the cross?
You can be made king.
It was a moment for prayer because it
was a moment of peril.
Why did Jesus refuse?
Well, of course, the reason he refused is
simple when you read the New Testament.
He came to destroy the works of the
devil.
And to destroy the works of the devil,
he has not simply to come into our
human nature and live a human life.
He has to go inside death itself.
And from within inside the castle of death,
he has, like some son of old, to
tear the thing to pieces so that he
is Lord of life and of death.
Jesus knew that even if Satan was a
gentleman, you can't strike terms with a person
like that.
He's a liar from the beginning.
And even if you can strike terms with
a person like that, it wouldn't do what
he'd come into this world to do.
He has to undermine the fabric and the
foundation of the whole kingdom and dominion of
Satan.
And that means he must die.
Oh, that we have the biblical view of
the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is as he goes to the cross,
he says, I see, I see the kingdom
of this world.
The kingdom of darkness being torn to smithereens
and Satan is being cast out.
But that necessitated his dying.
So he refuses the common appeal and he
goes alone to his father to pray, to
talk about the very temptation that has come
again in a different guise.
Jesus separating the twelve from the multitude and
separating himself from them all to be alone
with the father.
That's the first scene.
That's the first strand.
Now come and look at the second.
Jesus watching over his disciples in the storm
that has overtaken them.
Get the picture.
Having sent the twelve ahead of himself, Jesus
then eventually, as we've noted, dismissed the crowd
and made for a hillside scene overlooking the
lake, where he communed with his father.
And from that high vantage point, he also
watched and saw what was going on on
the lake below.
So you see, Jesus is there on the
hillside.
He's above the lake and he can see
what's going on on the lake.
At the same time, he's in touch with
a world above the world of his father.
He's watching over his own and he's interceding
with his father.
Look at verses 47 and 48.
When evening was come, the boat was in
the middle of the lake and he was
alone on land.
And I want you to notice these words
particularly.
He saw the disciples straining at the oars
because the wind was against them.
That's the New International Version.
Now, two things I want us to notice
here.
First of all, the vantage point when Jesus
watched over his own and then the vigil
he kept for them.
One, the vantage point.
Please don't miss this picture.
I think it's the most precious one and
the most suggestive one.
Uh, it's a suggestive one.
Let me bring it in here now.
Let us apply it before we come to
it.
It's a suggestive one in this sense.
It's a kind of picture of precisely what
our Lord Jesus Christ is doing for his
own today.
He has moved away from the immediate scene
of our storms and our trials, but he
sees us and he watches his people.
He watches all his people.
And as he does that, he intercedes.
Now let's get this.
Perched high on the hillside above the lake
with its storm, its winds, and its toiling
crew and their tossing little boat, Jesus there
from the hillside above is keeping watch over
his disciples.
He is supervising.
He is scrutinizing.
He is watching his people in their storms.
It was he who sent them out.
It was he who sent them into that
boat and across that lake.
And now that they're there and enveloped in
the storm, he's not going to turn his
back upon them.
He's watching them.
He's seeing them.
Neither is that the only precious thing to
note.
Don't let us miss the fact that he's
doing two things at one and the same
time.
He's watching over his own from that hillock
yonder or mountainside.
Call it whatever you like.
He's watching his own in the light of
the Paschal moon because this took place toward
the Easter time, towards the...
Sorry, I shouldn't say Easter in this context,
towards the Passover time.
And that was the time of the full
moon so that he could see in the
light of the full moon what was going
on on the lake below.
He did that.
He went aside to watch over them, but
he's doing something else.
He is watching over them.
And at the same time, he is communing
with his father.
He is talking with his father about his
own temptation and about the need of his
disciples and about the whole problems that face
him as the one who has come into
this world to seek and to save that
which was lost.
Now, please notice what's happening.
Apart from being personally involved in the care
of the disciples, as he communes with the
father, he involves the heavenly father also in
the same affairs.
I wonder whether some of us Christians feel
that we are buffeted a lot.
And we're very much alone in our battles,
very much alone in the storm, and our
little bark is getting waterlogged.
And we really don't know what to do.
Listen, my friend, take hold of this, will
you?
Are you a man or a woman of
faith?
Do you believe this morning?
If you do, now come with me.
Bring your faith here.
I want you to see what's happening.
Jesus is looking on and he sees everything.
But not only that, he's talking to the
father and he involves the father in the
same affair.
He cannot commune with the father now without
involving his father in the storm in which
his disciples have been caught up.
Oh, precious, precious thought.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is ascended up upon
high on a hill far higher than that,
than any hill that overlooked the Sea of
Galilee yesterday or today.
He has ascended up on high and he
is in communion with the father.
And this is what the Bible tells us,
that he involves the whole Godhead in the
needs of his people in their storms and
in their trials.
So that you see, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit are involved this morning in looking upon
you and watching you and listening to your
prayers if you're redeemed.
That's why I chose that hymn.
You won't wonder, will you?
I'm almost tempted to ask you to sing
it again.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus.
Spread his praise from shore to shore.
How he'll love this.
Ever loveth, changeth never, never more how he
watches over his loved ones.
You got it?
Have you got the picture?
Died to call them all his own.
How for them he intercedeth, watches all of
them from the throne and at the same
time involves the entire Godhead in the same
business.
Because he is in fellowship with the Father
and with the Spirit.
The vantage point when Jesus watched his own
and then the vigilance with which he did
so.
We read in Mark's gospel that when Jesus
is recorded as having first noticed the disciples
in trouble, it was in the first watch
of the night.
This is how we read, when evening was
come, the boat was in the middle of
the lake.
And he was alone on land.
He saw the disciples straining at the oars
because the wind was against them.
About now, about the fourth watch of the
night, he went out to them walking on
the lake.
He was about to pass them by.
The Jews divided the night into four watches
from 6 p.m. 6 in the evening
to 6 a.m. In the morning, four
watches of three hours.
Jesus' eye was upon them when evening was
come, that is between six and nine o
'clock in the evening.
He was still watching them at the fourth
watch.
And at the fourth watch, he saw that
things were so difficult, he must now go
to them.
They've not asked him, mind you.
Nobody asked him.
There was no flair sent up to say,
SOS, we perished.
No one did that.
They couldn't do that, of course.
There was no way.
There was no way they could come to
him to tell him in the ordinary human
way that they were in need, that they
were in trouble.
But he was watching them when they couldn't
see him.
Hallelujah.
Isn't that precious?
I can't see him this morning.
He watches or his own when we can't
see him.
Some of us need to know that today.
And the fourth watch, Jesus said, it's not
enough to watch them from a distance.
I must, I must, I must break in.
They have not asked me to come, but
the situation is such they are mine.
I sent them.
I'm responsible for them.
And I'm going to them.
And so he does.
Oh, my friends, before we go any further,
there is something here that you and I
need to lay hold of with two arms
of faith.
That is the recognition of the glorious fact
that our Lord Jesus Christ knows the moment
to intervene in our lives.
And he knows it far better than we
know ourselves.
And if he waits until the fourth watch
of the night before he does so, then
be sure of this.
He knows what he's doing.
It is good to know that we have
a savior who, in the words of our
opening praise this morning, neither slumbers nor sleeps.
The great I am the Lord of creation
and of time and of destiny.
And he doesn't sleep.
And he's always on vigil.
He's always awake.
He's always alert.
There's nothing he doesn't see.
He counts the hairs of your head.
Some of our troubles become exceedingly acute in
the dark hours of the night.
Don't we know that?
Even if it's only a little bit of
a toothache, it's far worse in the middle
of the night than it is in the
daytime.
My friend, I want you to know that
at the fourth hour, the fourth vigil, the
fourth fourth watch of the night, he's still
awake and he watches all his own.
Now, come with me to the last main
thought here, which brings it all to a
climax.
In the first place, Jesus dismisses.
Jesus separates the twelve from the crowd and
separates himself from them all.
In the second, Jesus watches all his disciples
in the storm.
Now the third, Jesus comes to his own.
He does not simply watch over his followers
from a distant heaven, but there are times
when he comes up right alongside of them.
And he comes to intervene on our behalf.
I want to say a word, first of
all, about the compassion that brought Jesus alongside
these storm-tossed disciples.
This passage in Mark leaves us with a
distinctive impression that the disciples were too occupied
with saving themselves even to think of Jesus.
And don't criticize them because we all do
the same thing.
The first thing we think about is not,
well, problems are becoming so acute, let's have
a word with our Lord, let's talk to
him about it.
The first thing we invariably think about is
to try and fight it through ourselves.
And oftentimes it's just because we are proud
and we are arrogant and we think we
can do things ourselves without involving him at
all.
And so here, you see, they had made
no appeal to him.
But nevertheless, he came to them.
Now, at the same time, I want you
to notice there's a measure, there's a paradox
here.
He came to them and yet he didn't
come to them.
He was walking on the water to come
to them, but did you notice what Mark
says?
He made as though he was going beyond
them, as if he were going to pass
them by.
You have exactly the same kind of thing
in Luke 24.
You remember those two people on the road
to Emmaus?
I don't know why it is.
We've been referring a lot to them recently.
But the same kind of thing happens there.
You remember they were going to Emmaus and
they were so terrified by what had happened
in Jerusalem and Jesus is with them.
And then when they came to the point
where they would turn off for their little
cottage or whatever it was, he made as
though he would go further.
He does exactly the same thing on the
lake.
There they are in the boat, they're really
like a cork on the ocean and they're
being knocked about and buffeted and they're fearful,
they're timid, they don't know what to do.
And he makes as if he's going to
pass them.
You see, he's come to them and yet
they must qualify it.
Dare I put it like this, Jesus makes
himself near enough to be recognized by his
own and and to be summoned to their
aid.
He doesn't actually inflict himself upon them, though
he's there to be invited.
And he wants to be invited.
He says, I've come all this way, no
one else could have come, but I've come
and I'm here and the storm is too
much for you.
Well, here I am, your Lord.
Now, surely you've got enough sense to call
me in.
You see me, I'm walking on the waves
that are causing you all the trouble and
all the turmoil and all the fears and
the heartaches.
Won't you invite me in?
Won't you let me take over?
Won't you ask me?
You see, and our Lord may be doing
exactly the same in our pews here in
Knox this morning.
You know he's near, but he's not going
to just burst into your life.
He's going to knock at the door.
You know, this is tremendous.
The Lord of glory knocks at the door
of the heart of his creature and says,
please may I come in?
I don't understand that.
He's the Lord.
He doesn't need to do it.
He's got every right to come in and
break in and break everything down in order
to come in.
But he does it.
Oh, the marvels of divine grace.
He says, I'm knocking at the door.
That's the principle here.
But now I've got to go further.
I want you to notice the cry that
eventually brought Jesus into the boat.
Well, you say, nothing to notice there.
I don't suppose just that they saw their
need of him, and they saw that he
was there, and they recognized him, and then
they asked him in.
No, they didn't.
You know, they didn't ask him in as
far as the record goes.
Well, what then brought him into the boat?
Oh, I'll tell you.
And if you don't want to dance, I
do.
You know what brought him into the boat?
Not the cry of faith, but the cry
of fear.
They had no faith.
They didn't recognize him.
They thought it was a ghost.
Now, I don't blame them for that.
But they didn't invite him in.
They didn't say, Lord, come and take charge.
We can't take charge of ourselves.
But he heard their cry of fear.
And he went into the boat because he
was responsible for them.
He had sent them on their journey.
And he was Lord of the sea through
which they were passing and Lord of the
waves.
So, he goes into their boat because he
heard them crying from fear when they would
not cry from faith.
Hallelujah.
Oh, my good people, is there music in
your soul this morning, you believers?
You see, this is part of the glory
of our Savior.
Now, he doesn't excuse us from inviting him
in.
This is the normal way.
And the New Testament tells us there are
many things we don't have because we do
not ask.
James tells us that.
Or we ask the wrong and we consume
what we get from God upon our own
lusts.
All right.
But you know, my friends, there are times
when our blessed Lord Jesus Christ doesn't wait
for us to cry out of faith.
But he listens to the cry of fear.
And he steps into the boat.
And he calms the tossing billows.
That's our Lord.
What a wonderful Savior we have.
Immediately, he spoke to them.
And he said, take courage in his eye.
Don't be afraid.
And he climbed into the boat.
The troubles are all over.
Now, I'm going to close.
There are many kinds of storms in the
New Testament and in the Bible.
There are some storms that we enter into
because of our disobedience.
Jonah got into a terrible storm because he
disobeyed.
And you and I may be in a
storm this morning just because we've disobeyed.
And the thing to do in those storms
is this, is to turn right around, right
about like Jonah did.
Now, I don't know what whale God is
going to send after us to swallow us.
His lordship over circumstances remains unabated.
And he can do that, too.
But the thing for us to do is
to turn right around and have a change
of mind and go his way.
But you know, there are storms on the
way of obedience to his known and his
clear, unequivocal commands.
I'm concerned for those this morning.
He sent you out.
He told you where to go.
He named Bethsaida.
It wasn't Bethsaida for you.
It was some other place.
And he said, I'll meet you there.
And when you went into your little boat
and you crossed the sea, you made for
the place where Jesus said, I'm going to
meet you.
But boy, on the way there, things were
topsy-turvy.
And you thought the end had come.
And you may be there this morning, right
in the middle of a little sea that's
really gone to smithereens under you.
Pardon the metaphors.
They're all topsy-turvy, too.
So the fact that you're in a storm
does not necessarily say that you're a saint
or a sinner.
You may be a rebel caught in the
storm, but you may be a saint.
And the reason for the storm is you're
obeying your Lord.
And the whole little sea in which you
are found is seething and is bitter against
you because you're doing the will of your
Lord.
And He's permitting it for some strange reason.
Now I want you to see that even
though He permits the storm, He's Lord over
it.
And He sees you in it.
And He's prepared.
No, He's determined, if you're obeying Him, to
come near enough for faith to call Him
into the boat.
No, more than that.
If faith does not call Him in, then
a cry of fear may yet bring Him
right by your side.
My good friends, if ever there was a
time in world history when you and I
needed to know this lesson, I'm sure it
is today.
We are moving into a period in world
history when we shall have to suffer much
more for our faith than we have ever
known.
All the prophets tell us that, not just
the morose prophets, not just those who are
always prophets of doom, who've never seen anything
but thunder clouds.
Time is coming when opulent North America will
have to be without less than suffer.
And if we don't do it of our
own volition in order to share what we've
got, the hordes of Russia or China or
somewhere else will be among us and they'll
help us to do it.
But in one way or another, we are
going to be humbled.
The Assyrian is still the rod of his
right hand in the humbling of a people
who know not how to share what they
have with the needy creatures that God has
made.
You and I need to know where we're
going, who sent us, and if in the
pathway of obedience we are found floundering, facing
a storm that's too much for us, we
need to know that He sees and He
can come to us and He can join
us.
He can change the whole situation.
I ask you to take this word this
morning.
If perchance as you worship here beneath this
roof today, you say, I'm in no storm
at all.
All is well with me.
The sky is rosy.
The sky is lovely.
Let me remind you, my friend, that it
can change just like that.
Jack Wemhoyer was playing his harmonica here three
weeks ago.
Another of our members was struck down without
that much warning in recent times.
Don't take life for granted.
The storm is brewing all the time.
But here is a Savior who is able
to save His people in the storm and,
if it please Him, from the storm and
certainly through the storm.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, we acknowledge Your bountiful, Your lavish
love and grace.
We thank You for all the mercies of
this day and all the privileges to which
we are heir.
We ask You to forgive us that we
sometimes talk about the most trivial things as
if they were storms, a petty fall in
our mode of living, and it's a disaster
for us because we do not see things
in the light of eternity and of Your
eternal will and purpose.
Forgive us for that.
Give us this morning, we pray, an understanding
of the fact that whatever storm comes to
us in the way of obedience, You are
pledged to keep Your own and we may
trust You.
And to any of us that may be
walking near the edge of a volcano and
who will soon be in greater need than
we recognize this morning, in the meantime, may
we learn to know You and love You
and trust You and serve You that in
the moment of desperation we shall not be
found wanting.
And these things we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.