He got up, rebuked the windand said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. Mark 4:39
We’ve been on a series in this devotional about how Jesus dealt with the storms of life, based on Mark 4. In today’s verse, Jesus spoke to the wind and waves that blew against him, and there’s a very valuable lesson contained in this verse. You see, Jesus didn’t speak about the wind and waves, he spoke to them.
When we’re going through something, we tend to want to talk about it. Now, I’m not saying that we can’t talk out our struggles with others, but we have to be careful. Sometimes we talk about our problems not because we’re searching for solutions or are trying to work through them. Sometimes when we talk about our problems, we’re just fixating on the negative.
We all have to push back the desire to have others feel sorry for us.
When we talk about the storms we face, we get sympathy, and that’s fine for a season. But the more we keep talking about the problem, the less we tend to deal with it.
When the storm was threatening to sink the boat, Jesus didn’t talk to people about the storm. He didn’t try to rate the severity or engage in “woe is me” talk. Jesus didn’t talk about the storm; he spoke to the storm.
In Mark 11:22–24, Jesus teaches us to speak to the mountainous problems we face, telling them to move. The less we fixate on the negative and the more we exercise our authority over the storms we face, the quicker we will overcome!