The Roof: Beneath God's Grace

by Max Lucado
The roof of a house is seldom noticed. How often do your guests enter your doorway saying, "You have one of the finest roofs I've ever seen!"
Such disregard is no fault of the builder. He and his crew labored hours, balancing beams and nailing shingles. Yet, in spite of their effort, most people would notice a two-dollar lamp before they would notice the roof.
Let's not make the same mistake. As God covered his Great House, he spared no expense. In fact, his roof was the most costly section of the structure. It cost him the life of his Son. He invites us to study his work by virtue of three words in the center of the prayer. "Forgive our debts."
Debt. The Greek word for debt has no mystery. It simply means "to owe someone something." If to be in debt is to owe someone something, isn't it appropriate for us speak of debt in our prayer, for aren't we all in debt to God?Aren't we in God's debt when we disobey his commands? He tells us to go south and we go north. He tells us to turn right and we turn left. Rather than love our neighbor, we hurt our neighbor. Instead of seeking his will, we seek our will. We're told to forgive our enemies, but we attack our enemies. We disobey God.
Aren't we in God's debt when we disregard him? He makes the universe and we applaud science. He heals the sick and we applaud medicine. He grants beauty and we credit Mother Nature. He gives us possessions and we salute human ingenuity.
Don't we go into debt when we disrespect God's children? What if I did to you what we do to God? What if I shouted at your child in your presence? What if I called him names or struck him? You wouldn't tolerate it. But don't we do the same? How does God feel when we mistreat one of his children? When we curse at his offspring? When we criticize a co-worker, or gossip about a relative, or speak about someone before we speak to them? Aren't we in God's debt when we mistreat a neighbor?
"Wait a second, Max. You mean every time I do one of these things, I'm writing a check on my heavenly bank account?"
That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm also saying that if Christ had not covered us with his grace, each of us would be overdrawn on that account. When it comes to goodness we would have insufficient funds. Inadequate holiness. God requires a certain balance of virtue in our account, and it's more than any of us has alone. Our holiness account shows insufficient funds, and only the holy will see the Lord; what can we do?
We could try making a few deposits. Maybe if I wave at my neighbor or compliment my husband or go to church next Sunday, I'll get caught up. But how do you know when you've made enough? How many trips do I need to make to the bank? How much credit do I need? When can I relax?
That's the problem. You never can. "People cannot do any work that will make them right with God" (Rom. 4:5). If you are trying to justify your own statement, forget ever having peace. You're going to spend the rest of your days huffing and puffing to get to the drive-through window before the bank closes. You are trying to justify an account you can't justify. May I remind you of the roof of grace which covers you?
"It is God who justifies" (8:33).

The Miracle of the Carpenter

by Max Lucado
Loretto Chapel took five years to complete. Modeled after the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, its delicate sanctuary contains an altar, a rose window, and a choir loft.
The choir loft is the reason for wonder.
Were you to stand in the newly built chapel in 1878, you might see the Sisters of Loretto looking forlornly at the balcony. Everything else was complete: the doors had been hung, the pews had been placed, the floor had been laid. Everything was finished. Even the choir loft. Except for one thing. No stairs.
The chapel was too small to accommodate a conventional stairway. The best builders and designers in the region shook their heads when consulted. “Impossible,” they murmured. There simply wasn’t enough room. A ladder would serve the purpose, but mar the ambiance.
The Sisters of Loretto, whose determination had led them from Kentucky to Santa Fe, now faced a challenge greater than their journey: a stairway that couldn’t be built.
What they had dreamed of and what they could do were separated by fifteen impossible feet.
So what did they do? The only thing they could do. They ascended the mountain. Not the high mountains near Santa Fe. No, they climbed even higher. They climbed the same mountain that Jesus climbed 1,800 years earlier in Bethsaida. They climbed the mountain of prayer.
As the story goes, the nuns prayed for nine days. On the last day of the novena, a Mexican carpenter with a beard and a wind-burned face appeared at the convent. He explained that he had heard they needed a stairway to a chapel loft. He thought he could help.
The mother superior had nothing to lose, so she gave him permission.
He went to work with crude tools, painstaking patience, and uncanny skill. For eight months he worked.
One morning the Sisters of Loretto entered the chapel to find their prayers had been answered. A masterpiece of carpentry spiraled from the floor to the loft. Two complete three-hundred-sixty-degree turns. Thirty-three steps held together with wooden pegs and no central support. The wood is said to be a variety of hard fir, one nonexistent in New Mexico!
When the sisters turned to thank the craftsman, he was gone. He was never seen again. He never asked for money. He never asked for praise. He was a simple carpenter who did what no one else could do so singers could enter a choir loft and sing.
See the stairway for yourself, if you like. Journey into the land of Enchantment. Step into this chapel of amazement and witness the fruit of prayer.
Or, if you prefer, talk to the Master Carpenter yourself. He has already performed one impossible feat in your world. He, like the Santa Fe carpenter, built a stairway no one else could build. He, like the nameless craftsman, used material from another place. He, like the visitor to Loretto, came to span the gap between where you are and where you long to be.
Each year of his life is a step. Thirty-three paces. Each step of the stair is an answered prayer. He built it so you can climb it.
And sing.

The Kitchen: God's Abundant Table

by Max Lucado
"Give us this day our daily bread..."
Your first step into the house of God was not to the kitchen but to the living room, where you were reminded of your adoption. "Our Father who is in heaven." You then studied the foundation of the house, where you pondered his permanence. "Our Father who is in heaven." Next you entered the observatory and marveled at his handiwork: "Our Father who is in heaven." In the chapel, you worshiped his holiness: "Hallowed be thy name." In the throne room, you touched the lowered scepter and prayed the greatest prayer, "Thy kingdom come." In the study, you submitted your desires to his and prayed, "Thy will be done." And all of heaven was silent as you placed your prayer in the furnace, saying, "on earth as it is in heaven."
Proper prayer follows such a path, revealing God to us before revealing our needs to God. (You might reread that one.) The purpose of prayer is not to change God, but to change us, and by the time we reach God's kitchen, we are changed people. Wasn't our heart warmed when we called him Father? Weren't our fears stilled when we contemplated his constancy? Weren't we amazed as we stared at the heavens?
Seeing his holiness caused us to confess our sin. Inviting his kingdom to come reminded us to stop building our own. Asking God for his will to be done placed our will in second place to his. And realizing that heaven pauses when we pray left us breathless in his presence.
By the time we step into the kitchen, we're renewed people! We've been comforted by our father, conformed by his nature, consumed by our creator, convicted by his character, constrained by his power, commissioned by our teacher, and compelled by his attention to our prayers.
The prayer's next three petitions encompass all of the concerns of our life. "This daily bread" addresses the present. "Forgive our sins" addresses the past. "Lead us not into temptation" speaks to the future. (The wonder of God's wisdom: how he can reduce all our needs to three simple statements.)
First he addresses our need for bread. The term means all of a person's physical needs. Martin Luther defined bread as "Everything necessary for the preservation of this life, including food, a healthy body, house, home, wife and children." This verse urges us to talk to God about the necessities of life. He may also give us the luxuries of life, but he certainly will grant the necessities.
Any fear that God wouldn't meet our needs was left in the observatory. Would he give the stars their glitter and not give us our food? Of course not. He has committed to care for us. We aren't wrestling crumbs out of a reluctant hand, but rather confessing the bounty of a generous hand. The essence of the prayer is really an affirmation of the Father's care. Our provision is his priority.

The Chapel: Where Man Covers His Mouth

"I am not worthy; I cannot answer you anything, so I will put my hand over my mouth." (Job 40:4)
The phrase for the chapel is "Hallowed be thy name."
This phrase is a petition, not a proclamation. A request, not an announcement. Hallowed be your name. We enter the chapel and beseech, "Be hallowed, Lord." Do whatever it takes to be holy in my life. Take your rightful place on the throne. Exalt yourself. Magnify yourself. Glorify yourself. You be Lord, and I'll be quiet.
The word hallowed comes from the word holy, and the word holymeans "to separate." The ancestry of the term can be traced back to an ancient word which means "to cut." To be holy, then, is to be a cut above the norm, superior, extraordinary. Remember what we learned in the observatory? The Holy One dwells on a different level from the rest of us. What frightens us does not frighten him. What troubles us does not trouble him.
I'm more a landlubber than a sailor, but I've puttered around in a bass boat enough to know the secret for finding land in a storm ... You don't aim at another boat. You certainly don't stare at the waves. You set your sights on an object unaffected by the wind—a light on the shore—and go straight toward it. The light is unaffected by the storm.
By seeking God in the chapel, you do the same. When you set your sights on our God, you focus on one "a cut above" any storm life may bring.
Like Job, you find peace in the pain.
Like Job, you cover your mouth and sit still.
"Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10). This verse contains a command with a promise.
The command?
Be still.
Cover your mouth.
Bend your knees.
The promise? You will know that I am God.
The vessel of faith journeys on soft waters. Belief rides on the wings of waiting.
Linger in the chapel. Linger often in the chapel. In the midst of your daily storms, make it a point to be still and set your sights on him. Let God be God. Let him bathe you in his glory so that both your breath and your troubles are sucked from your soul. Be still. Be quiet. Be open and willing. Then you will know that God is God, and you can't help but confess, "Hallowed be thy name."

by Max Lucado

When Your Heart Needs a Father

by Max Lucado
"Our Father who is in heaven ..." With these words Jesus escorts us into the Great House of God. Shall we follow him? There is so much to see. Every room reveals his heart, every stop will soothe your soul. And no room is as essential as this one we enter first. Walk behind him as he leads us into God's living room.
Sit in the chair that was made for you and warm your hands by the fire which never fades. Take time to look at the framed photos and find yours. Be sure to pick up the scrapbook and find the story of your life. But please, before any of that, stand at the mantle and study the painting which hangs above it.
Your Father treasures the portrait. He has hung it where all can see.
Stand before it a thousand times and each gaze is as fresh as the first. Let a million look at the canvas and each one will see himself. And each will be right.
Captured in the portrait is a tender scene of a father and a son. Behind them is a great house on a hill. Beneath their feet is a narrow path. Down from the house the father has run. Up the trail the son has trudged. The two have met, here, at the gate.
We can't see the face of the son; it's buried in the chest of his father. No, we can't see his face, but we can see his tattered robe and stringy hair. We can see the mud on the back of his legs, the filth on his shoulders and the empty purse on the ground. At one time the purse was full of money. At one time the boy was full of pride. But that was a dozen taverns ago. Now both the purse and the pride are depleted. The prodigal offers no gift or explanation. All he offers is the smell of pigs and a rehearsed apology: "Father, I have sinned against God and done wrong to you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son" (Luke 15:21).
He feels unworthy of his birthright. "Demote me. Punish me. Take my name off the mailbox and my initials off the family tree. I am willing to give up my place at your table." The boy is content to be a hired hand. There is only one problem. Though the boy is willing to stop being a son, the father is not willing to stop being a father.
Though we can't see the boy's face in the painting, we can't miss the father's. Look at the tears glistening on the leathered cheeks, the smile shining through the silver beard. One arm holds the boy up so he won't fall, the other holds the boy close so he won't doubt.
"Hurry!" he shouts. "Bring the best clothes and put them on him. Also, put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get our fat calf and kill it so we can have a feast and celebrate. My son was dead, but now he is alive again! He was lost but now he is found!" (Luke 15:22-24).
How these words must have stunned the young man, "My son was dead ..." He thought he'd lost his place in the home. After all, didn't he abandon his father? Didn't he waste his inheritance? The boy assumed he had forfeited his privilege to sonship. The father, however, doesn't give up that easily. In his mind, his son is still a son. The child may have been out of the house, but he was never out of his father's heart. He may have left the table, but he never left the family. Don't miss the message here. You may be willing to stop being God's child. But God is not willing to stop being your Father.

The Kitchen: God's Abundant Table

“Give us this day our daily bread…”
Your first step into the house of God was not to the kitchen but to the living room, where you were reminded of your adoption. “Our Father who is in heaven.” You then studied the foundation of the house, where you pondered his permanence. “Our Father who is in heaven.” Next you entered the observatory and marveled at his handiwork: “Our Father who is in heaven.” In the chapel, you worshiped his holiness: “Hallowed be thy name.” In the throne room, you touched the lowered scepter and prayed the greatest prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” In the study, you submitted your desires to his and prayed, “Thy will be done.” And all of heaven was silent as you placed your prayer in the furnace, saying, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Proper prayer follows such a path, revealing God to us before revealing our needs to God. (You might reread that one.) The purpose of prayer is not to change God, but to change us, and by the time we reach God’s kitchen, we are changed people. Wasn’t our heart warmed when we called him Father? Weren’t our fears stilled when we contemplated his constancy? Weren’t we amazed as we stared at the heavens?
Seeing his holiness caused us to confess our sin. Inviting his kingdom to come reminded us to stop building our own. Asking God for his will to be done placed our will in second place to his. And realizing that heaven pauses when we pray left us breathless in his presence.
By the time we step into the kitchen, we’re renewed people! We’ve been comforted by our father, conformed by his nature, consumed by our creator, convicted by his character, constrained by his power, commissioned by our teacher, and compelled by his attention to our prayers.
The prayer’s next three petitions encompass all of the concerns of our life. “This daily bread” addresses the present. “Forgive our sins” addresses the past. “Lead us not into temptation” speaks to the future. (The wonder of God’s wisdom: how he can reduce all our needs to three simple statements.)
First he addresses our need for bread. The term means all of a person’s physical needs. Martin Luther defined bread as “Everything necessary for the preservation of this life, including food, a healthy body, house, home, wife and children.” This verse urges us to talk to God about the necessities of life. He may also give us the luxuries of life, but he certainly will grant the necessities.
Any fear that God wouldn’t meet our needs was left in the observatory. Would he give the stars their glitter and not give us our food? Of course not. He has committed to care for us. We aren’t wrestling crumbs out of a reluctant hand, but rather confessing the bounty of a generous hand. The essence of the prayer is really an affirmation of the Father’s care. Our provision is his priority.

A Home for Your Heart

I only ask one thing from the LORD. This is what I want: let me live in the LORD's house all my life. — Psalm 27:4

I'd like to talk with you about your house. Let's step through the front door and walk around a bit. Every so often it's wise to do a home inspection, you know—check the roof for leaks and examine the walls for bows and the foundation for cracks. We'll see if your kitchen cupboards are full and glance at the books on the shelves in your study.

What's that? You think it odd that I want to look at your house? You thought this was a book on spiritual matters? It is. Forgive me, I should have been clearer. I'm not talking about your visible house of stone or sticks, wood or straw, but your invisible one of thoughts and truths and convictions and hopes. I'm talking about your spiritual house.

You have one, you know. And it's no typical house. Conjure up your fondest notions and this house exceeds them all. A grand castle has been built for your heart. Just as a physical house exists to care for the body, so the spiritual house exists to care for your soul.

You've never seen a house more solid: the roof never leaks, the walls never crack, and the foundation never trembles. You've never seen a castle more splendid: the observatory will stretch you, the chapel will humble you, the study will direct you, and the kitchen will nourish you.

Ever lived in a house like this? Chances are you haven't. Chances are you've given little thought to housing your soul. We create elaborate houses for our bodies, but our souls are relegated to a hillside shanty where the night winds chill us and the rain soaks us. Is it any wonder the world is so full of cold hearts?

Doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to live outside. It's not God's plan for your heart to roam as a Bedouin. God wants you to move in out of the cold and live ... with him. Under his roof there is space available. At his table a plate is set. In his living room a wingback chair is reserved just for you. And he'd like you to take up residence in his house. Why would he want you to share his home?

Simple, he's your Father.

You were intended to live in your Father's house. Any place less than his is insufficient. Any place far from his is dangerous. Only the home built for your heart can protect your heart. And your Father wants you to dwell in him.

No, you didn't misread the sentence and I didn't miswrite it. Your Father doesn't just ask you to live with him, he asks you to live inhim. As Paul wrote, "For in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28 NIV).

Don't think you are separated from God, he at the top end of a great ladder, you at the other. Dismiss any thought that God is on Venus while you are on earth. Since God is Spirit (John 4:23), he is next to you: God himself is our roof. God himself is our wall. And God himself is our foundation.

Moses knew this. "LORD," he prayed, "you have been our home since the beginning" (Ps. 90:1). What a powerful thought: God as your home.

by Max Lucado

A New Name

“I will also give to each one who wins the victory a white stone with a new name written on it.” Revelation 2:17

You may not have known it, but God has a new name for you. When you get home, he won’t call you Alice or Bob or Juan or Geraldo. The name you’ve always heard won’t be the one he uses. When God says he will make all things new, he means it. You will have a new home, a new body, a new life, and you guessed it, a new name.

by Max Lucado

Looking for the Messiah, Part 2 by Max Lucado

Some missed him.
Some miss him still.
We expect God to speak through peace, but sometimes he speaks through pain.We think God talks through the church, but he also talks through the lost.We look for the answer among the Protestants, but he's been known to speak through the Catholics.
We listen for him among the Catholics but find him among the Quakers.We think we hear him in the sunrise, but he is also heard in the darkness.We listen for him in triumph, but he speaks even more distinctly through tragedy.
We must let God define himself.
When we do, when we let God define himself, a whole new world opens before us. How, you ask? Let me explain with a story.
Once there was a man whose life was one of misery. The days were cloudy, and the nights were long. Henry didn't want to be unhappy, but he was. With the passing of the years, his life had changed. His children were grown. The neighborhood was different. The city seemed harsher.
He was unhappy. He decided to ask his minister what was wrong.
"Am I unhappy for some sin I have committed?"
"Yes," the wise pastor replied. "You have sinned."
"And what might that sin be?"
"Ignorance," came the reply. "The sin of ignorance. One of your neighbors is the Messiah in disguise, and you have not seen him."
The old man left the office stunned. "The Messiah is one of my neighbors?" He began to think who it might be.
Tom the butcher? No, he's too lazy. Mary, my cousin down the street? No, too much pride. Aaron the paperboy? No, too indulgent. The man was confounded. Every person he knew had defects. But one was the Messiah. He began to look for Him.
He began to notice things he hadn't seen. The grocer often carried sacks to the cars of older ladies. Maybe he is the Messiah. The officer at the corner always had a smile for the kids. Could it be? And the young couple who'd moved next door. How kind they are to their cat. Maybe one of them ...
With time he saw things in people he'd never seen. And with time his outlook began to change. The bounce returned to his step. His eyes took on a friendly sparkle. When others spoke he listened. After all, he might be listening to the Messiah. When anyone asked for help, he responded; after all this might be the Messiah needing assistance.
The change of attitude was so significant that someone asked him why he was so happy. "I don't know," he answered. "All I know is that things changed when I started looking for God."
Now, that's curious. The old man saw Jesus because he didn't know what he looked like. The people in Jesus' day missed him because they thought they did.
How are things looking in your neighborhood?

Looking for the Messiah, Part 1 by Max Lucado

SUPPOSE JESUS CAME to your church. I don't mean symbolically. I mean visibly. Physically. Actually. Suppose he came to your church.
Would you recognize him? It might be difficult. Jesus didn't wear religious clothes in his day. Doubtful that he would wear them in ours. If he came today to your church, he'd wear regular clothes. Nothing fancy, just a jacket and shoes and a tie. Maybe a tie ... maybe not.
He would have a common name. "Jesus" was common. I suppose he might go by Joe or Bob or Terry or Elliot.
Elliot ... I like that. Suppose Elliot, the Son of God, came to your church.Of course, he wouldn't be from Nazareth or Israel. He'd hail from some small spot down the road like Hollow Point or Chester City or Mt. Pleasant.
And he'd be a laborer. He was a carpenter in his day. No reason to think he'd change, but let's say he did. Let's say that this time around he was a plumber. Elliot, the plumber from Mt. Pleasant.
God, a plumber?
Rumor has it that he fed a football field full of people near the lake. Others say he healed a senator's son from Biloxi. Some say he's the Son of God. Others say he's the joke of the year. You don't know what to think.
And then, one Sunday, he shows up.
About midway through the service he appears in the back of the auditorium and takes a seat. After a few songs he moves closer to the front. After yet another song he steps up on the platform and announces, "You are singing about me. I am the Son of God." He holds a Communion tray. "This bread is my body. This wine is my blood. When you celebrate this, you celebrate me!"
What would you think?
Would you be offended? The audacity of it all. How irreverent, a guy named Elliot as the Son of God!
Would you be interested? Wait a minute, how could he be the Son of God? He never went to seminary, never studied at a college. But there is something about him ...
Would you believe? I can't deny it's crazy. But I can't deny what he has done.
It's easy to criticize contemporaries of Jesus for not believing in him. But when you realize how he came, you can understand their skepticism.
Jesus didn't fit their concept of a Messiah. Wrong background. Wrong pedigree. Wrong hometown. No Messiah would come from Nazareth. Small, hick, one-stoplight town. He didn't fit the Jews' notion of a Messiah, and so, rather than change their notion, they dismissed him.
He came as one of them. He was Jesus from Nazareth. Elliot from Mt. Pleasant. He fed the masses with calloused hands. He raised the dead wearing bib overalls and a John Deere Tractor cap.
They expected lights and kings and chariots from heaven. What they got was sandals and sermons and a Galilean accent.
And so, some missed him.
And so, some miss him still.

Fear of Overwhelming Challenges (Fearless Chapter 6)

by Max Lucado
Before the flight I’m a midlife version of Tom Cruise in Top Gun : wearing an air force helmet, a flight suit, and a smile the size of a watermelon slice. After the flight Top Gun is undone. I’m as pale as bleached bone. I list to the side, and my big smile has flattened as straight as the tarmac on which we just landed. Chalk the change up to sixty minutes of acrobatics at ten thousand feet.
I occupied the cockpit seat directly behind Lt. Col. Tom McClain. One month shy of retirement he invited me to join him on an orienta¬tion flight. The invitation came complete with
• a preflight physical (in which I was measured for the ejection seat);
• a safety briefing (in which I practiced pulling the handle for the ejection seat);
• a few moments hanging in the harness of a training para¬

chute (simulating how I would return to earth after any
activation of the ejection seat).
Message to air force public relations: any way to scale down the ejection-seat discussion? Turns out we didn’t use it. No small accom-plishment since we dived, rose, and dived again, sometimes with a vertical velocity of ten thousand feet per minute. Can you picture a roller coaster minus the rails? We flew in tandem with another T-6. At one point the two wingtips were separated by seven feet. I don’t like to get that close to another person in the shopping mall.
Here’s what one hour of aerial somersaults taught me:
• Fighter pilots are underpaid. I have no clue what their salary is, but it’s not enough. Anyone willing to protect his country at 600 mph deserves a bonus.
• G’s are well named. Funny, I thought the phrase “pulling g’s” had to do with gravitational pull against your body. It actu¬ally describes the involuntary sound a minister emits during a 360-degree rollover: “G-G-G-Geee!”
• The call sign of the pilot is stenciled on the back of his hel-met.

They have such great call signs: Iceman. Buff. Hatchet. Mine was Max. Pretty cool, huh? Col. McClain responds to T-Mac. It appears on the back of his helmet just above the collar line. I know this well. For fifty of the sixty minutes, I stared at his name. I read it forward, then backward, counted the letters, and created an acrostic: T-M-A-C. Tell Me About Christ. I couldn’t stomach looking anywhere else. The
horizon kept bouncing. So did the instrument panel. Closing my eyes only increased the nausea. So I stared at T-Mac. After all, he was the one with nearly six thousand hours of flight time!
Six thousand hours! He’s spent more time flying planes than I’ve spent eating pizza, a thought that occurred to me as I began regretting my dinner from the night before. Six thousand hours! The equivalent of eight months’ worth of twenty-four-hour days in the air, time enough to circumnavigate the globe 143 times. No wonder he was smiling when we boarded. This sortie was a bike ride on training wheels. I actually heard him humming during a near-vertical bank turn.
Didn’t take me long to figure out where to stare. No more looking down or out. My eyes were on the pilot. If T-Mac was okay, I was okay. I know where to stare in turbulence.
Peter learned the same lesson the hard way. Exchange the plane for a thirty-foot fishing boat, the San Antonio sky for a Galilean sea, and our stories begin to parallel.“But the boat was now in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary” (Matt. 14:24).
As famous lakes go, Galilee—only thirteen miles at its longest, seven and a half at its widest—is a small, moody one. The diminutive size makes it more vulnerable to the winds that howl out of the Golan Heights. They turn the lake into a blender, shifting suddenly, blowing first from one direction, then another. Winter months bring such storms every two weeks or so, churning the waters for two to three days at a time.1
Peter and his fellow storm riders knew they were in trouble. What should have been a sixty-minute cruise became a nightlong battle. The boat lurched and lunged like a kite in a March wind. Sunlight was a distant memory. Rain fell from the night sky in buckets. Lightning
sliced the blackness with a silver sword. Winds whipped the sails, leav¬ing the disciples “in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves.” Apt description, perhaps, for your stage in life? Perhaps all we need to do is substitute a couple of nouns . . .
In the middle of a divorce, tossed about by guilt.
In the middle of debt, tossed about by creditors.
In the middle of a recession, tossed about by stimulus packages and bailouts.
The disciples fought the storm for nine cold, skin-drenching hours. And about 4:00 a.m. the unspeakable happened. They spotted some-one coming on the water. “ ‘A ghost!’ they said, crying out in terror”
(v. 26 msg). They didn’t expect Jesus to come to them this way. Neither do we. We expect him to come in the form of peaceful hymns
or Easter Sundays or quiet retreats. We expect to find Jesus in morning devotionals, church suppers, and meditation. We never expect to see him in a bear market, pink slip, lawsuit, foreclosure, or war. We never expect to see him in a storm. But it is in storms that he does his finest work, for it is in storms that he has our keenest attention.
Jesus replied to the disciples’ fear with an invitation worthy of inscrip-tion on every church cornerstone and residential archway. “ ‘Don’t be afraid,’he said. ‘Take courage.I am here!’”(v.27 nlt).
Power inhabits those words. To awaken in an ICU and hear your husband say,“I am here.”To lose your retirement yet feel the support of your family in the words “We are here.” When a Little Leaguer spots Mom and Dad in the bleachers watching the game,“I am here” changes everything. Perhaps that’s why God repeats the “I am here” pledge so often.
The Lord is near. (Phil. 4:5 niv)
You are in me, and I am in you. ( John 14:20 niv)
I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matt. 28:20 niv)
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. ( John 10:28 niv)
Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. (Rom. 8:38 nlt)
We cannot go where God is not. Look over your shoulder; that’s God following you. Look into the storm; that’s Christ coming toward you.
Much to Peter’s credit,he took Jesus at his word.“ ‘Lord,if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.’ So He said, ‘Come.’ And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus” (Matt. 14:28–29).
Peter never would have made this request on a calm sea. Had Christ strolled across a lake that was as smooth as mica, Peter would have applauded, but I doubt he would have stepped out of the boat. Storms prompt us to take unprecedented journeys. For a few historic steps and heart-stilling moments, Peter did the impossible. He defied every law of gravity and nature; “he walked on the water to go to Jesus.”
My editors wouldn’t have tolerated such brevity. They would have
flooded the margin with red ink:“Elaborate! How quickly did Peter exit the boat? What were the other disciples doing? What was the expres¬sion on his face? Did he step on any fish?”
Matthew had no time for such questions. He moves us quickly to the major message of the event: where to stare in a storm. “But when [Peter] saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, ‘Lord, save me!’ ” (v. 30).
A wall of water eclipsed his view. A wind gust snapped the mast with a crack and a slap. A flash of lightning illuminated the lake and the watery Appalachians it had become. Peter shifted his attention away from Jesus and toward the squall, and when he did, he sank like a brick in a pond. Give the storm waters more attention than the Storm Walker, and get ready to do the same.
Whether or not storms come, we cannot choose. But where we stare during a storm, that we can. I found a direct example of this truth while sitting in my cardiologist’s office. My heart rate was misbehaving, taking the pace of a NASCAR race and the rhythm of a Morse code message. So I went to a specialist. After reviewing my tests and asking me some questions, the doctor nodded knowingly and told me to wait for him in his office.
I didn’t like being sent to the principal’s office as a kid. I don’t like being sent to the doctor’s office as a patient. But I went in, took a seat, and quickly noticed the doctor’s abundant harvest of diplomas. They were everywhere, from everywhere. One degree from the university. Another degree from a residency. The third degree from his wife. (I’m pausing to see if you caught the joke . . . )
The more I looked at his accomplishments, the better I felt. I’m in good hands. About the time I leaned back in the chair to relax, his nurse
entered and handed me a sheet of paper.“The doctor will be in shortly,” she explained.“In the meantime he wants you to acquaint yourself with this information. It summarizes your heart condition.”
I lowered my gaze from the diplomas to the summary of the dis¬order. As I read, contrary winds began to blow. Unwelcome words like atrial fibrillation, arrhythmia, embolic stroke, and blood clot caused me to sink into my own Sea of Galilee.
What happened to my peace? I was feeling much better a moment ago. So I changed strategies. I counteracted diagnosis with diplomas. In between paragraphs of bad news, I looked at the wall for reminders of good news. That’s what God wants us to do.
His call to courage is not a call to naïveté or ignorance. We aren’t to be oblivious to the overwhelming challenges that life brings. We’re to counterbalance them with long looks at God’s accomplishments. “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it” (Heb. 2:1 nasb). Do whatever it takes to keep your gaze on Jesus.
When a friend of mine spent several days in the hospital at the bed-side of her husband, she relied on hymns to keep her spirits up. Every few minutes she stepped into the restroom and sang a few verses of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Do likewise! Memorize scripture. Read biographies of great lives. Ponder the testimonies of faithful Christians. Make the deliberate decision to set your hope on him. Courage is always a possibility.
C. S. Lewis wrote a great paragraph on this thought:
Faith . . . is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change,
whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. . . . That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.2
Feed your fears, and your faith will starve. Feed your faith, and your fears will. Jeremiah did this. Talk about a person caught in a storm! Slide
down the timeline to the left about six hundred years, and learn a lesson from this Old Testament prophet. “I am the man who has seen afflic¬tion under the rod of [God’s] wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long” (Lam. 3:1–3 rsv).
Jeremiah was depressed, as gloomy as a giraffe with a neck ache. Jerusalem was under siege, his nation under duress. His world collapsed like a sand castle in a typhoon. He faulted God for his horrible emo¬tional distress. He also blamed God for his physical ailments. “He [God] has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones” (v. 4 rsv).
His body ached. His heart was sick. His faith was puny.“[God] has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation” (v. 5 rsv). Jeremiah felt trapped like a man on a dead-end street.“He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has put heavy chains on me; though I
call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer; he has blocked my ways with hewn stones, he has made my paths crooked” (vv. 7–9 rsv).
Jeremiah could tell you the height of the waves and the speed of the wind. But then he realized how fast he was sinking. So he shifted his gaze. “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my por-tion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him’ ” (vv. 21–24 rsv).
“But this I call to mind . . . ” Depressed, Jeremiah altered his thoughts, shifted his attention. He turned his eyes away from the waves and looked into the wonder of God. He quickly recited a quintet of promises. (I can envision him tapping these out on the five fingers of his hand.)

1. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

2. His mercies never come to an end.

3. They are new every morning.

4. Great is thy faithfulness.

5. The Lord is my portion.

The storm didn’t cease, but his discouragement did. So did Peter’s. After a few moments of flailing in the water, he turned back to Christ and cried,“ ‘Lord, save me!’ Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. ‘You of little faith,’he said, ‘why did you doubt?’ And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down” (Matt. 14:30–32 niv).
Jesus could have stilled this storm hours earlier. But he didn’t. He wanted to teach the followers a lesson. Jesus could have calmed your
storm long ago too. But he hasn’t. Does he also want to teach you a les¬son? Could that lesson read something like this: “Storms are not an option, but fear is”?
God has hung his diplomas in the universe. Rainbows, sunsets, horizons, and star-sequined skies. He has recorded his accomplish-ments in Scripture. We’re not talking six thousand hours of flight time. His résumé includes Red Sea openings. Lions’ mouths closings. Goliath topplings. Lazarus raisings. Storm stillings and strollings.
His lesson is clear. He’s the commander of every storm. Are you scared in yours? Then stare at him. This may be your first flight. But it’s certainly not his.
Your pilot has a call sign too: I Am Here.

Fear of Not Protecting My Kids (Fearless Chapter 5)

by Max Lucado

No one told me that newborns make nighttime noises. All night long. They gurgle; they pant. They whimper; they whine. They smack their lips and sigh. They keep Daddy awake. At least Jenna kept me awake. I wanted Denalyn to sleep. Thanks to a medication mix-up, her post-C-section rest was scant. So for our first night home with our first child, I volunteered to serve as first responder. We wrapped our eight pounds and four ounces of beauty in a soft pink blanket, placed her in the bassinet, and set it next to my side of the bed. Denalyn fell quickly into a sound slumber. Jenna followed her mom’s example. And Dad? This dad didn’t know what to make of the baby noises.
When Jenna’s breathing slowed, I leaned my ear onto her mouth to see if she was alive. When her breathing hurried, I looked up “infant hyperventilation” in the family medical encyclopedia. When she burbled and panted, so did I. After a couple of hours I realized, I have no clue how to behave! I lifted Jenna out of her bed, carried her into the living
room of our apartment, and sat in a rocker. That’s when a tsunami of
sobriety washed over me.
“We’re in charge of a human being.”
I don’t care how tough you are. You may be a Navy SEAL who specializes in high-altitude skydiving behind enemy lines. You might spend each day making million-dollar, split-second stock market deci­sions. Doesn’t matter. Every parent melts the moment he or she feels the full force of parenthood.
I did.
How did I get myself into this? I retraced my steps. First came love, then came marriage, then the discussions of a baby carriage. Of course I was open to the idea. Especially when I considered my role in launching the effort. Somehow during the nine-month expansion project, the real­ity of fatherhood didn’t dawn on me. Women are nodding and smiling. “Never underestimate the density of a man,” you say. True. But moms have an advantage: thirty-six weeks of reminders elbowing around inside them. Our kick in the gut comes later. But it does come. And for me it came in the midnight quiet of an apartment living room in down­town Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as I held a human being in my arms.
The semitruck of parenting comes loaded with fears. We fear failing the child, forgetting the child. Will we have enough money? Enough answers? Enough diapers? Enough drawer space? Vaccinations. Educations. Home­work. Homecoming. It’s enough to keep a parent awake at night.
And even though we learn to cope, an apiary of dangers buzzes in the background. Consider the mom who called me last evening. A cus­tody battle rages around her ten-year-old son. The courts, the father, the mother, the lawyers—they’re stretching the boy like taffy. She won­ders if her child will survive the ordeal.
So do the parents of the teenage daughter who collapsed in a volley­ball workout. No one knew about her heart condition or knows how she’ll fare. When we prayed at her bedside, her mom’s tears left circles on the sheets.
At least they know where their child is. The mother who called our church for prayers doesn’t. Her daughter, a high school senior, ran away with a boyfriend. He’s into drugs. She’s into him. Both are into trouble. The mother begs for help.
Fear distilleries concoct a high-octane brew for parents—a primal, gut-wrenching, pulse-stilling dose. Whether Mom and Dad keep vigil outside a neonatal unit, make weekly visits to a juvenile prison, or hear the crunch of a bike and the cry of a child in the driveway, their reaction is the same:“I have to do something.” No parent can sit still while his or her child suffers.
Jairus couldn’t.
On the other side of the lake the crowds welcomed Jesus, because they had been waiting for him. Then a man named Jairus, a leader of the local synagogue, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come home with him. His only daughter, who was about twelve years old, was dying. As Jesus went with him, he was sur­rounded by the crowds. (Luke 8:40–42 nlt)
Jairus was a Capernaum community leader,“one of the rulers of the synagogue” (Mark 5:22). Mayor, bishop, and ombudsman, all in one. The kind of man a city would send to welcome a celebrity. But when Jairus approached Jesus on the Galilean shoreline, he wasn’t represent­ing his village; he was pleading on behalf of his child.
Urgency stripped the formalities from his greeting. He issued no salutation or compliment, just a prayer of panic. Another gospel reads: “[Jairus] fell at his feet,pleading fervently with him. ‘My little daughter is dying,’he said.‘Please come and lay your hands on her; heal her so she can live’ ” (Mark 5:22–23 nlt).
Jairus isn’t the only parent to run onto gospel pages on behalf of a child. A mother stormed out of the Canaanite hills, crying, “Mercy, Master, Son of David! My daughter is cruelly afflicted by an evil spirit” (Matt. 15:22 msg). A father of a seizure-tormented boy sought help from the disciples, then Jesus. He cried out with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
The Canaanite mother. The father of the epileptic boy. Jairus. These three parents form an unwitting New Testament society: strug­gling parents of stricken children. They held the end of their rope in one hand and reached toward Christ with the other. In each case Jesus responded. He never turned one away.
His consistent kindness issues a welcome announcement: Jesus heeds the concern in the parent’s heart.
After all, our kids were his kids first. “Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? the fruit of the womb his generous legacy?” (Ps.
127:3 msg). Before they were ours, they were his. Even as they are ours, they are still his.
We tend to forget this fact, regarding our children as “our” children, as though we have the final say in their health and welfare. We don’t. All people are God’s people, including the small people who sit at our tables. Wise are the parents who regularly give their children back to God.
Abraham famously modeled this. The father of the faith was also
the father of Isaac. Abraham and Sarah waited nearly a century for this child to be born. I don’t know which is more amazing, that Sarah became pregnant at the age of ninety or that she and Abraham at that age were still trying to conceive. Of all the gifts God gave them, Isaac was the greatest. Of all the commands God gave Abraham, this one was the hardest:“He said, ‘Take your dear son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I’ll point out to you’” (Gen. 22:2 msg).
Abraham saddled the donkey, took Isaac and two servants, and traveled to the place of sacrifice. When he saw the mountain in the distance, he instructed the servants to stay and wait. And he made a statement that is worthy of special note: “Stay here with the donkey. My son and I will go over there and worship, and then we will come back to you” (Gen. 22:5 ncv).
Look at Abraham’s confident “we will come back.” “Abraham rea­soned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead” (Heb.
11:19 nlt). God interrupted the sacrifice and spared Isaac.
Jairus was hoping for the same with his daughter. He begged Jesus to come to his home (Luke 8:41). The father wasn’t content with long-distance assistance; he wanted Christ beneath his roof, walking through his rooms, standing at the bedside of his daughter. He wanted the pres­ence of Christ to permeate his house.
My wife displays this same longing.I will someday ask God,“Why were you so good to my daughters and me?” and he will answer by pointing to Denalyn. “She just kept talking about you and your kids.” Denalyn takes regular prayer walks through our house, stepping into each bedroom and living area. She pauses to pray for her daughters and
husband. She takes full advantage of the invitation of Lamentations
2:19: “Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift your hands toward Him for the life of your young children” (Lam. 2:19).
Parents, we can do this. We can be loyal advocates, stubborn inter­cessors. We can take our parenting fears to Christ. In fact, if we don’t, we’ll take our fears out on our kids. Fear turns some parents into para­noid prison guards who monitor every minute, check the background of every friend. They stifle growth and communicate distrust. A family with no breathing room suffocates a child.
On the other hand, fear can also create permissive parents. For fear that their child will feel too confined or fenced in, they lower all bound­aries. High on hugs and low on discipline. They don’t realize that appro­priate discipline is an expression of love. Permissive parents. Paranoid parents. How can we avoid the extremes? We pray.
Prayer is the saucer into which parental fears are poured to cool. Jesus says so little about parenting, makes no comments about spank­ing, breast-feeding, sibling rivalry, or schooling. Yet his actions speak volumes about prayer. Each time a parent prays, Christ responds. His big message to moms and dads? Bring your children to me. Raise them in a greenhouse of prayer.
When you send them off for the day, do so with a blessing. When you tell them good night, cover them in prayer. Is your daughter stumped by geography homework? Pray with her about it. Is your son intimi­dated by the new girl? Pray with him about her. Pray that your children have a profound sense of place in this world and a heavenly place in the next.
Some years ago I witnessed a father taking this priority seriously
during a Sunday morning worship service. As we took communion, I heard a small boy asking, “What’s that, Daddy?” The father explained the meaning of the bread and then offered a prayer. The boy was quiet until the cup was passed. Then he asked again,“What’s that, Daddy?” The father began again, explaining the blood and the cross and how the wine symbolizes Jesus’ death. Then he prayed.
I chuckled at the colossal task the father was tackling. When I turned to give him a knowing nod, I realized the father was David Robinson, NBA basketball player for the San Antonio Spurs. Sitting on his lap was his six-year-old son, David Jr.
Less than twenty-four hours earlier David had led the Spurs in scoring in a play-off game against the Phoenix Suns. Within twenty-four hours David would be back in Phoenix, doing the same. But sandwiched between the two nationally televised, high-stakes contests was David the dad. Not David the MVP or Olympic Gold Medal winner, but David the father, explaining holy communion to David the son.
Of the events of that weekend, which mattered most? The basket­ball games or the communion service? Which will have eternal conse­quences? The points scored on the court? Or the message shared at church? What will make the biggest difference in young David’s life? Watching his dad play basketball or hearing him whisper a prayer?
Parents, we can’t protect children from every threat in life, but we can take them to the Source of life. We can entrust our kids to Christ. Even then, however, our shoreline appeals may be followed by a difficult choice.
As Jairus and Jesus were going to Jairus’s home,“a messenger arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. He told him,‘Your daughter is dead. There’s no use troubling the Teacher now.’ But when
Jesus heard what had happened, he said to Jairus, ‘Don’t be afraid. Just have faith, and she will be healed’ ” (Luke 8:49–50 nlt).
Jairus was whipsawed between the contrasting messages. The first, from the servants: “Your daughter is dead.” The second, from Jesus: “Don’t be afraid.” Horror called from one side. Hope compelled from the other. Tragedy, then trust. Jairus heard two voices and had to choose which one he would heed.
Don’t we all?
The hard reality of parenting reads something like this: you can do your best and still stand where Jairus stood. You can protect, pray, and keep all the bogeymen at bay and still find yourself in an ER at mid­night or a drug rehab clinic on visitors’ Sunday, choosing between two voices: despair and belief. Jairus could have chosen despair. Who would have faulted him for deciding “Enough is enough”? He had no guaran­tee that Jesus could help. His daughter was dead. Jairus could have walked away. As parents, we’re so glad he didn’t. We need to know what Jesus will do when we entrust our kids to him.
He united the household. “When Jesus went to the house, he let only Peter, John, James, and the girl’s father and mother go inside with him” (Luke 8:51 ncv).
Jesus included the mother. Until this point she had been, for what­ever reason, out of the picture. Perhaps she was at her daughter’s bed­side. Or she might have been at odds with her husband. Crisis can divide a family. The stress of caring for a sick or troubled child can drive a wedge between Mom and Dad. But here, Christ united them. Picture Jesus pausing at the house entrance, gesturing for the distraught mother to join them. He didn’t have to do so. He could have hurried in without her. But he wanted Mom and Dad to stand together in the struggle.
Jesus gathered the entire, albeit small, household in the presence of the daughter.
And he banished unbelief. “Now all wept and mourned for her; but He said,‘Do not weep; she is not dead, but sleeping.’And they ridiculed Him, knowing that she was dead. But He put them all outside” (vv. 52–54).
He commanded doubt to depart and permitted only faith and hope to stay. And in this intimate circle of trust, Jesus “took her by the hand and called, saying, ‘Little girl, arise.’ Then her spirit returned, and she arose immediately. And He commanded that she be given something to eat. And her parents were astonished” (vv. 54–56).
God has a heart for hurting parents. Should we be surprised? After all, God himself is a father. What parental emotion has he not felt? Are you separated from your child? So was God. Is someone mistreating your child? They mocked and bullied his. Is someone taking advantage of your children? The Son of God was set up by false testimony and betrayed by a greedy follower. Are you forced to watch while your child suffers? God watched his son on the cross. Do you find yourself wanting to spare your child from all the hurt in the world? God did. But because of his great love for us,“he did not spare his own Son but gave him for us all.So with Jesus, God will surely give us all things” (Rom. 8:32 ncv).
“All things” must include courage and hope.
Some of you find the story of Jairus difficult to hear. You prayed the same prayer he did, yet you found yourself in a cemetery facing every parent’s darkest night: the death of your child. No pain compares. What hope does the story of Jairus offer to you? Jesus resurrected Jairus’s child. Why didn’t he save yours?
God understands your question. He buried a child too. He hates
death more than you do. That’s why he killed it. He “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light” (2 Tim. 1:10). For those who trust God, death is nothing more than a transition to heaven. Your child may not be in your arms, but your child is safely in his.
Others of you have been standing for a long time where Jairus stood. You’ve long since left the water’s edge of offered prayer but haven’t yet arrived at the household of answered prayer. You’ve wept a monsoon of tears for your child, enough to summon the attention of every angel and their neighbor to your cause. At times you’ve felt that a breakthrough was nearing, that Christ was following you to your house. But you’re not so sure anymore. You find yourself alone on the path, wondering if Christ has forgotten you and your child.
He hasn’t. He never dismisses a parent’s prayer. Keep giving your child to God, and in the right time and the right way, God will give your child back to you.
Late that night a quarter century ago, I gave my daughter to God. As I rocked her in our just-bought rocker, I remembered the way Abraham had placed Isaac on the altar, and I decided to do the same. So following the centenarian’s example, I made our apartment living room my Moriah and lifted my daughter toward heaven. I can’t raise this girl, I confessed, but you can. I give her back to you. Must have been a sight to behold, a pajama-clad father lifting his blanket-wrapped baby toward the ceiling. But something tells me that a few parents appreci­ated the gesture. Among them, Abraham, Jairus, and, of course, God.

Fearless, Chapter 1

by Max Lucado

You would have liked my brother. Everyone did. Dee made friends the way bakers make bread: daily, easily, warmly. Handshake— big and eager; laughter—contagious and volcanic. He permitted no stranger to remain one for long. I, the shy younger brother, relied on him to make introductions for us both. When a family moved onto the street or a newcomer walked onto the playground, Dee was the ambassador.
But in his midteen years, he made one acquaintance he should have avoided—a bootlegger who would sell beer to underage drinkers. Alcohol made a play for us both, but although it entwined me, it enchained him. Over the next four decades my brother drank away health, relation­ships, jobs, money, and all but the last two years of his life.
Who can say why resolve sometimes wins and sometimes loses, but at the age of fifty-four my brother discovered an aquifer of willpower, drilled deep, and enjoyed a season of sobriety. He emptied his bottles, stabilized his marriage, reached out to his children, and exchanged the liquor store for the local AA. But the hard living had taken its toll.
Three decades of three-packs-a-day smoking had turned his big heart into ground meat.
On a January night during the week I began writing this book, he told Donna, his wife, that he couldn’t breathe well. He already had a doctor’s appointment for a related concern, so he decided to try to sleep. Little success. He awoke at 4:00 a.m. with chest pains severe enough to warrant a call to the emergency room. The rescue team loaded Dee onto the gurney and told Donna to meet them at the hospital. My brother waved weakly and smiled bravely and told Donna not to worry, but by the time she and one of Dee’s sons reached the hospital, he was gone.
The attending physician told them the news and invited them to step into the room where Dee’s body lay. Holding each other, they walked through the doors and saw his final message. His hand was resting on the top of his thigh with the two center fingers folded in and the thumb extended, the universal sign-language symbol for “I love you.”
I’ve tried to envision the final moments of my brother’s earthly life: racing down a Texas highway in an ambulance through an inky night, paramedics buzzing around him, his heart weakening within him. Struggling for each breath, at some point he realized only a few remained. But rather than panic, he quarried some courage.
Perhaps you could use some. An ambulance isn’t the only ride that demands valor. You may not be down to your final heartbeat, but you may be down to your last paycheck, solution, or thimble of faith. Each sunrise seems to bring fresh reasons for fear.
They’re talking layoffs at work, slowdowns in the economy, flare-ups in the Middle East, turnovers at headquarters, downturns in the housing market, upswings in global warming, breakouts of al Qaeda cells. Some demented dictator is collecting nuclear warheads the way others collect fine wines. A strain of swine flu is crossing the border. The plague of our day, terrorism, begins with the word terror. News programs disgorge enough hand-wringing information to warrant an advisory: “Caution: this news report is best viewed in the confines of an underground vault in Iceland.”
We fear being sued, finishing last, going broke; we fear the mole on the back, the new kid on the block, the sound of the clock as it ticks us closer to the grave. We sophisticate investment plans, create elaborate security systems, and legislate stronger military, yet we depend on mood-altering drugs more than any other generation in history. Moreover, “ordinary children today are more fearful than psychiatric patients were in the 1950s.”1
Fear, it seems, has taken a hundred-year lease on the building next door and set up shop. Oversize and rude, fear is unwilling to share the heart with happiness. Happiness complies and leaves. Do you ever see the two together? Can one be happy and afraid at the same time? Clear thinking and afraid? Confident and afraid? Merciful and afraid? No. Fear is the big bully in the high school hallway: brash, loud, and un­productive. For all the noise fear makes and room it takes, fear does little good.
Fear never wrote a symphony or poem, negotiated a peace treaty, or cured a disease. Fear never pulled a family out of poverty or a country out of bigotry. Fear never saved a marriage or a business. Courage did that. Faith did that. People who refused to consult or cower to their timidities did that. But fear itself? Fear herds us into a prison and slams the doors.
Wouldn’t it be great to walk out? Imagine your life wholly untouched by angst. What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats? If you could hover a fear magnet over your heart and extract every last shaving of dread, insecurity, and doubt, what would remain? Envision a day, just one day, absent the dread of failure, rejection, and calamity. Can you imagine a life with no fear? This is the possibility behind Jesus’ question.
Why are you afraid?” he asks (Matt. 8:26 NCV).
At first blush we wonder if Jesus is serious. He may be kidding. Teasing. Pulling a quick one. Kind of like one swimmer asking another, “Why are you wet?” But Jesus doesn’t smile. He’s dead earnest. So are the men to whom he asks the question. A storm has turned their Galilean dinner cruise into a white-knuckled plunge.
Here is how one of them remembered the trip: “Jesus got into a boat, and his followers went with him. A great storm arose on the lake so that waves covered the boat” (Matt. 8:23–24 NCV).
These are Matthew’s words. He remembered well the pouncing tempest and bouncing boat and was careful in his terminology. Not just any noun would do. He pulled his Greek thesaurus off the shelf and hunted for a descriptor that exploded like the waves across the bow. He bypassed common terms for spring shower, squall, cloudburst, or downpour. They didn’t capture what he felt and saw that night: a rumbling earth and quivering shoreline. He recalled more than winds and whitecaps. His finger followed the column of synonyms down, down until he landed on a word that worked. “Ah, there it is.” Seismos—a quake, a trembling eruption of sea and sky. “A great seismos arose on the lake.”
The term still occupies a spot in our vernacular. A seismologist stud­ies earthquakes, a seismograph measures them, and Matthew, along with a crew of recent recruits, felt a seismos that shook them to the core. He used the word on only two other occasions: once at Jesus’ death when Calvary shook (Matt. 27:51–54) and again at Jesus’ resurrection when the graveyard tremored (28:2). Apparently, the stilled storm shares equal billing in the trilogy of Jesus’ great shake-ups: defeating sin on the cross, death at the tomb, and here silencing fear on the sea.
Sudden fear. We know the fear was sudden because the storm was. An older translation reads, “Suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea.”
Not all storms come suddenly. Prairie farmers can see the formation of thunderclouds hours before the rain falls. This storm, however, springs like a lion out of the grass. One minute the disciples are shuffling cards for a midjourney game of hearts; the next they are gulping Galilean sea spray.
Peter and John, seasoned sailors, struggle to keep down the sail. Matthew, confirmed landlubber, struggles to keep down his breakfast. The storm is not what the tax collector bargained for. Do you sense his surprise in the way he links his two sentences? “Jesus got into a boat, and his followers went with him. A great storm arose on the lake” (8:23–24 NCV).
Wouldn’t you hope for a more chipper second sentence, a happier consequence of obedience? “Jesus got into a boat. His followers went with him, and suddenly a great rainbow arched in the sky, a flock of doves hovered in happy formation, a sea of glass mirrored their mast.” Don’t Christ-followers enjoy a calendar full of Caribbean cruises? No. This story sends the not-so-subtle and not-too-popular reminder: getting on board with Christ can mean getting soaked with Christ. Disciples can expect rough seas and stout winds. “In the world you will [not ‘might,’ ‘may,’ or ‘could’] have tribulation” ( John 16:33, brackets mine).
Christ-followers contract malaria, bury children, and battle addic­tions, and, as a result, face fears. It’s not the absence of storms that sets us apart. It’s whom we discover in the storm: an unstirred Christ.
“Jesus was sleeping” (v. 24 NCV).
Now there’s a scene. The disciples scream; Jesus dreams. Thunder roars; Jesus snores. He doesn’t doze, catnap, or rest. He slumbers. Could you sleep at a time like this? Could you snooze during a roller coaster loop-the-loop? In a wind tunnel? At a kettledrum concert? Jesus sleeps through all three at once!
Mark’s gospel adds two curious details: “[ Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on a pillow” (Mark 4:38). In the stern, on a pillow. Why the first? From whence came the second?
First-century fishermen used large, heavy seine nets for their work. They stored the nets in a nook that was built into the stern for this purpose. Sleeping upon the stern deck was impractical. It provided no space or protection. The small compartment beneath the stern, how­ever, provided both. It was the most enclosed and only protected part of the boat. So Christ, a bit dozy from the day’s activities, crawled beneath the deck to get some sleep.
He rested his head, not on a fluffy feather pillow, but on a leather sandbag. A ballast bag. Mediterranean fishermen still use them. They weigh about a hundred pounds and are used to ballast, or stabilize, the boat. Did Jesus take the pillow to the stern so he could sleep, or sleep so soundly that someone rustled him up the pillow? We don’t know. But this much we do know. This was a premeditated slumber. He didn’t accidentally nod off. In full knowledge of the coming storm, Jesus decided it was siesta time, so he crawled into the corner, put his head on the pillow, and drifted into dreamland.
His snooze troubles the disciples. Matthew and Mark record their responses as three staccato Greek pronouncements and one question.
The pronouncements: “Lord! Save! Dying!” (Matt. 8:25).
The question: “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38).
They do not ask about Jesus’ strength: “Can you still the storm?” His knowledge: “Are you aware of the storm?” Or his know-how: “Do you have any experience with storms?” But rather, they raise doubts about Jesus’ character: “Do you not care . . . ”
Fear does this. Fear corrodes our confidence in God’s goodness. We begin to wonder if love lives in heaven. If God can sleep in our storms, if his eyes stay shut when our eyes grow wide, if he permits storms after we get on his boat, does he care? Fear unleashes a swarm of doubts, anger-stirring doubts.
And it turns us into control freaks. “Do something about the storm!” is the implicit demand of the question. “Fix it or . . . or . . . or else!” Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control. When life spins wildly, we grab for a component of life we can manage: our diet, the tidiness of a house, the armrest of a plane, or, in many cases, people. The more insecure we feel, the meaner we become. We growl and bare our fangs. Why? Because we are bad? In part. But also because we feel cornered.
Martin Niemöller documents an extreme example of this. He was a German pastor who took a heroic stand against Adolf Hitler. When he first met the dictator in 1933, Niemöller stood at the back of the room and listened. Later, when his wife asked him what he’d learned, he said, “I discovered that Herr Hitler is a terribly frightened man.”3 Fear releases the tyrant within.
It also deadens our recall. The disciples had reason to trust Jesus. By now they’d seen him “healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of dis­ease among the people” (Matt. 4:23). They had witnessed him heal a leper with a touch and a servant with a command (Matt. 8:3, 13). Peter saw his sick mother-in-law recover (Matt. 8:14–15), and they all saw demons scatter like bats out of a cave. “He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick” (Matt. 8:16).
Shouldn’t someone mention Jesus’ track record or review his résumé? Do they remember the accomplishments of Christ? They may not. Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia. It dulls our miracle memory. It makes us forget what Jesus has done and how good God is.
And fear feels dreadful. It sucks the life out of the soul, curls us into an embryonic state, and drains us dry of contentment. We become abandoned barns, rickety and tilting from the winds, a place where humanity used to eat, thrive, and find warmth. No longer. When fear shapes our lives, safety becomes our god. When safety becomes our god, we worship the risk-free life. Can the safety lover do anything great? Can the risk-averse accomplish noble deeds? For God? For oth­ers? No. The fear-filled cannot love deeply. Love is risky. They cannot give to the poor. Benevolence has no guarantee of return. The fear-filled cannot dream wildly. What if their dreams sputter and fall from the sky? The worship of safety emasculates greatness. No wonder Jesus wages such a war against fear.
His most common command emerges from the “fear not” genre. The Gospels list some 125 Christ-issued imperatives. Of these, 21 urge us to “not be afraid” or “not fear” or “have courage” or “take heart” or “be of good cheer.” The second most common command, to love God and neighbor, appears on only eight occasions. If quantity is any indicator,
Jesus takes our fears seriously. The one statement he made more than any other was this: don’t be afraid.
Siblings sometimes chuckle at or complain about the most common command of their parents. They remember how Mom was always say­ing, “Be home on time,” or, “Did you clean your room?” Dad had his favorite directives too. “Keep your chin up.” “Work hard.” I wonder if the disciples ever reflected on the most-often-repeated phrases of Christ. If so, they would have noted, “He was always calling us to courage.”
So don’t be afraid. You are worth much more than many sparrows. (Matt. 10:31 NCV)
Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven. (Matt. 9:2 nasb)
I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough. (Matt. 6:25 NLT)
Don’t be afraid. Just believe, and your daughter will be well. (Luke 8:50 NCV)
Take courage. I am here! (Matt. 14:27 NLT)
Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. (Matt. 10:28)
Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32)
Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. . . . I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. ( John 14:1, 3 NLT)

Don’t be troubled or afraid. ( John 14:27 NLT)
“Why are you frightened?” he asked.“Why are your hearts filled with doubt?” (Luke 24:38 NLT)
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. (Matt. 24:6 niv)
Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” (Matt. 17:7)

Jesus doesn’t want you to live in a state of Jesus doesn’t want you to live in a state of fear. Nor do you. You’ve never made statements like these:
My phobias put such a spring in my step.
I’d be a rotten parent were it not for my hypochondria.
Thank God for my pessimism. I’ve been such a better person since I lost hope.
My doctor says if I don’t begin fretting, I will lose my health.
We’ve learned the high cost of fear.
Jesus’ question is a good one. He lifts his head from the pillow, steps out from the stern into the storm, and asks,“Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” (Matt. 8:26).
To be clear, fear serves a healthy function. It is the canary in the coal mine, warning of potential danger. A dose of fright can keep a child from running across a busy road or an adult from smoking a pack of cigarettes. Fear is the appropriate reaction to a burning building or growling dog. Fear itself is not a sin. But it can lead to sin.
If we medicate fear with angry outbursts, drinking binges, sullen withdrawals, self-starvation, or viselike control, we exclude God from the solution and exacerbate the problem. We subject ourselves to a posi¬tion of fear, allowing anxiety to dominate and define our lives. Joy-sapping worries. Day-numbing dread. Repeated bouts of insecurity that petrify and paralyze us. Hysteria is not from God. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear” (2 Tim. 1:7).
Fear may fill our world, but it doesn’t have to fill our hearts. It will always knock on the door. Just don’t invite it in for dinner, and for heaven’s sake don’t offer it a bed for the night. Let’s embolden our hearts with a select number of Jesus’ “do not fear” statements. The promise of Christ and the contention of this book are simple: we can fear less tomorrow than we do today.
When I was six years old, my dad let me stay up late with the rest of the family and watch the movie The Wolf Man. Boy, did he regret that decision. The film left me convinced that the wolf man spent each night prowling our den, awaiting his preferred meal of first-grade, red¬headed, freckle-salted boy. My fear proved problematic. To reach the kitchen from my bedroom, I had to pass perilously close to his claws and fangs, something I was loath to do. More than once I retreated to my father’s bedroom and awoke him. Like Jesus in the boat, Dad was sound asleep in the storm. How can a person sleep at a time like this?
Opening a sleepy eye, he would ask, “Now, why are you afraid?” And I would remind him of the monster. “Oh yes, the Wolf Man,” he’d grumble. He would then climb out of bed, arm himself with super¬human courage, escort me through the valley of the shadow of death, and pour me a glass of milk. I would look at him with awe and wonder, What kind of man is this?
Might it be that God views our seismos storms the way my father viewed my Wolf Man angst? “Jesus got up and gave a command to the wind and the waves, and it became completely calm” (Matt. 8:26 NCV).
He handles the great quaking with a great calming. The sea becomes as still as a frozen lake, and the disciples are left wondering,“What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” (v. 27 NCV).
What kind of man, indeed. Turning typhoon time into nap time. Silencing waves with one word. And equipping a dying man with suf¬ficient courage to send a final love message to his family. Way to go, Dee. You faced your share of seismos moments in life, but in the end you didn’t go under.
Here’s a prayer that we won’t either.

Death: Because of Christ, You Can Face It

As heart surgeries go, mine was far from the riskiest. But any procedure that requires four hours of probes inside your heart is enough to warrant an added prayer. So on the eve of my surgery, Denalyn, I, and some kind friends offered our share. We were staying at a hotel adjacent to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. We asked God to bless the doctors and watch over the nurses. After we chatted a few minutes, they wished me well and said good-bye. I needed to go to bed early. But before I could sleep, I wanted to offer one more prayer…alone.

I took the elevator down to the lobby and found a quiet corner and began to think. What if the surgery goes awry? What if this is my final night on earth? Is there anyone with whom I should make my peace? Do I need to phone any person and make amends? I couldn’t think of anyone. (So if you are thinking I should have called you, sorry. Perhaps we should talk.)

Next I wrote letters to my wife and daughters, each beginning with the sentence “If you are reading this, something went wrong in the surgery.”

Then God and I had the most honest of talks. We began with a good review of my first half century. The details would bore you, but they entertained us. I thanked him for grace beyond measure and for a wife who descended from the angels. My tabulation of blessings could have gone on all night and threatened to do just that. So I stopped and offered this prayer: I’m in good hands, Lord. The doctors are prepared; the staff is experienced. But even with the best of care, things happen. This could be my final night in this version of life, and I’d like you to know, if that’s the case, I’m okay.

And I went to bed. And slept like a baby. As things turned out, I recovered from the surgery, and here I am, strong as ever, still pounding away at the computer keyboard. One thing is different, though. This matter of dying bravely?

I think I will.

May you do the same.

God Never Sends You Out Alone‏

When you place your faith in Christ, Christ places his Spirit before, behind, and within you. Not a strange spirit, but the same Spirit: the parakletos. Everything Jesus did for his followers, his Spirit does for you. Jesus taught; the Spirit teaches. Jesus healed; the Spirit heals. Jesus comforted; his Spirit comforts. As Jesus sends you into new seasons, he sends his counselor to go with you.
God treats you the way one mother treated her young son, Timmy. She didn’t like the thought of Timmy walking to his first-grade class unaccompanied. But he was too grown-up to be seen with his mother. “Besides,” he explained, “I can walk with a friend.” So she did her best to stay calm, quoting the Twenty-third Psalm to him every morning: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…”
One school day she came up with an idea. She asked a neighbor to follow Timmy to school in the mornings, staying at a distance, lest he notice her. The neighbor was happy to oblige. She took her toddler on morning walks anyway.
After several days Timmy’s friend noticed the lady and the child.
“Do you know who that woman is who follows us to school?”
“Sure,” Timmy answered. “That’s Shirley Goodnest and her daughter Marcy.”
“Who?”
“My mom reads about them every day in the Twenty-third Psalm. She says, ‘Shirley Goodnest and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my life.’ Guess I’ll have to get used to them.”
You will too. God never sends you out alone. Are you on the eve of change? Do you find yourself looking into a new chapter? Is the foliage of your world showing signs of a new season? Heaven’s message for you is clear: when everything else changes, God presence never does. You journey in the company of the Holy Spirit, who “will teach you and will remind you of everything I have told you” (John 14:26 NLT).

by Max Lucado