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When I was a child, I was an avid reader of the Hardy Boys Mystery Series which starred two teenaged detectives, Frank and Joe Hardy, who lived in a town called Bayport and fought crime by outwitting dumb criminals. It was these books that taught me to read and so I guess I have fond memories for these stories and as such I still collect the series and of 190 books, I am only missing two (#s146 and 158, if you'd like to help your pastor's weird hobbies). I'll admit that after almost 200 books with the same characters, things get fairly monotonous and repetitive but to a young boy on a rainy day, the dependability was comforting. You knew that by the first chapter, there would be a great mystery to be solved. You knew that somewhere in the book, either Frank, Joe, both, or one of their friends would be kidnapped by the bad guys. You knew that at the end all would seem hopeless and while it looked like they were winning, the bad guys would talk and reveal too much information. And you also knew that in the end a miracle or lucky streak would take place to save Frank and Joe and the bad guys would be hauled away mumbling "I should have kept my big, fat mouth shut."

I bring up these children's fictional characters only because the Hardy Brothers had a boat. It was called the Sleuth and now thinking back I realize that it must have been the most unlucky, unreliable, and worst boat in history. Every time that they took it out on the local bay, it either broke down, was shot, was rammed, blew up, sunk, sprung a leak, or led them to where they witnessed some horrible crime or suspicious activity. Either that, or the worst storm in the history of the Atlantic coast would suddenly spring up and they would be caught in hurricane winds, and then the motor would blow up, etc... I mean this happened every time they used the boat. You would have thought that the local authorities would have caught on and to forecast weather just started watching the Hardy's boat dock. ("Clear skies today with pleasant, . . . oh, wait a minute, the Hardy's are taking their boat out, that means hurricane gales with thirteen foot waves and hail today.")

It would almost seem that boats in the scripture had the same curse as the Hardy's Sleuth. It seems as if there is a boat involved, then something is going to go wrong. The disciples get in the boat with Jesus to cross the Sea of Galilee, and a big storm blows up that has even the experienced fishermen of the group shaking in their sandals. The disciples obey Jesus' command and cross the Sea again without Him, and (surprise!) a big gale blows up that makes a hurricane seem pale in comparison. Several other times we find the disciples fishing all night and having no luck from their boat and then we also find when they do not follow Jesus' exact directions they almost sink their boat because of the many fish caught in their nets. After you go through a couple of the Gospels, you want to scream at the text: "don't get in; don't go out in the boat!"

Part of the reason I think that the disciples had such often calamities in boats was because half of them had been fishermen before Jesus called them. To be successful in the kingdom of God, we must be totally convinced of our need to rely on Jesus, and so God allows things in which we were once familiar and comfortable to become stormy, and to allow what we once thought our strengths to be broken. He does this so that we will rely on Him and His will rather than our own strength and abilities.

And yet we must also admit that there must be more to it than that because we find the Apostle Paul at least four times in a bad situation on a ship and in fact the entire last two chapters of the Book of Acts detail a tremendous storm and wreck in which the Apostle was involved. And throughout out all of scripture when judgment is meted out against an evil nation, we find the wreckage of ships involved. We find one third of the ships being destroyed in the second trumpet of Revelation. We find story after story of ships and their issues and so eventually you have to ask, "what's the big deal?" It could be that God loves a good ship wreck. It could also be that He wanted to prove a point: after all the Titanic was built by professionals leaning on their own understanding, but the ark of Noah's day was built by amateurs following God's plan. But I think the scriptures fascination with ships and storms together ties in with a scripture in 1 Timothy where Paul is warning the young pastor to keep being faithful to God:

"some have made shipwreck of their faith." The metaphor is clear: our life is like a voyage of a boat at sea, and some will sail through both calm and stormy weather to finish their journey of faith, and some will get sidetracked and even wreck in the storms of life. And so all at once, the reason for the scripture's preoccupation with ships and storms becomes clear: God knew that we have to weather some bad days and rough times in this voyage of life and so wanted us to have plenty examples of how to respond and how not to respond in the stormy days!

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Let me preach to you a bit. One of the reasons that the Gospels record so many storms, is that we must understand that even with Jesus involved, there will be some days of less than perfect conditions. Some people think that serving Jesus and doing His will means that all bad days cease and only the sun shines in your life and all of your worries are gone. That's not true. What is true is that if you will be faithful and as Jesus said "endure until the end" that you will spend eternity in a better place where there will be no storms, and no tears, and no heartache and such. But for this life on earth, even with Jesus on board your boat, there will be times when you find yourself being tossed to and fro in the waves. We read as our text one such situation. The disciples are obeying Jesus and have the Master on board the boat and yet they are hit with a huge storm. Another time, we find the disciples boarding a boat at Jesus' command and then -- while obeying everything that He had said, perfectly -- they find themselves in the middle of a horrible storm. In the middle of God's will, a storm awaited.

So the first thing that you've got to get out of your mind is that a storm or bad days means that Jesus is nowhere around or that you have somehow sinned and are being punished. That's just not necessarily true. Often obeying God's command exactly will take you directly into the face of the storm. There is a reason for that. There's a reason why God doesn't remove all of the bad days and strong winds from our life when we decide to start serving Him. It is in the storm, that we learn to trust Him. It is in the storm that we receive the revelation of who He really is. It is in the storm that we learn of God's power and might. It is in the storm that we learn of the power of His Word over even the natural elements of this world. If it had not been for the storms, the disciples of Jesus and us would have never known Jesus as "the creator and Master of every situation." It was after Jesus had calmed the storm that they begin to ask of themselves "what manner of man is this?" Peter later got the revelation of who He was, but his first clue was in a boat watching a storm respond to the Master!

I'm preaching to you today. They would have never known Jesus as the one who can walk on water and who will show up before it's too late if it hadn't of been for a storm that the will of God took them through. Mankind learned a great lesson about God's righteousness and power in the Flood of Noah's day and the same could be said of all of the other storms in scripture. It was when the mountain shook and the thunder rolled that God met with Moses on Mt. Sinai. It will be in the day of a great earthquake and of the sky rolling away as a scroll that Jesus Christ will be revealed to this world at His Second Coming. Even the day of the Rapture of the church will be a day that has "clouds" because it is written that the "Son of Man shall come in the clouds" and that we will be caught up to meet Him "in the clouds." It won't be a sun-shiny day when Jesus Christ comes back and it won't be a "perfect day" in the world, but rather a stormy day somewhere! He may just come back on the worst day of your life when the rain is falling heavily. And the reason is that storms and bad days reveal to us who we really are. Everybody appears a Christian on a good day, but it's in the storm that we find out where our trust really lies!

And so if you are going to make it to heaven, you must learn to serve God through the storm! And realize that if the storm is God sent, then there is a purpose for the storm. God is wanting you to come to know Him better or reveal Himself to you in a greater way. Or it could be that He is testing you to see if you can keep you eyes on Him even when the winds and waves are howling around you. It could be He's seeing how well you received His "perfect peace" by seeing how you react in situations that are less than perfect. The song says it well: "sometimes He calms the storms, but other times He calms His child."

If you find yourself in a storm this day, understand that God has not forgotten you nor turned His back upon you. There's nothing like a storm to make you realize your need for Him to be active in your life and so it's very possible that the storm is the very tool of God to teach you to rely on Him rather than your own ability. To the creation, a storm is all powerful; to the Creator, it is nothing. As Peter had to learn, storms are no big deal as long as your gaze is fixed upon Jesus!

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In our text, we read of Jesus being asleep in the boat. That's the way many Christians are. They have Jesus in their life and they take great comfort in that, but He's not very active. They are guiding their own life and trying to survive on their own without "bothering Jesus." Why do we think that we bother God with our problems? Do we think that He's like us where just one bad thing goes wrong and we are ready to quit. It takes quite a bit for God to get frustrated, He just doesn't look at things quite like we do! And yet we insist on only getting God involved in the last minute. The scriptures say in our text that:

Their answer is on the boat, asleep and yet the disciples waited until the storm had increased so much and that the waves had been hitting so long that the ship was full of water and near sinking before they cried out to Jesus! They were trying to fix everything on their own, and didn't "want to bother Jesus" until everything had really gotten worse!

And so it is with many "Christians." They have Jesus in their life, but they have not permitted Him to be very active. He deals with their heart about some things from the past, and they say "go back to sleep, Jesus." God's Spirit begins to deal with this sin or that sin and they are like "go lay back down and chill out, God." They don't want God active in their life because Him being active means that He is trying to change them and make them more like Himself.

And so God sends a great storm. Let the waves get high enough and the wind strong enough and the situation seem hopeless enough and all of a sudden, people who so far on their journey hadn't cared to much for Jesus being active in their life are suddenly shaking Him screaming "wake up God! Don't you care that I'm about to die?" Suddenly, in the storm, they want God actively involved in their life! Suddenly they want His Spirit moving and working in their situation! And that's the precise reason why God sends the storm to many of us. He's tired alright, but tired of sleeping! He's tired of doing nothing. He's ready to work. Ready to show you His power. Ready to reveal to you who He is! Ready for you to trust Him, and yet it takes a storm to get you serious about Him working! God cares less about your personal comfort and more about your eternal destination. If it takes the boat nearly sinking for you to turn to Him and awaken Him in your life, then get ready for the waves to come over!

And so I'm preaching to some of you who have been screaming at God: "don't you know what I'm going through?" "Can't you feel the waves that are trying to destroy my life?" Sure He knows about it, He's the One who sent the waves. He's just trying to get you to realize that you can't survive on your own, that you need Him active in your life. If some of you could hear God's answer today to your screams, you would hear "You're crying out to me and admitting you need me, that's why I sent the storm in the first place!"

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We can learn some other tremendous lessons from our text of the storm in Mark chapter 4. Sometimes storms in our lives are tests to see how much heed we have been paying to God's Word. We read of the storm, but we forget that the journey began with Jesus saying these words:

Jesus did NOT say "let's go out halfway and drown." He did NOT say "let's go capsize in a storm and be lost." He told the disciples at the very first that they were going to the other side. And then Jesus went to sleep. We tend to also forget that after rebuking the storm, Jesus rebuked the disciples saying:

Why did He rebuke them? Sure He knew that the storm was coming, but I believe that the entire trip was a test to see if the disciples were really trusting in His Word or not. To see if they were really paying attention. When you view the story from this angle, it becomes clear that they should have never had to wake Jesus up, after all, hadn't He already told them that they were going to the other side? Can the Word of God lie? It didn't matter if the worst hurricane, earthquake, and a nuclear bomb had hit, if Jesus said that they were going to the other side, then they were going to get to the other side! Their problem was that in the storm, they forgot what He had promised and so fear took over!

Fear is the product of you forgetting the promise of God! Too many times we freak out in the storm because we forget what God has already said! Didn't He say that He would never leave you nor forsake you? Didn't He promise that He would not put more on you than you could bear? Didn't He promise that this trial would not destroy you but that ALL things would work together for the good in your life!? Didn't He say "lo I am with you always, even till the ends of the earth?" Did not He promise to finish the good work that has been started in you? Has God's Word not spoken? Why then do we get fearful? Why then do we get afraid? Why then do we worry? Because we forget God's Word and allow ourselves to get wrapped up in the storm. I'm here to remind somebody: if He said that you are going to the other side, then even if every devil in hell were to try to stop you, you are going to make it!

And so there are times that we desire for God to be active in our lives and yet it feels as if He is asleep and unaware of what is going on. When you feel as if God is not responding to your situation, remember that it's very possible that this is a test to see just how much you were paying attention to what His Word told you! If it seems that God is asleep and casting a deaf ear towards your prayers, it could be that He's trying to teach you to remember and hold on the promised that He has already given. Some people struggle and scream and cry out for a "new word from God" or some "new direction" and when they can't find it think that God has forgotten them. When you can't get a "new word from God" maybe you ought to go back to the last thing that He told you and stand on that and obey!

And too often it is that the Word of God already spoken brings you into a storm. When that happens, it doesn't mean that you should give up on the Word of God but rather that you should cling more closely to His promise! If something is powerful enough to stir up the storms of persecution and adversarial winds when you obey it, then you can be sure that it will also bring something good in the end! If God takes you into the storm, then you can rest assured that there is a purpose in it!

The disciples did not have a true revelation of just how powerful and mighty Jesus Christ was, before this incident. If they had, then they would have trusted in His Word that they were going to the other side. People with a true revelation of how faithful Jesus Christ really is don't freak out in storms that come in the perfect will of God, but rather hold onto what He has said and know that He will come through! God wants us to learn that no matter how hard life my seem, it's not hard to stay afloat on this journey if we will lean and trust Jesus in everything!

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And then we come to our other text. It's a ship and a storm and somebody waking up a sleeping passenger. But this time the situation's different. Oh, it's like Mark chapter 4 in that the person that is sleeping is the one who caused the storm, but this time the sleeping man is Jonah whose disobedience to God has created the situation. God didn't want to send this storm. It was not just a storm of life. This was a storm that came from the wrath of God on a rebellious man.

Pentecostals preachers like the story of Jonah and with good reason. There's much to gleam from this little book of the Old Testament. It stands out from the other minor prophets and gleams with excitement. What other book of this part of the Bible contains big fish swallowing a man up? For that matter, what other book in the world contains fish vomit? And there are great lessons to be learned about mercy and forgiveness and doing what's right and self-examination from this book and so we tend to preach it from the standpoint of the fish, or Nineveh, or Jonah. But have you ever thought about it from the perspective of the Gentiles who were on the boat to Tarshish?

The guys on the boat didn't ask for all of the excitement. They were just doing their job. They no doubt just wanted to deliver their cargo and passengers, collect their paychecks, and sail back home to be with their families. The trouble came from Jonah -- a prejudiced man -- that decided that rather than go do as God had commanded and preach mercy to the Ninevites and give them an opportunity to repent before God toasted them, that he would get on a ship heading the opposite direction and run from God. Jonah was in rebellion to God and running and God was determined to get his attention. It was just by chance that Jonah happened to get on board these guys' ship. But God let the ship get out to sea, and then sent a "whale of a storm" to try to get Jonah's attention. Think about it from the view point of the sailors: they are sailing on a journey with something on board that is in rebellion to God Almighty, and for this reason, they find themselves in a terrible storm.

Yes, sometimes storms are just life. It rains on the just and the unjust and that means that God will sometimes send a bad day in the life of Christians just so the heathen cannot look at Him one day at judgment and say "no fair." And as we have already seen, sometimes storms come from God when He is trying to reveal more of Himself to us. But we must remember that like the story of Jonah chapter 1, sometimes we bring storms upon ourselves also! When you are trying to make it through life with a little rebellion asleep in the cargo hold, then you'd better be prepared for trouble. Sometimes it is our unrepented and hidden sin that brings the winds up in our life! No matter whether you are aware of it or not, rebellion on board the ship will always lead to the loss of smooth sailing!

If it did not hit so close to home, the actions of the sailors in the storm would almost be comical. Human nature must not have changed much in a few thousand years, because when most people are in a storm of their own creation, they still act like these sailors in our text.

According to Jonah 1:5, the first thing that these men did when the storm hit was to cry out to "false gods." Rather than find the root of the problem. Rather than call out to the one God who could help. They leaned and trusted in the gods of their own creation. "Gods" that could not see, hear, nor speak, but that they hoped would soothe the journey.

That's what many people do even today. They have sin in their life and rather than deal with the sin and God Almighty, then when the heat and trouble comes from that sin, they immediately turn to other things to try to distract them and get them through it. Last week, I preached "knowing what you worship." I could probably add that you can know what it is that you worship by recognizing what it is that you turn to first for help in time of crisis. What is it to which you turn to "calm you" and "soothe you" when the storm first hits? That's probably a false god in your life.

Is it not true? To find an example, you only have to turn the radio to a country station. The guy cheats on his wife or commits fornication or gambles his check away or steals something and when the storm hits, where is the first place he goes? To the "honky-tonk" where he'll get drunk, smoke a cigarette to "calm his nerves" and lust over other women that are not his wife. The country music scene has created an entire lifestyle that is all about weathering the storm caused by your sins. But you never hear a song about dealing with the true cause of the troubles -- sins and disobedience to God and His Word -- and you only hear about turning to other things that go against God's Word and trusting in them. The reasons that their lives are in such a mess, and the reason that the people who listen to that trash lives and marriages are in such a mess is that they are not dealing with the real problem and that's the rebellion to God's Word inside. But rather than deal with the disobedience, they'd rather turn to a false god like whiskey or drugs that can't hear them, speak to them, or help them, but whom they hope might soothe the waves a bit.

The next thing the verse says that the men began to do was to toss their "wares" overboard. This was a cargo ship. They would make most of their money from delivering their goods to the port. The cargo was their plans and their purpose in life, and yet we find that it's the first thing to go in the storm.

Is it not true today? People harbor disobedience and sin in their lives and when the gods of this world don't calm the storm, and the waves get worse and the days get darker, they are quick to throw away all purpose from their life! As one preacher said, you want to scream out at this part of the story: "keep the cargo; throw Jonah overboard!" Think about what was like after the storm was over and they had tossed the disobedience and rebellion off the ship. They've survived and they've finally got everything on their ship right with God but now they've got to explain to their families and bosses why they have no money and why they lost the precious things that they were carrying!

How quick people today are to throw away their marriage, their kids, their jobs, their morals, their ministry, their anointing, their purpose when a storm blows up. I see people saying "preacher, I had to lighten my load, it just go too heavy to carry all of that precious stuff." And so when the storms get too bad, they chunk it overboard. And somehow it's easier to throw away valuable stuff than it is to admit that the problem might be the rebellion to God's Word that's deep inside. Somehow they would rather lose everything important and precious rather than deal with the sin issue that is truly causing the storm in the first place! And so we have on this earth, millions of people whose homes and marriages have been destroyed, and their relationships are shot, and they are living their lives, surviving the storms of life, but just a floating shipwreck with no purpose or value. But they have their sin. It is important to hold onto. They don't want to even admit it's there. They'll close their eyes and refuse to see that the reason that their life is a mess and their kids are a mess and their home is a mess is because of the one thing that they refuse to get out of the inner chambers of their heart! But I cry out to you today: leave the cargo alone, throw Jonah overboard!

Eventually they found out the problem. Jonah admitted that he was the cause of the storm and that he was disobedience and rebellion on their boat. And the scripture records a remarkable thing. Despite the storm's still raging. Despite the answer being obvious and apparent. The Bible says:

They just had the preacher tell them what they should do! They just had the man of God tell them "the only way that this storm will subside is to throw the rebellion overboard" and yet the scripture says "nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land." Even with the problem of sin pointed out and obvious, they still tried with everything within them to get out of the storm without having to get rid of the rebellion!

That's what some people do today. A preacher can point out the sin and the things in their life that are causing the storm and they can see it and understand it and realize that it's true and yet they still would rather exhaust themselves just seeing if they can get out on their own power and if they can survive with the sin still there. They will row and row and row against the winds of God trying to prove that they don't need Him! They are willing to try to stay afloat with the sin still on board!

But I'm preaching to you that when they finally got desperate enough to heave the rebellion off of the ship, the Bible says that immediately the sea ceased raging. All they had to do was get Jonah off of the ship! Get the sin out of the cargo hold and the wind stopped howling and the sun shone again!

And so I'm preaching today to some of you who you are here just trying to stay afloat in life. Some of your storms are because God is trying to reveal Himself to you in a greater way. Some of your storms are because God is wanting you to cry out to Him and let Him work in your life. And some of your storms are because there is sin in the cargo hold of your ship and the winds of adversity will blow until you get it out and repent to God and make some changes.

You can cause the storm to cease sooner or later. You can finish the storm with your purpose and life still intact, or you can throw them overboard. But the issue isn't the world. The issue isn't those around you. The issue is your sin. The issue is those things that even when the preacher points them out, you'd rather ignore and not remove from your ship. That's the issue that has brought the storm in your life. Sin, rebellion, disobedience is the issue. And only you can make the choice to throw it overboard and as such it could be said that only you can decide whether or not you will make it. What you do with your sin, will determine if you are able to stay afloat.