“I had always done many tasks simultaneously, simply because I could. Persons seemed to benefit from my work, and multitasking fed my joy, as well as my ambition and drive.”1

But one day he was preaching, after an endless series of messages and preparation and fixing marriages and bringing reconciliation, and he turned to the assistant pastor in the midst of the sermon and said, “I can’t go on.”2

Have you ever felt like saying that? Maybe there is a lawyer here today who just wants to turn to his partner in the midst of his trial, and say, “I can’t go on.” I wonder if there is a super mom here wanting to put her super cape down for just a while, and is feeling like, “I just can’t go on.” Perhaps there is a young person and the pressures of peers, of society, and, sadly, maybe even a parent, are making you think, “I just can’t go on.”

I can tell you that I know of a tired preacher who needed to go to the Lord and take in the lessons for life seen in the Savior asleep in the back of the boat. I learned during my time away that I really needed to spend more time with Jesus in the back of the boat. Because if you don’t slip away with the Sleeping Savior in the stern of the boat, you will become fearful in the storms of life.

So, when you can’t go on, go in. Go into the hull of this boat, go to where Jesus is and take these four principles of resting in God’s sovereign grace for your own life as His child.

Here are the four lessons we learn from being with Jesus in the back of the boat during the storm.

I. Public ministry depends upon private moments.

The Lord is, in this passage, not preaching, healing or teaching. He is sleeping. Jesus is resting in the back of the boat. He is resting.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer! Psalm 4:1

In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. Psalm 4:8

The Lord often sought retreat in order to saturate His life with God. Rest itself is a way for us to say, “I have done what God has called me to do, and I will now rest. My rest is an act of faith that says, ‘without time alone with you Lord, I cannot be authentic when I am with others.”

Many of us remember the great actor Michael Landon. In the final year of his terminal illness, he was asked if the knowledge of his impending death caused him to love his family more. Landon’s response was, “No, I can’t say that I love them more. I’ve always loved them. I do notice them more.”3 What a response.