Dr. Richard Swenson, a physician who wrote The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live within Your Limits, said:

"[We must] stop believing that chronic exhaustion is normal, that a listless spirit is inevitable, that burnout is piety…[but rather our goal is] Sustainability, service, passion, and joy."5

Could we be honest and say that some of us have not trusted God for our children, we have not trusted God for the salvation of our loved ones, we have not trusted God with our careers, and we are tired, and we have even lost our joy? Listen to the Savior who slept in the back of the boat in the midst of the storm. Listen to Him as He speaks to you:

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"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

And hear God say to you from the Book of Hebrews:

"...for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his." Hebrews 4:10

"Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest..." Hebrews 4:11

Some of us need to rest from working to please God. He is pleased with His Son. Rest in Jesus and you will be resting with the Beloved. Some of us just need to rest from our anger, our troubled spirits which desire to gain the upper hand, repay for an evil we think has been done, or a great need that we think only we can meet. Rest. Rest with Jesus. He is the Lord of life, including Lord of the storms.

And this leads us to the last truth I want to show you out of this passage.

IV. Our lives cannot be destroyed by earth's wind and waves, since our souls are sustained by God's promises and power

Jesus could sleep in the storm. Jesus' mission could not be destroyed by earth's wind and waves since His life was sustained by His Father's promise and power. Jesus' disciples had to learn that the storms could not destroy the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus chided them before calming the sea. The Savior asleep in the stern while the saints were afraid in the storm was a call to rest in His sovereign grace.

Bonhoeffer wrote of the German Church's weakness during the storms of Adolph Hitler's reign of terror:

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?"6

Sometimes I have fought the storms to learn that they are more powerful than I am. I too learn to feign faith in the storm. And then it must be asked, "Am I still of any use?"