“A Refusal to Panic”: Faith in the Face of Surgery #3

“Faith is a refusal to panic,” Martyn Lloyd-Jones said. It’s a refusal to be controlled by circumstances and, as the poet Robert Browning wrote, it is “unbelief kept quiet.”

In other words, faith brings peace when we apply our faith because we know King Jesus is with us. Even when, and especially when, he is sound asleep in the stern of our storm-tossed boat.

The image of the sleeping Jesus has steadied me more than any other in the last five months of stormy seas. The image comes from the true story of Jesus asleep in the boat on the stormy sea. What happened in that boat made a mark on the disciples. Matthew (8:23–27), Mark (4:35-41), and Luke (8:22–25)  all record the incident.

The Wind Still Blows & My Wound Won’t Close

It’s been since March that I’ve had a healthy lower right limb. My last jog was March 27th on Sanibel sand. It’s been into the fire and into the storm since then. I’ve not been able to walk down the hill to see our garden or to stand in the shower. But God always provides. Meals appear, my mom and son help me on grocery runs, and I’m refilled with good cheer.

Tomorrow, I face my third surgery in five months. My surgeon confirmed today that it’s likely there will be more. I haven’t turned the corner. Or, as a student told me yesterday, upon seeing me for the first time since May, “I thought you’d be better by now.” 

“I thought you’d be better by now.” 

The storm still rages. The wind still blows and my wound hasn’t closed. Even though the surgeon’s scalpel will cut open that increasingly delicate skin above my heel, I know that I’ll be fine. By that, I mean I am in God’s hand and there unsnatchable. 

(I also ask for your prayers that God would show mercy and heal my heel.)

I will do my best to trust him in the boat. 

Faith’s Greatest Point

For some reason, the image of the sleeping Jesus, and how he rebuked his panicky disciples when they woke him strengthen my faith. 

Strong, growing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is what this life’s about.

But when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?

And without faith it is impossible to please God. 

Faith is the important thing. 

“Faith,” C. H. Spurgeon wrote, “is always at its greatest point when we are in the middle of a trial.” That quote so resonated, that I turned it into this graph.

Have you felt this, too, how faith grows stronger as the trial goes longer? 

So it is God’s goodness to call us into faith-growing storms. 

To all who say we can’t know why, Peter says (1 Peter 1:6-7), we can. It all boils down to faith. 

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 

Tested faith brings glory to God, and panic lets him down. 

Right Where He Wants Us

Peter may have started learning that in the boat, after the Lord’s rebuke of the great wind and great waves and his little-faith disciples,

Here is Mark’s account, which may have to him from Peter, 

³⁵ On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶ And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. ³⁷ And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. ³⁸ But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹ And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰ He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹ And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Two quick points about this text. 

First, the disciples were in the storm because they were obedient to Jesus. The storm was not a response to disobedience as it was for Jonah. Jesus had called them to cross the lake, and they came. As far as I can tell, I’m in this storm because the Good Shepherd led me here. 

Second, it must have been some storm to work even seasoned fishermen into a panic. And it must be some storm to put my highly acclaimed ankle surgeon, if not in a panic, into a tight spot. 

But here we are. Right where he wants us.

Where Is Your Faith? 

“Why are you afraid?” The Greek word for “afraid” in Mark 4:40 is not phobos, which is the more common word for fear. It is deilos, used only three times in the New Testament: in Matthew 8:26, a parallel with Mark 4:40, and in Revelation 21:8. There it is translated “cowardly,” as in, those whose ”portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.” Nowhere is deilos a commended kind of fear.

This was a rebuke from Christ.  

In Luke’s account, Jesus asked the disciples “Where is your faith?” This question reveals the disciples’ problem, which is our problem. It wasn’t that they completely lacked faith, but that they weren’t applying it in that critical moment. 

Dr. Lloyd-Jones explains it’s as if Jesus asks:

“Where is it? You’ve got it, but where is it? It ought to be here, but it isn’t here. Where is your faith?” 

The disciples had just seen Jesus heal a shriveled hand and a paralyzed man. They should have trusted that Jesus was in control. 

Even though “the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling.” 

Even though Jesus was “in the stern, asleep on the cushion.” Especially then.

Because if Jesus the God-Man who knows our Heavenly Father best could sleep in a storm, by grace through faith, so can we. 

Jesus sleeps, he stills his hand, to test our trust so that our faith will grow. 

But the disciples did not, as Dr. Lloyd-Jones puts it, “apply their faith” to their stormy situation.

They should have refused to panic. They should have refused to be controlled by circumstances, because that storm-tossed boat was exactly the place the Lord had chosen for them to activate, and so grow, their faith. 

Where is your faith-activating, faith-growing, faith-purifying place? 

Mine is in my house tonight, on the eve of my third, and least routine, heel surgery in five months. This is my storm-tossed boat. This is the place I will rest with Jesus who fell asleep as the waves rushed in.

Right here, right now, is where God calls me to walk by faith and not by sight, and to rest in his power and love. 

Lord willing and whatever happens to the creek, hobbling along in my boot, that is just what I will do. 

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.”

-Psalm 4:8