The storm I feared was carrying me into the freedom I had been praying for.
Beloved, before the sea, I drew its line and called it Mine. That sea is loud tonight, though it still obeys. Your hands are still on the rope, knuckles white, rain finding every seam of your coat, the rudder fighting you. This storm will not sink you. It is carrying you into the deep. Deep is calling to deep, and it is calling your name (Psalm 42:7). I have felt this spray of water before, the night the men I loved thought I had stopped caring because I slept (Mark 4:35-38).
What Your Hands Are Really Holding
The wind came up suddenly, the way it always moves over the waters. The sea climbed toward heaven and dropped toward the deep, and every man’s courage melted with it (Psalm 107:25-26). And in the stern, My Spirit watched over My weary ones who called it drowning. But the Captain had already named the harbor before the storm had made its voice louder. He who holds the stars in their courses holds the foot that almost slipped, and has never allowed it to slip (Job 38:31–33; Psalm 37:23–24; Psalm 121:3–4).
The Spray Reached Me First
The roaring spray of the waves was cold on My face before it ever reached yours. The lamp swung from shadow to light like a slow pulse, while you weighed if I was worth waking (Mark 4:38). I was not unaware. I was not far off, dreaming of some calmer water somewhere else. I was lying in the one place on that boat where the water would come in first, and I had chosen it before you ever stepped aboard, the way I have always chosen the worst place first (Isaiah 53:3-4).
The storm that woke you did not wake Me. I chose where to sleep.
I have been in that place before, the place where the water comes in first, where the current is loudest and the dark is total. I went through it once so that no flood would ever be the last word over you (Isaiah 43:2). What is breaking over you tonight is not new mercy running out. It is the same mercy, new again this morning, the way it is every morning, because it has never once been late (Lamentations 3:22-23).
Your Grip You Call Faithfulness
You built a glass wall between the ones you love and the deep, your own body, your own breath, pressed outward like a hand against a tide. Your hands forgot open. Your eyes went blind to the three feet distance in front of you, the three feet that were Me.
If you could call the clouds down into rain, if the sea drew back at your word the way the lightning answers Mine, then yes (Job 38:34–35). Never let go. But the sea has never once obeyed you. What you are gripping has heard no such word from you, it was always Mine to hold. I told the waters where they end, and the waters did as I said. I called the morning to its place and the morning rose as I bade. I set the deep its gate and bar and the deep, to this hour, has obeyed.
My beloved, be still, and know that I am your God
(Psalm 46:10).
The Line the Sea Has Never Crossed
Before the deep had a name, before light knew water, I spoke, and the waters gathered, trembling (Genesis 1:2,9; Psalm 33:6-9). I drew one line, and the deep has kept it through storms that swallow whole (Job 38:8-11; Proverbs 8:27-29). The wind that tore your sail still answers to it. It always has.
Look at My hand on this rudder. It drew that line in the deep where the waters are told to stop. It hung the stars in the dark and walks among them still, calling each by its name (Isaiah 40:26). It is also the hand they stretched across a beam of wood and held there with iron, the hand that on the third morning opened a sealed grave from the inside, walked out still warm, and took back the keys that death had never been given the right to keep (Revelation 1:18).
One hand drew the boundary of the sea and bore the nail, and it was always, from before the first morning broke, the same. One hand. One line. One Lord of the water and the wood.
Calvary Was a Sea I Crossed
Calvary was a sea too, Beloved, deeper than your deepest fear, and colder than all seas, colder than the cold that would freeze a soul, and I went into it to rescue you
(Psalm 22:1; Isaiah 53:5; John 10:18).
I bore your fears, your punishment, the way a lamb bears nothing, walking the line to slaughter without a word, because that weight was never Mine (Isaiah 53:7; 1 Peter 1:18-19). Death thought it had swallowed Me whole. On the third morning it found it could not keep what it had swallowed, and it gave Me back, and lost its sting in the returning (1 Corinthians 15:54-55).
And when I came up on the other side, on the third morning, with the smell of myrrh still on the linen behind Me, I was already standing where your Captain needed to stand. Ahead of you. On the shore you are afraid you will never land (John 19:39-40).
The Root Beneath This Storm
What was from the beginning, what I have held since before the world began, I am holding now, in this boat, in this storm, in you (1 John 1:1).
I am with you in the stern, at the rudder, on the shore that is coming. You crossed from death into life the moment you believed, Beloved, and nothing in this storm can carry you back to what you left behind (1 John 3:14). Nothing in this water, nothing in this wind, nothing in the whole wide dark, can take you out of My hand (Romans 8:38-39). I live inside the Father, you live inside Me, and I inside you: one spirit, one life, one love that cannot come undone (1 Corinthians 6:17; Galatians 2:20; John 14:20; John 17:21–23).
One vessel wearing a crown, built not to go down and the crucified Hand within cannot drown, but only to crown
(Revelation 2:10; John 10:28; Romans 8:11; 1 Peter 5:4).
Sent Across, Sent to Free
There is a lost soul in bondage waiting on the other side of this crossing. A man outside Gerasa was once bound, chained by more chains than anyone could count, who had stopped expecting anyone to come for him at all, until his Redeemer stepped ashore and called (Mark 5:1-20).
I crossed that sea once to reach him, and the legion that held him bowed before Me the Elohim (Mark 5:1-2; 6–7). When I spoke, the chains fell from him. He sat down clothed, and in his right mind, and free from what was foul and dim (Mark 5:15). I am crossing this one with you for the same reason, so you will be My hymn (Mark 4:35-36; 5:19–20; Isaiah 43:21).
This crossing was never an end, it was always a passage, and the word that opened the water once has said it again: come (Mark 4:35). Not asking. Saying. He who is with you is not a comfort against the crossing. He is Immanuel, God housed in flesh, standing in the bow, and no darkness has ever made that name go out (Matthew 1:23).
He who began it keeps it, the way the deep keeps nothing and His hands have never once let go of what they hold (Philippians 1:6). Now, let the wind have the sail. Let the night spend itself. Let the gold of the morning have the shore because weeping may stay for the night, but it is coming for you (Psalm 30:5). The other side is not a place. It is not a distance you are closing. It is wherever I Am, and it is more than you were told (Exodus 3:14).
Lift your eyes, Beloved.
I wore the thorns before the gold was worn, and what the thorns have borne, the glory has sworn, and what the glory has sworn cannot be torn by any storm (Isaiah 53:5).
The King of Glory is here in the gold, and He is your portion to hold (Psalm 24:10). And I have found in you My all in all, and, Beloved, you are Mine, forever Mine, from shore to shore; where I am the Door, you are Mine evermore (Ephesians 1:23; John 10:9).
Open Bible: Find one thing you have been gripping tonight, a decision, a relationship, a fear you have been steering by hand. Write it on a strip of paper. Open your Bible to Mark 4, verses 35 through 41. Place the paper inside the page, over the verse where the wind grew still. Leave your hand open on top of it. Do not pick it back up.
Prayer: I have been so afraid of letting go that I forgot You were already holding the rudder too. I open my hand now, not because the storm has stopped, but because You have not. Amen.
vjtravenblog 