Matthew 14:31 (NLT) Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him. “You have so little faith,” Jesus said. “Why did you doubt me?”

Living life with Jesus must have been a mind-blowing experience as the disciples never knew what He would be up to next. From healing the sick, opening blind eyes, unstopping deaf ears and casting out evil spirits from people, Jesus was always involved with highly powerful and dramatic situations. On one such occasion after feeding five thousand men (not counting women and children), He sent the disciples back to the boat they had been traveling on to get to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. As we know from scripture, a strong wind rose while they were far from land and the disciples began struggling to keep the boat moving and not capsizing against the heavy waves. Into this frenetic and terrifying situation comes Jesus walking on the very waves that the disciples were fighting against. At first, they were terrified when they saw Jesus, thinking that He was a ghost. You can't really blame them, because who would ever expect to see anyone who wasn't in a boat walking on the waves of a fierce storm? When they realized that it was Jesus, Peter mustered up the courage and the faith to ask Jesus if he could get out of the boat and walk on the water with Him. What he was thinking, we'll never know, although we do know that after a few steps on the water, he regretted his decision. He started to sink but Jesus was right there to pick him up and walk him back onto the boat. That's when he heard Jesus tell him that his faith was very little.

From our vantage point, Peter's faith was a lot bigger than ours because I don't know of anyone else who would have thought of even attempting what Peter did. Did you notice that none of the other disciples cared to join him? But in Jesus' estimation, his faith was still so little. The reason why Jesus thought so was that Peter, having seen all the impossible miracles that Jesus had done up to that point, should have known better than to think that he was in any danger. It was when "he saw the wind and the waves" that he became afraid and began to sink. Jesus was physically right there with Peter. It was the moment that Peter looked away from Jesus and onto the circumstances around him that he lost his faith for a moment, and that's all it took for him to begin to sink.

What about you and me? Although Jesus is not physically with us, He is closer to us today than He was to any of the disciples or anyone else while He was here on earth physically. Peter could have taken courage and kept his faith intact by simply keeping his eyes glued on Jesus, but today, Jesus lives in us through the Holy Spirit. This is more than Jesus “with” us. It's Jesus in us! Jesus has done enough miraculous things in our lives for us to know that He is more than able to take care of us. That means that we, like Peter, have no excuse for our little faith. Jesus has done so much for you and me. He has proven Himself faithful over and over. So why is our faith still so little? It's because even though He lives in us, we too take our eyes off Him when the storms come. Whenever we choose to focus on our problems instead of on the Lord Jesus, we begin to sink like Peter did. Let's keep our eyes fixed on Jesus through the storms of this life so that our faith will be strong and not little. As we keep our eyes fixed on Him, the wind and the waves of our storms go out of focus and the reality of Jesus in us comes into laser focus, making us more than conquerors through Christ Jesus. That's the faith in us that Jesus wants to see and the faith that will lead us through this life and safely into His loving arms for all of eternity.

Pastor Joey Vazquez