Hello, my beautiful island home.

This week, I wanted to submit a devotional thought because I believe we all need moments of encouragement to help us stay afloat in this sea of life. In true Chelsea fashion, this devotional thought comes from God encouraging me in my own life and then impressing upon my heart that someone else might benefit from the Word He gave me when I needed it.

I am a forthcoming, transparent person, and since the birth of my second son last February, life has been a beautiful blur. In this season with two sons aged 3 and 1 — and as I write this devotional thought, both with seasonal fever and colds — I often feel like my ship is taking in water. Many moments feel like I am bailing out my boat rather than cruising along calmly with my babies.

The toddler phase has revealed triggers I thought I might have — and some I swore I would never have — and it has presented me with the opportunity to humble myself before God and be open to this season being a tool for the refinement of my character. The silent work of accepting the reality that there are parts of you that need to grow and let go in order to become a better version of yourself for your children can be one of the hardest things you do in life.

The other night, while being pinned down by my babies — one on either arm in the wee hours of the morning — I felt like I was drowning. I felt physically and emotionally claustrophobic. One movement and either one or both littles would wake, both sick and in need of rest. With no ability to shimmy out from under them, I was alone with my thoughts, without the opportunity to distract myself with social media scrolling, Netflix, or cleaning.

Thoughts of finances, goals I want to achieve, deadlines, expectations, my sons’ futures, the list of chores waiting to be done, guilt from the lack of devotional time — simply the mental load of motherhood — flooded my mind. I was leaning into the lie that I was far away from God because I haven’t managed to sit down to prayer journal or read a full chapter in so long. Silent tears began to fall from my eyes.

In that moment, a simple thought planted itself in my heart and mind: Jesus is in my boat.

That thought led me to remember the account in Scripture of Jesus resting in a boat with His disciples while crossing the lake when a storm hit. This recount is found in three of the four Gospels — Matthew 8:23–27, Mark 4:35–41, and Luke 8:22–25. Mark and Luke take a little more time to detail the account. This is Mark’s account:

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”

And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him.

And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling.

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?”

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.

He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”

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?”

***

As I read this passage, what stood out to me was how severe the storm was — and Jesus’s response after He calmed it. He asked, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”

I’m not going to lie — reading “Why are you so afraid?” had me looking at the Bible a little sideways. If the storm was so severe that they thought death was a likely outcome, doesn’t that warrant being afraid?

But it was the next line that I believe the Holy Spirit wanted to remind me of: “Have you still no faith?”

It was here that I remembered a quote from a book I read a couple of years ago, Lessons on Faith by AT Jones and EJ Waggoner. The quote reads:

“Faith is the depending upon the word of God only, and expecting that word only, to do what the word says.”

This blew my mind because in John 1:1, referring to Jesus, John states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And in John 1:14, also referring to Jesus: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.” (ESV)

Some context that Mark and Luke give us is that Jesus said: “Let us go across to the other side.”

With this beautiful understanding of faith — Jesus being the Word of God — He said, Let us go across to the other side. By this time, the disciples had witnessed many experiences of reality aligning with Jesus’s words, in the form of healing and miracles.

So, if He said they would go across to the other side, believing that God’s Word will accomplish what God’s Word says by God’s Word alone, they should have had the assurance that His word would come to pass — that they would, in fact, cross to the other side and not perish along the way.

This is the faith I pray God is growing in me — that I will simply and always take Him at His Word, depend on His Word, and trust that His Word will accomplish what He says it will do.

The reality is that, even with Jesus in our boat, we are not immune to life’s storms. In this particular passage, they had the Word that said they would cross to the other side. Everyone’s walk with God and journey on this side of heaven is different. We all have our own storms. Some storms, with Christ, we get through them. Some storms — even with Christ — result in death.

Our relationship with God is individual and personal. He speaks to us individually, but He has also spoken collectively through promises in His Word that, in faith, we can trust He will accomplish in any storm.

I want to leave you with two of those promises.

The first is that Christ will never leave you nor forsake you. He wanted us to know this so deeply that it is repeated at least seven times in Scripture (Deuteronomy 31:6, 31:8; Joshua 1:5; 1 Chronicles 28:20; Hebrews 13:5; Matthew 28:20; Romans 8:38–39).

The second is this: when you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, no matter how the storms of life blow — no matter what the outcome is on this side of heaven — we have the hope of eternity with our Lord (1 John 4:15–17; 1 John 5:13).

My final thought is this.

There is a song my Granny taught us. I remember one year we were camping down at Ferry Reach, and the weather turned horrible. Most of our tents were leaking and flooding, but Granny’s tent was dry. I was in her tent with my siblings and some cousins, and she started to sing:

“With Christ in the vessel we can smile at the storm, as we go sailing home…”

As an adult, I think of this song differently. I don’t think I will always be smiling at the storm, because storms are real, tough, and many times scary. But hopefully, in the midst of the storm, I can remember to look and see Jesus in my boat and smile at Him — remembering the promises He has given me.

And even one day, when I face my last storm, the home I am sailing toward is not an earthly one. It is a heavenly one.

And that is the greatest hope we all have in Him.