“Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” – Matthew 14:31
“Why did you doubt?”
With these four words, we can already reflect our whole life in Christ. Why did you doubt? Why did you not trust the whole process of God? How come you let your fear eat you instead of holding tightly to the promise of God? Again, why did you doubt? Now, God always uses storms to teach us and to discipline His people. When Jonah tried to disobey God, He used a great storm to keep Him in the line and to bring Him back to the path where God called Him to go. Just like our verse today, when the disciples are experiencing a very strong storm and they see someone walking. When they recognized that it was Jesus, Peter asked Him if he could walk with Him.
So, when Christ said yes, Peter walked in the water, but when he saw a big wave coming, instead of focusing on Jesus Christ, who was just in front of Him, he succumbed to fear and that made him drown. Jesus then stretched out His hand and told Peter that he was of little faith, and asked him why he doubted. On first reading, we are always amazed by the faith Peter had in Jesus. We are always amazed that aside from Jesus there was someone who was able to walk on water and that is Peter because he had great faith in Christ. However, the comment of Christ to Peter is somewhat harsh because He called him someone who had a little faith.
If we reflect on this, we can say that compared to us, Peter had even bigger faith than us because he was able to walk on water. Yet, we have to realize that in Christ, our faith indeed matters, but He is more interested in the things that can kill our faith. He is more focused on addressing the possibility that our faith might be snatched away from us just because of our worldly fear. Now, through this verse, we can assess ourselves and check if we are really focusing on Christ while we walk on this troubled water called life? Are our eyes focused on Christ and not on the things around us that are trying to snatch us away from the faith we have in Christ?
Therefore, we must always check ourselves and ask ourselves, why did we doubt Christ? Why did we let our fear eat us up instead of trusting in God’s powerful hand? Let us always remember that these storms in our lives that we are experiencing right now, God knows about it and He just wants us to trust Him and to focus on Him. Thus, let us always focus on Him, and let Him guide us throughout the storm until it’s over. May it be sunny, may it be good days or bad days, we must always trust God, and may we not let anything distract us from looking directly straight at Him.
So, ask yourselves, why did you doubt? You shouldn’t doubt!
