CTS Radical Christianity | Radical Trust

When Jesus said, "No one pours new wine into old wineskins" (Luke 5:37-38), He was describing the radical life He brings. New wine ferments and expands; old, brittle wineskins burst under the pressure. New wineskins, though, stretch to hold the new wine. In the same way, Jesus calls His disciples into a faith that stretches us beyond what feels safe or comfortable — the kind of trust that does not collapse under storms, worries, or uncertainty. There are three places this trust gets stretched: over storms, over worry, and over what the eye cannot yet see.

1. The Lord Over Storms

Jesus asked the disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee, and a storm broke out so fierce that the boat began filling with water. These were not weekend sailors; several of them were professional fishermen. They had handled bad weather before. This storm scared them. And where was Jesus while they were terrified? Asleep in the stern, with His head on a cushion. They shook Him awake with what is half-accusation, half-prayer: Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing? Jesus stood up, rebuked the wind, and said three words to the sea: Peace, be still. The wind ceased. The water flattened. And the men who had been afraid of the storm now had something larger to be afraid of, because the One in the boat with them commanded weather.

The lesson is not that storms will never come; the lesson is that the Lord of the storm is in the boat with you. Radical trust does not deny the weather; it knows who is sleeping on the cushion. Faith does not always stop the storm, but it anchors the disciple to the Savior who rules over it. The disciples' question — do You not care? — is the question every storm draws out of every Christian eventually, and the answer is the same answer Jesus gave them: He cares enough to be in the boat, and He has authority enough to make the wind listen.

Application is direct. When the storm comes — and it will come — the disciple's first response is not panic but prayer. The disciple says, Jesus is in my boat. He may not calm this storm tonight. He may calm it tomorrow. He may not calm it at all and instead carry the disciple through the middle of it. None of these outcomes is a sign that He does not care. All three are a sign that He is sovereign and present. The radical disciple's posture toward storms is therefore not desperation but rest — the rest of someone who knows the One who is sleeping with His head on the cushion is the same One who made the wind.

2. The Lord Over Worry

If the storm chapter is about the great fears, the worry chapter is about the small ones — food, drink, clothing, the bills that did not stop coming when the paycheck did. Jesus addresses these directly. He points the disciples to two ordinary things in front of them. Birds do not run agribusiness; they have no granaries; the Father feeds them anyway. Lilies do not weave fabric; they have no looms; Solomon in his full royal wardrobe was not as well dressed as the wildflower that comes up in three weeks and is gone in six. The argument is not that food and clothing do not matter. The argument is that they matter to the Father.

Then Jesus asks a question that should embarrass every Christian who has lain awake at three in the morning: Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? The honest answer is none. Worry has never lengthened a life, paid a bill, healed a child, or restored a marriage. What worry actually does is impersonate prayer while accomplishing none of prayer's work. It feels like spiritual labor and produces only fatigue. The disciple's alternative is named in verse 33: seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. The order matters. The kingdom is first; the needs come after. Reverse the order and even the needs do not get met properly.

This is what Matthew 6 looks like on a Wednesday night with no money. Worry tells the disciple to lie awake calculating disasters that have not happened. Trust tells the disciple to surrender the calculation to a Father who has counted hairs on heads and watches sparrows fall. The practical exchange the radical disciple learns to make is a small one and a hard one: replace what if with even if. What if the paycheck does not come becomes even if the paycheck does not come, the Father knows. What if the diagnosis is bad becomes even if the diagnosis is bad, the Father is in the room. The grammar changes; the heart follows.

3. The Lord of Sight

Hebrews 11 is the Bible's hall of witnesses for trust that has no immediate evidence. Abraham is the first name on the wall. The summary of his obedience is six words: he went out, not knowing. God had told him where he was going in only the vaguest terms — a land that I will show you — and Abraham packed up the household and started walking. He spent the rest of his life in tents, in a country that was not his, with promises that mostly outlived him. The son finally arrived in Abraham's old age; the nation took another four hundred years; the land took longer than that; the city whose builder and maker is God has not yet come down. Abraham believed it would. He died believing it without seeing it.

Paul puts the same principle into one verse for the Corinthian church: we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). This is the third place radical trust gets stretched — not in the dramatic storm and not in the daily worry, but in the long slow obedience in a direction whose endpoint the disciple may never see. Most Christian lives are mostly this. The pastor who plants a church that does not flourish in his lifetime, the parent who prays for a child's salvation for thirty years, the missionary who buries a wife in foreign soil before the first convert is baptized — these are the Abrahams. The future is not visible. It is only promised. The disciple decides which of those is more reliable.

The disciple who walks by sight will not make it through that kind of work. The disciple who walks by faith will. The promises of God do not depend on what is currently visible; they depend on the character of the One who made them. This is why Hebrews defines faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb 11:1). It is substance even before it is sight. It is evidence even before it is delivery. The radical disciple's sight reaches farther than his eyes do, because his eyes are looking at what God has said and not at what the circumstance is showing.

Storms, worries, and unseen futures are the three places trust gets stretched. The old wineskin of self-reliance cracks at every one of them. The new wineskin of faith holds. The Lord of the storm is in your boat. The Lord over worry is your Father. The Lord of sight has spoken the future already, and His Word does not return void. Where do you need radical trust today? In your storm, your worry, or your unseen tomorrow? Stretch.