The longer you’re married, the more you can anticipate how your spouse is going to react, to respond, to be in any given situation. When at first you’re getting to know each other, though, you are often surprised by what you see or hear. “I’ve never seen this side of you,” we say. “I didn’t know that about you.”

While Jesus took time away alone to pray, his disciples took to a boat and the sea. “When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them.” Hours later, at dawn, Jesus entered the storm to come to his disciples “walking on the sea”. (see Matthew 14:22-33)

Whatever the disciples’ condition in those moments, it wasn’t the storm that suddenly unnerved them. It was what or Who they saw walking on the sea. They were terrified. But Jesus spoke a word to them in the middle of the storm: “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”

“I’ve never seen this side of you,” Peter might have said. But it was still him, still Jesus.

How often do we go through life and see in the middle of our stormy circumstances the approaching shape of Someone. What’s going on? Who is that? Jesus, is that you? I’ve never seen this side of you. And he replies, “It’s still me, Jesus.”

There was a man named Noah whom at a moment’s notice God called to build an ark. “What’s a flood?” Noah might have asked. Nothing like a flood had likely ever happened before. God was doing something unnerving, unfamiliar, unknown, uncharted in Noah’s life. “God, is this you?” A different side of God. Still, the same God in whose eyes Noah had found favor.

Every “side” of God gives us another glimpse of who He is—of His love, of His faithfulness, of His mercy, of His kindness, of His goodness—and of who we are in His eyes of grace.

What a 3 year old son knows of His father, is not what he comes to know and to understand at 13, at 23, at 33. There is a knowing, sides of knowledge, that we will only experience in new situations and seasons of life and relationship.

God is not always easy to understand. Jesus is not always easy to follow. “You want me to forgive them?” “You want me to tithe?” “You want me to love my enemy?” “You want me to get up early and pray?” “You want me to give that up?” “You want me to give that away?” “You want me to welcome them in my home?”

For every “stepping out of the boat” as disciples, there’s a stepping in to something new. There are sides of Jesus you will only discover in the boat. But then there are sides of Jesus you will only discover out on the waves.

Jesus calls all His disciples to follow Him both in the familiar and the unfamiliar; in the old and the new; in the easy and the hard; in the comfortable and the unnerving; in the seen and the unseen; in the calm and the terror. “Is that still you, Jesus?” “Yes, it’s still me.”