Matthew 14:25
"Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake."
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The Greek text is more specific than the English translation lets on.
It does not say "shortly before dawn." It says "in the fourth watch of the night." That was the Roman military designation for the hours between three and six in the morning. The last and longest stretch of the dark.
Jesus came to them at four in the morning.
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The disciples had been on that boat since evening. Mark's version of the story tells us they were "straining at the oars, because the wind was against them." The Greek word for "straining" is the same one used for being tortured. They were not sailing. They were fighting.
For nine or ten hours.
Imagine that. The boat in the middle of the lake. The wind against them. The waves breaking over the sides. The men taking turns at the oars because no one can row that long alone. The arms going numb. The hands blistering. The hours passing — eight in the evening, nine, ten, midnight, one, two — and the shore no closer.
Jesus did not come at midnight.
He did not come at the first watch, when the disciples were tired but still strong. He did not come at the second watch, when the wind first turned hostile. He did not come at the third watch, when most men would have already despaired.
He came at the fourth watch.
The hour of the most exhausted darkness. When the body has used everything it has and is still pulling on the oar out of habit, not strength. When the question is no longer whether you will reach shore but whether you will live until morning.
This is when He came.
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I have noticed, in my own life and in the lives of believers I have known, that this is a pattern.
The Lord does not always come at the first watch. He often comes at the fourth.
We pray in the first watch — when the trouble first arrives. The diagnosis. The lost job. The broken relationship. The crisis at midnight. We pray with strength then, with words, with confidence that He will answer soon.
He often does not answer soon.
The second watch comes, and we are still praying, but the words are thinner. The third watch comes, and we are silent because we have run out of things to say. The fourth watch comes, and we are no longer praying so much as enduring. The oar in our hands has become a piece of wood we cannot let go of, not because we believe it will get us to shore, but because we no longer have the strength to drop it.
That is when He comes.
This is not a doctrine I have constructed. It is something I have watched the Lord do, over and over, in the lives of His people. He waits. Not because He is indifferent. Not because He is late. But because there is something He is doing in the fourth watch that He could not do in the first.
What is He doing?
He is teaching the soul that He is not a resource to be summoned at the first watch and dismissed once the crisis passes. He is teaching the soul that He is sufficient at four in the morning. That He is sufficient when the body is spent. That He is sufficient when prayer has become groaning and groaning has become silence.
In the first watch, we want His help. In the fourth watch, we want Him. And He has been waiting for the soul that wants Him, not just His help.
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If you are reading this in the fourth watch of something, I want you to hear this carefully.
He has not forgotten the boat.
The hours have not been wasted. The exhaustion has not been silence on His part. He has been watching, the whole night, from the shore. He has not been absent. He has been waiting for the watch in which His coming will mean what it could not have meant earlier.
He is coming.
He may come this hour, or the next, or He may stretch the fourth watch into a fifth that the rest of us cannot see. But He is coming. The boat is not lost. The wind is not stronger than His step on the water.
He walked the lake to find them.
He will walk further than that, to find you.
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Prayer
Lord, I am in the fourth watch of something I do not know how to name.
I prayed in the first watch with strength. I have nothing left now. The oar is in my hands by habit. The words have run out. I do not know how much longer I can keep rowing.
You came to the disciples at the hour when they had nothing left.
Come to me here. Not the resource I was summoning in the first watch, but Yourself. The Lord on the water. The voice that says, "Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid."
I do not need to be saved from the storm yet. I need You to be near. That is enough for the fourth watch. I will trust You to bring the morning when You will. Amen.
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Written by Dr. Jang in Jeju, Korea. Adapted into English by his son