The disciples came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us, we are perishing!”
In this saying the duality of the disciples’ spiritual condition is revealed: they are frightened by the storm and recognize their powerlessness, and so they turn to Jesus as the only source of salvation, yet their cry is still born of fear, not of full trust. They believe that the Lord can save, but that faith is still mixed with anxiety and panic, which is why in the next verse Christ calls them “of little faith.”