I Want My Name in Lights

It sure is easy to fantasize about what your life could be, isn't it?  Whenever I find myself in a tough situation or when circumstances seem overwhelming, I find myself dreaming about what I could be doing instead of where I find myself.  Usually, my conversation with God goes a little something like this:

Me: God, I think that I could be better used as a missionary somewhere...maybe Wales or South Africa, or maybe even Australia.  If You told me to sell everything and be a missionary, I would do it right now.

God: I am so thankful that you have that kind of servant's heart, but I want you to stay where you are.

Me: Apparently, You didn't hear me clearly, I said I am willing to go anywhere You want me to...just name the place.

God: Alright, I want you to go to your house and love your family to the best of your ability and share with them My love, too.  Then, I want you to go into your community and serve others and show them My love as well.  

Me: What about serving in Wales or South Africa or Australia? 

God: Now, is not your time.

Me: (said in a frustrated child's voice) But Gooooooddd!

When I was younger, I had this dream of being a "famous" youth evangelist.  Whenever there was a youth camp, I wanted to be the guy people wanted to call and speak at their camp.  It was totally a selfish and prideful desire, but I passed it off in my head as something I would be doing for God, so it was all okay.  As I grew and God matured me, my desires began to change, but I still wanted to be used in some big, awesome way for Him.  Maybe He can use me to be a worship leader for thousands of people.  Maybe He can use me to write a book and do a book tour and talk at conferences.  Maybe He can use me to ________ fill in the blank for yourself.  What I've come to realize is that I am still a selfish, prideful person.  I want to do all these grandiose things for God, but the reality is that maybe God wants me to be a janitor (figuratively speaking).  Maybe He wants me to just be faithful in the small tasks and the tasks where my work will not be recognized.  Sometimes, God needs a janitor for the job that is at hand.  Other times, God needs people like Billy Graham.  Here is what I've come to realize about God, though.  He views the janitor in the same light as He does Billy Graham.  There is no unimportant or menial task with God.  

What does God require of us?  Faithfulness!  Sometimes, the task God gives me seems mundane and lacking in excitement, but to Him, it is an important part of His plan.  Think through Scripture.  What do we know about Enoch?  Not a whole lot, right?  In Genesis 5, we see who some of his relatives were and who some of his descendants were.  Then, we come to verse 24, where we learn, “Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”  We know nothing else about his life.  Was he a famous prophet in the Old Testament, preparing the way for the Lord?  No.  Did achieve some great task for God like building an ark or setting God’s people free from captivity?  No!  All we know is that he was faithful to God and God brought him to heaven without Enoch dying.  Do you think God looked at Enoch’s life as a failure or something that was "less than" because Enoch didn’t achieve some great task?  Absolutely not!  Enoch had a life well-lived.  He was faithful to whatever God called him to do, and his reward was heaven itself. 

In the end, what I want to be written about me is the same thing we know about Enoch…He walked faithfully with God.  That is all that matters!  All the other things that distract me…fame, renown, the desire to be somewhere else, they all center around my pride and selfishness, which is what God is trying to kill in me.  Why am I not satisfied with being a janitor for God?  Pride.  Why am I unhappy with not being a missionary and God telling me to stay?  Pride.  Why am I jealous of what God is doing in other people’s lives?  Pride.  Why am I unsatisfied with what God is (or isn’t) doing in my life?  Pride.  In order to move past all our dissatisfaction, frustration and aggravation we have with God and what is going on in our lives, we must die to our pride.  It’s just that “easy!”  When we feel those negative emotions coming on, our focus should shift to the Maker of our emotions.  We must take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5).

To this day, I still struggle with being jealous about what God does in and through other people.  I compare their lives to mine, and I feel like I am disappointing God because I don’t have the same achievements.  The great thing about God is that He meets me in the middle of those frustrations and jealous thoughts and loves me anyway.  As Brennan Manning says, God loves me just as I am and not as I should be, because none of us are as we should be. 

The bottom line is that God’s desire, more than anything else, is for us to be in constant contact with Him.  He wants us to be totally reliant upon Him, so that He can show us how much He loves us by how He will orchestrate our lives.  The question is, are you brave enough to say, “Yes?”  If you do, just know, you won’t be alone!

Be God’s!

I Dare You to Trust

I have been a fan of Rich Mullins' music for about as long as I can remember listening to music.  His album A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band forever changed my idea of what music and lyric writing meant.  I still remember the day, and where I was on my college campus, when I heard that Rich had passed away in a tragic car accident.  What Rich inspired me to do was to try and understand God and His love for me.  Since Rich's passing, I have watched just about every documentary and tribute that was produced about him and his life.  Most recently, there was a film called Ragamuffin that was made about his life.  It was a film that David Leo Schultz (who I hope I get to meet and have a conversation with someday) directed that beautifully depicts the struggles Rich faced throughout his life.  The things that I admired most about Rich were his humanity, his unashamed realness, and his passion for knowing God.  He didn't pretend to be something he wasn't, and he wasn't afraid to be broken in front of others.  

I think we all can learn a lesson here.  In order to be honest before others, you have to be honest with yourself.  In order to be honest with yourself, you have to be honest before God.  In order to be honest before God, you must be broken.  Brokenness is an essential part of honesty, in my opinion.  Today, I think our churches are overrun with people who have selective brokenness or selective surrender.  That is not what God requires.  What does God require?  The death of self.  Every day, another piece of me has to die.  Every day, another piece of my pride, my judgmental spirit, my anger, and anything else that does not reflect my Savior has to be killed.  There will never come a day that God won't require that of me.  The question is...do I have the guts to surrender?

For years, I had this very poor, distorted view of God.  I thought He was a God of rules, regulations, criticisms, critiques, and judgment.  When I view God that way, I take away almost everything that Jesus did on the cross.  What is at the core of who God is?   Love and compassion.  While watching Ragamuffin, I heard this quote by Brennan Manning (another man whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration for):

(It's rather long, but very worth it!)

On judgment day, I believe God will ask one question, and only one question…did you believe that I loved you, that I desired you, that I waited for you day after day, that I longed to hear the sound of your voice?  The real believers will respond and say, I believed in your love, and I tried to shape my life as a response to it.  But many of us who are so faithful to our ministry to our practice, to our church-going are going to answer, "Well frankly, no sir, I never really believed it.  There is the real difference between the real believers and the nominal Christians who abound in our churches across the land.  No one can measure like a believer the depth and the intensity of God's love, but then again no one can measure like a believer the effectiveness of our gloom, our pessimism, our low self-esteem, our self-hatred, and despair that block God's way to us.  Do you see now why it's so important to lay hold to this basic truth of our faith, because you are only going to be as big as your own concept of God.  We make God in our own image, and He winds up as being as fussy,  and rude, and narrow-minded, and judgmental, and legalistic, and unloving, and unforgiving as we are.  I've been in churches from Bangor, Maine, Miami, Seattle, San Diego, and St. Louis, and, honest the God, of so many Christians I meet is too small for me.  Because He is not the God of the Word, He is not the God who is revealed in and by Jesus Christ who, at this moment, comes to your seat and says, "I have a word for you.  I know your whole life story.  I know every skeleton in your closet.  I know every moment of sin and shame, dishonesty and degraded love that darkened your past.  Right now, I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship, and my word to you is this…I dare you to trust that I love you, just as you are, not as you should be, because none of us are as we should be."  

When I heard that, God wrecked me.  For so many years, I was the person who had to say, "well frankly, no sir, I never really believed it."  Now, I am beginning to dare to believe that God loves me just as I am.  God's love for me is not performance based.  It is based solely on the fact that HE IS LOVE!  God loves you just the way you are, too!  It's not because you go to church every week, or go to a bible study, or tithe, or sing, or play in the praise band, or serve in some other capacity.  All of those things are great, but His love for you is based on the fact that God IS love...and He is crazy about you.  Does God know that I am going to fail Him again and again?  Absolutely.  Doesn't that change His love for me?  Absolutely not!  What would happen if we all grasped this idea?  Man, you want to talk about revival.  If we can view ourselves in the light of God's love, imagine how we would view others!  Everything would change.  How we led our families, our jobs, our communities, our churches, our nation....  Everything.  Would.  Change.  What about you?  Do you dare trust that God loves you that way?  I dare you to trust that God loves you, just as you are, not as you should be, because none of us are as we should be.

Be God's

Foolishness for Christ

I surrender all
I surrender all
All to Thee, my Blessed Savior
I surrender all
("I Surrender All" written by Judson Van DeVenter and Winfield Weeden)

Or maybe this one,

Strip away all that remain for the glory of Your Name
'Til there's nothing left of me
Burn the kingdoms I have made that You would shine and I would fade
'Til there's nothing left of me, 'til there's nothing left of me
("Nothing Left of Me" written by Jeffrey Scott and Joel Engle)

Or maybe one more,

So I'll stand with arms high and heart abandoned
In awe of the One who gave it all
I'll stand my soul Lord to You surrendered
All I am is Yours
("The Stand" by Joel Houston)

As a worship leader and musician, I can't tell you how many times I have sung and played these songs.  In the moment, when I led these songs, I thought I meant every word coming out of my mouth.  However, if I'm honest with you, I meant them from my head and not my heart.  As I would sing these words, inside I was trying to convince myself that I meant them.  The reality was, I was singing "I surrender all...up until this line in the sand that I have drawn.  Then, I surrender some."  Or, "Strip away the easy stuff that remains, 'til there's still something left of me."  Or, "I'll stand, my head (not my heart) Lord to You surrendered, some of what I have is Yours."

Peter is a prime example of this kind of struggle.  In Peter's own head, he was invincible.  He had convinced himself that if Jesus had asked him to run through a brick wall, Peter would've done it in a heartbeat.  Even when Jesus confronted Peter to tell him that he would deny Jesus three times, Peter's response was, "You must be out of your mind."  I am the same way.  For years, my head was totally committed while my heart teetered back and forth.  My heart would only commit to things that were safe and easy.  Whenever things got difficult, my heart would shut off communication to my head and there would be a busy signal.  Talk about stubborn...I know.

Just like Peter, however, there comes a point in our lives, as believers, that our Heavenly Father brings us to a crisis of faith.  There is no busy signal when the Father gets involved.  He presents us with a question, as He did with Peter.  "Do you love Me?"  Of course I do, my head and heart agree on that.  "Do you trust Me?"  Of course I do, wait, my head does, but my heart isn't sure.  "Do you truly want to surrender and mean those words you sing?"  Yes, Lord, the deep of my heart is calling out to the deep of Your love.  Wait, if I'm supposed to surrender, then I have a few questions for you, Lord.  Will there be pain involved?  "Yes, you must be refined, and that process is not an easy one."  Will there be suffering involved?  "Yes, when you die to yourself, it hurts, but the closeness you will have with Me will far outweigh the cost it took to get there."  Will it be safe for me and my family?  "Your definition of safe is not the same as Mine, but I will never leave you or forsake you.  I love you, and I want what is best for you and your family."  Having struggled through these questions between God and myself, I was finally brought to a point a total surrender, and my heart and head finally agreed.

What does surrender look like?  Well, to others, it will look like foolishness.  Foolishness is defined as an act that is lacking in sense, judgment or discretion.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:10 that we are fools for Christ.  If we follow Christ the way that He requires, our lives will not make sense to those around us.  We will sacrifice when others would walk away.  We will love and show mercy when others would turn up their nose.  We will seek less when others desire more (speaking of things).  When people look at us and watch us, they will see that we are not of this world.  They will look at us as foolish.

Here is what I have come to realize on my journey to foolishness, I have to allow God to break through the busy signal between my head and heart.  If I am to sing, and truly mean, the words of these songs on surrender, then I have to stop trying.  If I try and make myself surrender, I will fail every time.  At the core of surrender is the idea of yielding, or submitting.  Initially, there is this fear of what will happen, but fear does not come from the Lord.  The enemy will fight against this kind of surrender with all his might, so don't allow fear, doubt, or any other negative thought or emotion sway you.  Trust that, through this process, the Lord will never leave you or forsake you.  He is birthing in us His desires and His will for our lives.  God is always at work in us, it's up to us to yield control.  It is then that God can do amazing and miraculous things.

Be God's!

Helplessness

John 21:17 - "He asked him the third time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love Me?'  Peter was grieved that He asked him the third time, 'Do you love Me?'  He said, 'Lord, You know everything! You know that I love You.' 'Feed My sheep,' Jesus said."

I have to be honest, there are times that my life feels like a runaway train headed down a mountain, with no brakes, with a curve is straight ahead, and a thousand foot drop into a deep chasm.  Have you ever felt that way...helpless?  I am currently fighting that battle right now.  There are several areas in my life that are beyond my control, and there is nothing I can do to fix any of them.  I am literally at a point of total reliance on God. Now, being in a place of total reliance is great on one hand, because God has ample opportunity to work things out in a way where He receives the most glory.  However, personally, it is the one of the hardest things to live out.

I have been using Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest" during my quiet time that I spend with the Lord.  Earlier this week, I read a passage called "The Piercing Question."  In it, Chambers was referencing Jesus' restoration of Peter in John 21.  Chambers made the following point:

Unless we are experiencing the hurt of facing every deception about ourselves, we have hindered the work of the Word of God in our lives. The Word of God inflicts hurt on us more than sin ever could, because sin dulls our senses. But this question of the Lord intensifies our sensitivities to the point that this hurt produced by Jesus is the most exquisite pain conceivable. It hurts not only on the natural level, but also on the deeper spiritual level.

Why is this important?  I'm glad you asked.  If we are to truly follow after Christ the way He intends for us to, then we are going to have to face some of these same questions.  He is asking us these questions in order for us to surrender, and, when we do, it will be some of the most intense pain you will ever feel.  You begin to realize how much you have allowed the enemy to dull your senses.  At this point you have 2 choices, you can give in let God finish the work He started in you.  The other choice is to fight against Him tooth and nail until, eventually, God has worn you down to a place where you have no other choice but to surrender (kind of like Jonah).   The good news is that the moment we feel that intense pain, God is able to instill and reveal His truth.  When we learn this kind of lesson, just like Peter, it will be one we will never forget.  Look how God used Peter after this moment of restoration.  He was the cornerstone on which God was to build His church.

Helplessness is the feeling you get when you are in the middle of this process.  It is one of the enemy's tactics he uses to try and deter or distract us from the bigger truth, which is that God is working and moving in our lives.  The journey we have to go on in order to reach this level of brokenness is a painful one.  My buddy, Jason, heard a great quote that states, "Faith preaches easy but walks hard."  My tendency is to try and speed up this process or try and justify a decision and ask for God's blessing after the fact.  The reality is, God's timing is never my timing.  Through this process, God is trying to instill in us the importance of patience.  The phrase from the song "The Lord Our God" keeps coming to mind..."we won't move without You, we won't move without You, You're the light of all and all that we need."  The way we defeat helplessness is total reliance on and brokenness before the One True God.  We can't move without Him.

The bottom line is this...do we truly desire to chase after God and make Him our heart's only devotion?  If so, there is going to be a lot of death in our life.  We will die to our pride and have it replaced with God's love and humility.  We will die to our lust for things and have those replaced with a desire to give to those in need and show mercy to those who don't necessarily deserve it.  We will also die to our desires, and they will be replaced with a yearning for God's will to be done in our lives.  Those are just a few areas that will have to be surrendered.  So, there I am in a train headed down the mountain with no brakes and a curve ahead, and all I can hear God say is, "Give it a little more gas."  Death is a beautiful thing isn't it!  Who wants to journey with me?

Be God's!

Standing for the Weary

The last 2 years have been some of the most challenging years I have ever faced.  Mind you, my family has faced some challenging things such as medical challenges with my oldest son (there were times we didn't know if he was going to live), my wife breaking 20+ bones in a skiing accident, including the majority of her vertebrae, some cracked ribs and several breaks in her sternum.  After surviving through these and many other challenges, it makes you think that you have learned all the "hard" lessons you are supposed to learn.  I assumed, by this point, my faith was pretty solid and unwavering.  Then, the last 2 years happened.  Not only has my faith been challenged, but so has my belief of whether there is a God, my idea of how I define the things I read in Scripture, and just about every core belief I have inside of my soul. 

We all reach a point in our journey of faith where we must choose belief over doubt, and that is the essence of my struggle for the last 2 years.  I have journeyed through my "dark night of the soul," and I feel like I have come out on the other side.  On the other side, there are wounds, there are still unanswered questions, but there is also comfort, peace, and renewed joy.  How true it is when Scripture tells us that God will never leave us or forsake us.  I realized that the distance I was feeling between God and myself was created because I began to walk away, not Him.  The enemy doesn't play fairly.  He'll use whatever weapon in his arsenal to discourage or distract us from the truths we know from Scripture.  Whenever I felt afraid, or worried, or doubtful, or deceived, it was because I had taken my eyes away from where my gaze needed to be, just like Peter when he walked on the water.

One passage of Scripture that helped bring me out of my "dark night" was from Isaiah 35:

Even the wilderness and desert will be glad in those days.  The wasteland will rejoice and blossom with spring crocuses. 2 Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy!  The deserts will become as green as the mountains of Lebanon, as lovely as Mount Carmel or the plain of Sharon.  There the Lord will display his glory, the splendor of our God. 3 With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands, and encourage those who have weak knees. 4 Say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies.  He is coming to save you." 5 And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unplug the ears of the deaf. 6 The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy!  Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the wasteland. 7 The parched ground will become a pool, and springs of water will satisfy the thirsty land.  Marsh grass and reeds and rushes will flourish where desert jackals once lived. 8 And a great road will go through that once deserted land.  It will be named the Highway of Holiness.  Evil-minded people will never travel on it.  It will be only for those who walk in God's ways; fools will never walk there. 9 Lions will not lurk along its course, nor any other ferocious beasts.  There will be no other dangers.  Only the redeemed will walk on it. 10 Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return.  They will enter Jerusalem singing, crowned with everlasting joy.  Sorrow and mourning will disappear, and they will be filled with joy and gladness.

I love what verses 3 and 4 say, "strengthen those who have tired hands, and encourage those who have weak knees.  Say to those with fearful hearts, 'Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies.  He is coming to save you.'"  One thing that I've learned is that I have tremendous friends and family who truly walk alongside me through dark times.  They encourage me, pray for me, and lift me up when I feel like I can't keep going, which brings me to the point of this particular post… 

There will come a point in all our lives, if we are truly following after Jesus with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, that we will need to help carry someone else's burden (Galatians 6:2).  In order to fulfill this requirement, we need to care about the person enough to be a part of their lives.  We need to truly intercede in prayer, which means to put yourself in their shoes and pray from their perspective.  It's more than just, "God, be with Robert during this difficult time."  When was the last time you wept for someone else and the pain they were going through?  When was the last time you hurt so badly for someone else's situation that you couldn't sleep?  When was the last time God led you to fast for someone else and pray for their situation?  This is what it means to truly be a Christ-follower.  I have been on the receiving end of this before, and God taught me about what it's like to receive this kind of love, support and encouragement.  Now, through what God has taught me, I look forward to being that kind of support for someone else. 

Romans 8:28 tells us, "We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose."  I think we've all heard this verse misquoted or taken out of context.  One thing God has taught me through all this is that my definition of "good" is not going to be His definition of good.  Actually, my definition of most things don’t match up with His definitions.  I heard someone say one time, "If it's not good, it's not the end," so we journey on believing that God will reveal His "good."  We must continue to pursue God with all that we have through our dark nights.  If we don't, we will begin to sink, just like Peter.  As we journey on, be aware of fellow journeyman around you and help carry one another's burden.  When you do, God will teach you more about yourself and Him than you ever thought possible.

Be God's!

Humble Yourself

1 Peter 5:5-7

⁵ In the same way, you younger men, be subject to the elders. And all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.  ⁶ Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time, ⁷ casting all your care on Him, because He cares about you.

The verb translated "humble yourselves" means that we are the subject of action.  It can also be translated “Suffer yourselves to be humbled.”  Therefore, God is one the doing the action…to us.  We are being humbled by Him.  In our lives, we reach a point where God needs to teach us another lesson in order for us to move forward in a way that glorifies Him.  In order for that to happen, we have to be refined, which means another piece of our pride has to die.  God has to humble us so that we can be used in a way that He desires.  So, I ask myself, wouldn’t I rather just submit to God’s authority over me and receive His humility instead of always fighting against it and being humbled in a way that I wouldn’t like?  It will be hard.  It will be challenging.  There will be days that I will have successes, and there will be days that I will fail miserably.  I have to keep moving forward and daily submit to God’s refining process.  In the end, I will look back and be amazed at what He did in me and why He did it. 

Now, in verse 7, the apostle explains to them that while this humbling process is going on, they should cast all their care (not cares) upon God. The word "care" is the translation of a Greek word which means "anxiety" or "worry." The word "all" in the Greek text has the idea, not of every worry that comes along, but the whole of their worries. They are to cast upon God the whole of their worries, that is, come to the place where they resolve to cast the whole of their future worries upon Him, and the result will be that when those things that would otherwise worry them come up, they will not worry.  To put it simply, when I submit to God’s authority, discipline, and direction in my life, and I trust His direction, I shouldn’t have a care, anxiety, or worry.  The reason I worry is because I begin to doubt God’s process and direction.  I think that I can handle the situation better than God can, which is pride, and that brings us back to the fact that God’s resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.   Now, that’s not to say that we shouldn’t make plans and use wisdom with regards to our decision’s about the future.  When God alters our plans for what we thought our future was going to be, we have to humble ourselves, and cast all our “cares” about what His new direction is, on Him.  Trust His process!

The key to all of this is to live in the moment that God gives us.  I can’t worry about next month, or next week, or the next day, or the next hour or minute.  I have to live in the moment that God is currently giving me.  As I write these words, I have thoughts about what I have to do next, or when I get home, or this weekend.  Then, I start thinking about what decisions, compromises or obstacles I will have to make or endure to get these things accomplished.  Let me give you an example…when I get off work and go home, I look forward to 8:30 p.m. when 4 out of my 5 children are in bed.  At 8:30, I finally get to relax, lay on my bed with my wife, and watch a show or catch up with each other’s day.  Many times, I make decisions that expedite that process at the expense of my children’s happiness.  The other night, all the kids were outside having fun together, which is a luxury with having that many kids.  Instead of letting them play a little longer, which would’ve made them miss their bedtimes, I called a couple of them in so they could get clean and get ready for bed.  Now, they were a little disappointed that they had to come in, but it didn’t make them hate me, nor did they give me a hard time.  However, it was out of a purely selfish motive that I called them inside.  I could’ve justified it to myself by thinking that they had school and they needed their sleep, but it was because I wanted the evening process to begin so that I could have “my” time.  What I should’ve done is allow them to enjoy being with their siblings.  Those times are when memories are made.  It is then that I realize that pride is a terrible beast to slay.  It is a battle most, if not all, of us face every day.  I believe that is why Jesus reminded us to take up our cross daily to follow Him.  I can’t let tomorrow’s worries determine how I live right now.  

This journey that God has called us to is a difficult one, and not for the faint of heart.  Each day, God requires us to die a little more to ourselves.  If we are truly seeking after Him, and desiring holiness above comfort, and purity above justification, then we have quite the challenge ahead of us.  However, as I have travelled down this road (reluctantly at times), I have determined that God has yet to disappoint me with the outcome of His refining process.  During the process, I have lots of questions, frustrations and criticism, but when I submit, I begin to see what He is really trying to accomplish…more of Him and less of me.  He truly does care about me!

I must give credit to my friends Jason and Darren, and to the Holman Commentary on 1 Peter for helping me with putting some of these thoughts together.

Be God's!

Let's Risk the Ocean

Matthew 14:29b

"So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water towards Jesus."

A few years ago, I remember my accountability partner and I read a book entitled, "If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat" by John Ortberg.  At the time I read the book, I didn't realize how much it would impact me.  This book dissects this account of Peter walking on water and gives great insight into how it can be applied to our lives.

Peter is the disciple I can relate to the most.  Deep inside of him is this burning desire to be bold and lead, but there is also a part of him that has the best intentions but fails miserably.  This account of Peter walking on the water encompasses every attribute of Peter's humanity and dilemma (and mine, too).  As I read through this passage again, questions started popping into my head.  First of all, how good am I at recognizing God's presence?  Every disciple that was on that boat didn't realize it was Jesus in the distance.  When times are good, or when I'm in corporate worship, identifying God's presence is easy.  Conversely, when times are bad and things aren't going my way, when the waves of life are crashing all around me, it's difficult to determine if I really see a figure in the distance standing on the water asking me to step out of the boat.  The boat is really comfortable and secure.  Stepping out into the rough seas of the unknown is scary and risky.  It is then that I must realize, as Ortberg said, that this is not just a story about risk-taking, it's a story about obedience.  Obeying God can be difficult, because we have to face things that aren't enjoyable like pride, control, and failure.  We were made for something more than merely avoiding these things, though.  There is something inside us that wants to walk on the water and join in on the adventure of following God with reckless abandon.

This begs the next question...what is the "boat" that is keeping me from living this adventure?  My "boat" represents safety and security.  It's something that I put my trust in other that God.  It represents something that I may not be willing to give up.  It could be my pride, my belief in my own talents and gifts, money, family, or relationships.  I have to have an honest conversation with myself to figure this part out.  Stepping out of my "boat" means that another piece of me has to die.  God is calling me out on the water to purify me of something else in my life that doesn't reflect Him.

Peter was facing these same thoughts in his head, but he decides to abandon his own comfort and reason and throw caution to the wind.  He swings his legs over the side of the boat and....stands!  Peter put his entire faith, trust and reason in the hands of Jesus, his Savior, and then, he takes a step.  Was there danger in getting out of the boat?  Absolutely.  But, as Ortberg states, there is also danger in staying in the boat.  If I never get out of the boat, I never fully join in on the adventure God wants me to take.  Staying in the boat means that I only want to follow God according to my terms, not according to His.  It also means that I am allowing my enemy to cloud my view of who God is and what He has planned for me.

Now, what happens once we're out of the boat?  I'm glad you asked.  Whenever I have stepped out of the boat to follow after God, I experienced setbacks, I faced opposition, there were obstacles that I didn't know about or see, and there was plenty of fear.  Let me go ahead and say that there are times that you are going to fail miserably, just like Peter.  Can we just come to grip with that fact?  Peter didn't make it all the way to Jesus.  Jesus had to come to Peter's rescue.  Ortberg says is perfectly, "Failure is not an event, but rather a judgment about an event.  Failure is not something that happens to us or a label we attach to things.  It is a way we think about outcomes."  Peter knew, all too well, the shame of public failure.  In front of his closest friends, and in front of his Teacher, he failed.  However, Peter was the only one, in this instance, that knew the amazing feeling of walking on the water.  No one else got out of the boat.  Failure is a vital part of learning and growing.  Through all of my failures, I have gained a lot of wisdom as well.

Why risk the ocean?  Why should I risk all my comforts and safety to step out into tumultuous waters?  Ortberg closes out his book with the best statement to answer this question, "The water is where Jesus is."  It's really that simple.  What should inspire me to leave my comfort, my safety, my security?  Jesus.  Most of the time. I try to manage my life to the point where my family is safe and secure, where I can predict what is going to happen (for the most part), and where I can present the illusion that I have everything under control.  What does this achieve, though?  I think God is calling us all to step out the boat of our cookie cutter lives.  I know that when I step out onto the water, I will fail.  Sometimes, I will fail miserably, and I'll do in front of my family and my friends...and that's okay.  It's all part of the journey.  Then, every once in a while, through the power of the One who called me out there in the first place...I will walk on water.  When that happens, it's all worth it.  It makes all the failures that I had along the way disappear.  In that moment, with the waves crashing in all around me, with my eyes focused on my Savior in the distance, I walk with reckless abandon.  It is then, that I live!


"Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)"
by Hillsong United

Verse 1
You call me out upon the waters
The great unknown where feet may fail
And there I find You in the mystery
In oceans deep my faith will stand

Chorus 1
And I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine

Verse 2
Your grace abounds in deepest waters
Your sov'reign hand will be my guide
Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me
You've never failed and You won't start now

Bridge
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Saviour


Be God's!