Saturday, July 13, 2013

"The Great Unknown Where Feet May Fail"

Have you ever stopped and looked back at the events of your life? Seemingly random choices and event that produced circumstances that left you in many cases wondering ... why did this happen?
Then years sometimes decades later God reveals to you the why those things happened hopefully you learned from your struggles and didn't repeat any of your former mistakes. This is what we would call growth and it leads to maturity in certain areas of our characters.
The amazing thing about trials and tribulations in life is people tend to view their decisions or choices as failures and it petrifies them or creates fear that freezes them from moving forward. Some might call this procrastination but procrastination is a mild form of this inability to move forward. you see the procrastinator knows what they need to do, should do, and just doesn't pull the trigger on it. What I want to focus on though is the fear that causes us to stop making decisions at all just out of  the thought of  "maybe" or "what if". Church people know this as having faith. Truth be told even if you don't believe in God, the bible, or Jesus you have faith too. You just haven't identified what you have faith in. Let me explain with a simple example. You have a light switch in your house. Do you think about whether the light will go on when you search for the switch? No. You don't. You believe it will go on because you've seen it happen over and over again. We'll the people of God, his true children have Jesus and they have seen him flick that switch in their lives enough times to just know that he can be trusted. Just like you know the room will light up when you hit the switch. Faith isn't some funny concept for religious folks only but it does matter what you put you faith in or hope in. You see most of us are looking for that 100% guarantee, the full proof plan or enough facts to set our minds at rest only problem here is your faith became all about you creating your own dynamic to trust and that's not faith at all.

Many people I have come across in ministry or in the church always ask the same question. "I want to know what God's will for my life is?" All of us whether we go to church or not would love to know what's coming up next in our lives. Today, I'm going to reveal to you a secret God revealed to me long ago but has brought it back to the forefront again in my life. Why? Because I was and still am in a season of the great unknown in my life. The things that I have endured and continue to walk through were never on the radar or even the hypothetical plan I had dreamed up for my life. Worse than that I was put in a position of not being able to help myself in almost every way you could imagine. I had to trust. I had to have faith. I had to believe in the plan and purpose that God had in all my circumstances and know that he was working it all out for my good. So I want to tell you this story hopefully a little different than you've heard it before but it paints the correct picture for you to find God's will in your life.
You may know this as the story where Jesus walks on the water or when Peter walks on the water but then starts to sink and cries out to be saved. What I want you to do is close your eyes and put yourself in the boat with the disciples. If your saying I'm not a disciple it's alright, I get that. None of the men in the boat at this time believed in Jesus yet either so your in good company. Imagine the storm. lightening, rain, wind and waves so fierce you think at any moment your life could be over. The bible calls it a tempest. Which we would call a hurricane.

Matthew 14:25 During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” 28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” 29 “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind and the waves, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” 32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 


So here we are in this great storm of life and we are terrified. What happens when fear takes control we start thinking the worst possible things. They are so scared they think Jesus is a ghost. How many times in your life have you been terrified of something that never came to pass or never happened? Worrying about ghosts that don't exist. I know I have too many times. Then Jesus tells us in the boat, it's me! Don't be afraid. Why not Jesus we reply?
Jesus answers...how about this? I just walked a couple miles on top of the water to a boat in the middle of a huge lake in the height of a really bad storm. Even if you don't believe I am who I say I am you can at least know that part is undeniable. 
This is the place in the story where you can begin to find what God's will for your life is? The storm is fierce. Your life is uncertain, your in a mess you see no way out of, you've run out of answers, and you have no energy left to fight.
Twelve men on the boat and only one decides he will trust Jesus. One man's focus changed from the horrible storms of life to his God and Savior. I wish Peter never lost focus on Jesus and they both walked back to the boat but unfortunately that's not the way it goes in our lives either. Faith is built over time and experience walking with God but it all starts with taking that first step out of the boat into the great unknown. What are you afraid of right now? Why won't you step out of the boat?


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