06/18/2023
Do you follow Jesus without a second thought? Do you give your faith free and unquestioned rein to rule your life? Peter walked on water by faith, but he sank into the roiling sea out of doubt. I have allowed similar doubt to steal my victory on more than one occasion... have you experienced this in your walk with Jesus? These are the questions that face us all and the crux of my morning contemplation.
“He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, "Lord, save me." Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?"”
Matthew 14:29-31 ESV
Letting our minds take command of that place where only faith should rule results in our downfall. Questioning God by applying our physical, human, logic to the Lord's spiritual, heavenly, events or walk leads us ever back to what makes sense to us, and away from the unbounded miracles which are of God. We pluck ourselves from the hand of God and are cast by doubt into the sea once more.
Oswald Chamber wrote about this event in my morning devotional reading today. He spoke of immediately following God's calling, but also of the importance of staying fixed in our faith as we do. Let's read his words...
"If you debate for a second when God has spoken, it is all up. Never begin to say - "Well, I wonder if He did speak?" Be reckless immediately, fling it all out on Him.... It is only by abandon that you recognize Him. You will only realize His voice more dearly by recklessness." - Oswald Chambers
I was squirrel hunting on my grandfather's farm in North Carolina. I had entered the woods and taken a seat near some hickory trees and leaned back against a tree to sit. Shortly I saw not one but two squirrels moving in the tree tops. I dispatched them, and then moved deeper into the woods with dinner in my coat pocket. I walked and sat several times, but didn't harvest any more squirrels. Finally, I decided to return home and prepare my offering for my grandmother to cook.
When I turned toward home, I took first this ridge and then the next as I instinctively retraced my path into the forest. I was thinking about how proud I would be to present my squirrels for dinner when I suddenly reached a place where two ridges branched off before me. My inclination was to follow the ridge to the north, but as I applied my logic to the situation, I convinced myself to go south.
After many minutes of walking I realized I had made a mistake and that not only had I chosen the wrong ridge, but that I was now hopelessly lost. I wanted to panic, but I reasoned once more, and decided to follow a small creek down from the hills because experience told me that it would eventually lead me to civilization. Sure enough, I came to a road and a farmhouse, where I called my uncle and asked him to come get me. I was back in the world I knew.
Our faith, and the calling of God, is a great deal like this. We are called into the woods and provided with bounty, but in our humanity we eventually decide to take control of the situation ourselves. Sometimes it is out of pride, and at other times it might be one of a myriad of other human frailties, such as fear, that leads us astray. But, when we apply our logic and physical nature to an event that God has designed, we find ourselves separated from Him... lost. At this point our instinct is to continue on in the physical world in which we live and we find ourselves back where we began before God called.
Peter leapt from the boat and began to walk on the water towards Jesus. He was fully supported by his faith in the Lord, but somewhere between the boat and the hand of Christ, he applied the physical laws of nature to a spiritual event, and sank into the waves. His fear undid him, and he went from walking on water to drowning in the sea in an instant. In Peter's case, he called out to Jesus and was rescued... then was chided for his doubt.
Has this happened in your life? Have you been on your way to healing, success in delivering the gospel, or some other glorious heavenly event, and lost your way by thinking, "How is this possible?" Have you plucked the situation from the spiritual and plopped it right back into your own physical world? I believe that we all have done this at some point... it is part and parcel of becoming educated in faith. Our doubt becomes a lesson in learning to trust God in all things with unwavering faith.
Prayer:
Father, thank you for calling me to do your heavenly work, and thank you for giving me the faith to follow the path you have laid out before me. Lord, give me blinders to the world as I follow you; never let me be distracted by what I know to be laws governing my physical world and lose sight of the spiritual wonder you have placed me in. Holy Father, let Jesus lead me and let my eyes remain fixed on Him at all times. Keep my vision fixed ahead and don't let my doubt cause me to look back at the world. You are great beyond my ability to reason, and you are mightier than everything I face in this world. Into your hands I commit myself, and in your merciful provision I entrust my life.
“Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."”
Luke 9:62 ESV
Rich Forbes