The weekend is over and Moan-day is here. Work mounts like Mount Everest. Head swimming in a sea of thoughts of what to do and how to plan for the week. Problems flow in and out of your mind like a spring breeze reminding you of something fresh is around the corner.
Camel day comes and you’re trying to get over the hump of the middle of the week. The plans you planned have now fizzled. Your expectations are futile. Dreams are shattered or like a ship sailed away beyond your grasp into the ocean of countless and lost dreams.
Fry day is now here, and you feel like your brain is like a French fry waiting to be dipped into a sauce of weekend blues. You ponder about your Sat all day and wonder if you can make it to Son Day. Realization from the University of Hard knocks slaps you with a blow of an illness or even a death in the family. The cloud of despair just seemed to get bigger and like rain drops falling, so do the tears of wondering what is coming next. The wind begins to blow, tossing the thoughts around like falling leaves. There are flashes of light like lighting of memories of events past roar with thunderous echoes of resentment and guilt.
Maybe you are a like a friend of mine that lost a precious animal. Maybe you are like my wife who lost three loved ones in one week. Maybe you are like a co-worker worried about the health and wondering if they will make it. Maybe you put your house up for sale and are just frustrated because it is not going fast enough. These are storms and crises we face whether they are small or large we still have to go through them.
Just writing this out reminds me of my life at one point. I know that my disappointments were clearly my fault and some of my decisions were poor and I took the wrong path. Sometimes it felt like life was my car and I took the wrong turn because of a detour. The detours lead me to a new and fresh understanding about something I had to learn.
What I had to learn is how to walk on water. Impossible! Thought you might think that very thought. However, it is not impossible to walk on water. I created an acronym to help me to remember how to walk on water.
WATER = Working (an) Attitude Through (an) Eternal Relationship.
We all have dreams, expectations, and a mental picture of how our lives should be. Whether it is, for the moment, day by day, or in the future we have some idea of what we expect. A week described above can begin to fathom the demonic lie that begins to form, “Does God exist?” We feel alone and empty and sometimes wonder where He is in the midst of our storm cloudy day that seems to tatter with raining problems.
You may not even believe in God, but if this is true, then can I share a secret in life with you? There is too much evidence that He exists and I had to learn to walk on water in order to experience the freshness and newness of life to see He does exist. It begins with one simple thought: “If you do not change your thoughts and beliefs, your life that you now live, will be like that forever.” I did not want to live in a constant state of what ifs and wherefores and despair of hopelessness.
Do you fear change? Remember my acronym for fear? FEAR = Forgetting Everything About Righteousness is to forget that God cannot work in our life if we fear the inevitable knowing that He can. We allow ourselves to get into all kinds of mischief when we assume God must think and feel as we do.
Peter taught me how to walk on water. Peter says, "Lord, if it be you, ask me to come to you on the water." I understand that is the kind of thing for faith to do. Anyone can walk on solid ground, but faith is a water-walker. Faith has a can do, it has activeness, and it works where others fail, “for it is in Christ, I can do all things.” Faith is an active exercise that prompts you to move and to venture where others fear to tread. Faith developed Peter to love Christ. Even after Peter denied him, Peter was the first to strip his clothes and jump into the sea and swim to meet Christ after His resurrection.
How does one work an attitude through an eternal relationship? God is eternal and it is our attitude, which we have to work in our relationship with Him. We have to make our, “thoughts obedient to Christ”, through the “renewing of our minds”, in order to “know the will of God.”
First, we must let go of our internal intuitiveness to control. My swimming instructor always told me not to fight the water and to relax allowing the water to support your body to float. I had to let go of my fear, relax and learn to float and trust in the instruction I was given. We have to trust in the words of truth that God will see us through. Floating allows us to wait patiently on the Lord to see what he can accomplish in our live for it is, “God that works in you” to perfect His good will in you.
Second, I had to learn to keep walking through the storm. Several times I gave up, and I regret it because if I had only have stayed, I would have been promoted to the next position. Sometimes the pain we feel only sharpens us to a heighten awareness of being prepped to do greater things. We can stay as a caterpillar and slowly crawl through life, or we can change and learn to reach new heights and see a new world from a different perception.
Third, I had to realize that walking on water is not a characteristic of faith, but praying when you begin to sink is faith. Notice Peter when he reached out and said, “Lord, save me.” Peter, did not loose faith. He still kept the faith in the one that made it possible for him to walk on water and kept the faith when he lost focus.
Finally, I remember a story by Aesop, which tells of a story of man that saw a little boy drowning and sitting up by the shore, began to lecture him about venturing out to far. There are those who will ridicule or even our minds will beat us with self defeat in what we should have, would have or could have done and never have a helping hand out of our situation. Then we begin in believing in the lie and observe the burden which is too heavy to bear. However, Christ still seeing Peter reached out and lifted him up. Christ takes the burden off of us and creates the mustard seed of faith. I had to learn how to water that mustard seed and to cultivate it to grow.
Remember we have to work our attitude through an eternal relationship. That relationship is realizing when we are seeking, we use our mustard seed of faith and request help for it is HIM who catches us by the hand and raises us above the seemingly impossible surroundings. The more we seek God, the more we learn of God; The more we learn of God, the less we understand God; The less we understand God, the more we must believe God, and the more we must seek God.
To walk on water one must lean towards him and not run from the storm. Do not confine Him to your thoughts, but provide room for Him to work in your life. Be patient and wait upon him and not hesitate when he bids you to come. Trust that He will see you through and base your faith in the truth of His identity and not your own.
Isaiah 40:28-31
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
I can walk on water because my attitude in my eternal relationship with him rests in trusting even when it doesn’t make sense for me to trust in Him. When I put trust in Him and anchor my life in the cross there is abounding love that can and has sustained me through troubled times. Now, instead of swimming, I am walking on water. If I can, you can too because Peter had the faith to show us anything is possible. Faith is the things hoped for in the unseen.
