Walking On Water

Sometimes the plans we make don't always pan out like we hoped. Like this holiness series I started on my blog for the omer count. For the first two weeks I felt like what I was writing and what I was learning went hand in hand. After that, my posts felt more and more forced. God is continuing to teach me and grow me, but instead accepting that, I try to continue with my own pre-planned agenda.

Today is the 36th day of the omer. Over the last 35 days, I've drafted up two or three blog posts that I never published (and probably won't publish). One's called "My boat" in reference to Peter walking on water with Yeshua. The other is called "Poor in Spirit", the first of the beatitudes. The third one I already deleted some time ago. I bring this up because these drafts were the kind that are written as an outlet for myself rather than a show for everyone else. Both of them center on my lack of faith.

I don't think it's God's power that I have trouble believing. I mean, He created the universe--is it such a far leap to say He can do whatever He wills with it? Nor is it His wisdom. How can an omniscient God not be wise beyond our understanding? I think the part that is hardest to believe is His love.

Why would an omniscient, omnipotent, ever-present God, the King of the universe, whose voice most of the time I cannot hear--why would He care to attend to the details of my life? When I approach Him in prayer, I always hasten to say at the end of each request "not my will, but yours" and then wonder, why am I making the request in the first place if His will is just going to override mine?

A few things God put in my hands these last few weeks: A book about George Muller. He ran an orphanage in Bristol. He started for one primary purpose--to prove that it could be done by solely relying on God. The way he prayed and the way God answered his prayers are just amazing. Everything George prayed for he jotted down in a journal, and then when God answered he jotted that down next to the request. What's most amazing about his story is that he started out in his youth as a crook who thought prayer to be childish. God transformed this man into an amazing example of faith and prayer.

A verse from the book of Matthew: "And Peter answered him, 'Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water'" (Matt. 14:28). Command me to leave the safety of my boat to walk on the unsteady waves? Did Peter seriously just ask God to pull out his safety net, his security blanket from under him? The culture today says "God expects you to take care of yourself." That if we do not build our boats securely, we will sink beneath the crashing waves. That those who say they will walk on the water are either too lazy or too naive to build a sturdy boat. But to intentionally ask God to teach me to fully rely on Him--well, that's a dangerous prayer.

Truth be told, I don't know how to walk on water and I don't know George Muller's "formula" for successful prayer. Most of the time, I don't even know how to listen for God's voice. So, I fall back on what God taught me several years ago: "Even if you fall, I will catch you." Because of that, one thing that I can believe God for is that He will not desert me and leave me to my own devices. That He will not give up on me. And through His infinite wisdom, He will find a way to get through my thick skull and soften my hard heart and get me to a place where I can grow (after all, He knows me inside and out).

Maybe if I stop trying to force my own self-growth plan and let the Father do His work in me. Maybe if I stop trying to figure it all out for myself and just trust Him to guide me. It's like that first year of piano lessons, when you want so badly to play something epically awesome, but instead you feel stuck playing scales and learning the basics. And you just "know" that if your teacher let you jump ahead to the hard stuff that you could do it. And maybe you could learn to play one or two songs like that--but the learning would not be the same. In my efforts to live righteously, it's the same thing. I feel like there's no time to be playing around with the small stuff--that I've got to learn it all at once. But that's not how growing works. Most of the time growth is so slow you hardly even notice it is happening. And this can result in the feeling of going nowhere. That's when you have to trust that God is doing His work in you. Imperceptible sometimes, but very real.

So, I won't despair over comparing myself to Muller or other believers, but thank God for such people and the encouragement I can find in their stories. And I may not know the first thing about walking on water (I'm not sure Peter did either), but I will pray that God will call me out onto the waves so that I may learn to fully trust Him. And when I fall, as Peter did, I know His arms will be there to catch me.