Walking on Water (First blog entry!)

Today my alarm failed to go off, so at 6:17 I woke up and decided to go to the post-workout Bible study. I got to the gym just in time for a 15 minute bike ride and about 5 minutes of stretching, so needless to say I didn't get much of a physical workout. One of the things we talked about was the story of Peter's attempt to walk on water.

I never really thought much of the story other than the life lesson of having faith in Jesus, and how Peter doubted.  There's a whole lot more to it than that though. Peter didn't fall because he lost faith in the Lord. Peter always had faith, he saw Jesus, or rather he saw a figure, spoke to it, heard His voice, and realized it was Him. After that he realized Jesus was walking on top of water. Not only water, but a storm, and was unaffected by it. So Peter knew that it was possible through the power of the Lord to walk on water. The reason he fell was because he became distracted. He lost focus of what was really important and was frightened by the storm (Matthew 14:30) I mean let's be honest wouldn't you? Rumor has it that the other eleven were too afraid to even leave the boat. I can imagine them sitting there hugging their teddy bears and rocking in the fetal position. They were probably thinking "Here we are in the middle of a storm, our boat is going to sink, we're going to drown, and to make things worse here comes a ghost!" I mean I'm sure some of them were so scared they didn't even know Peter left the boat. So is Peter really the one that we should point fingers at when Jesus said "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:31 (and change) NASB) What do you think Jesus said to the others?

This was an awesome lesson for me today. One I've been trying to work on lately too, so it was a great confirmation. We as Christ followers need to leave our Boat (our comfort zone), and go out into the Water (the world). Once in a while forces will appose us, but we need to stay focused and ignore the Storm (Lucifer, etc.), and stay focused on Walking on Water (what's really important).

One of the couples in the Core Group that Haley and I go to lives out at Miracle Camp and on Sunday they talked about how people look up to them because they live a Christ centered life and devote themselves to God. They explained how they felt a lot of times like they are taking the easy way out by surrounding themselves by other Christ followers who share common goals and they never have to feel uncomfortable.

I have another friend who works at Bair Lake Bible Camp, and one of the things they teach out there is that if you feel comfortable, you aren't learning anything.

So to anyone that is reading this I challenge you to go out and make yourself uncomfortable.

In the words of Daniel Radcliffe (I know, right?),  "There's never enough time to do nothing."

Haley has her test today at 2 p.m., please pray for her.