Brown's Daily Word 2-5-09

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord for the way we can have dreams and visions from the Lord, the Creator of Heaven and earth. It has been written that without vision people perish. I was in a conference last year in Washington, DC, where one of the speakers was Dr. Michael Duduit. I first met Dr. DuDuit in Birmingham Alabama in 1992. In the words of Dr DuDuit, "Do you know what is the richest place in any city or town? It’s not the jewelry store, or the country club, or anything so modest as that. It’s the cemetery. Go by any cemetery – it’s full of riches that people carried to their graves. There are great songs that were never written, magnificent works of art never created, life-changing achievements never attempted, powerful testimonies for Christ never spoken. Can you think of anything more tragic than to go to your grave never having tasted the great things God made available to you – all because you never asked?" Victor Pentz, pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, one of the largest churches in America, said that when he was a young pastor he one day walked into his office with a pair of scissors and cut the word “impossible” out of his dictionary. That may sound silly, but it shows the kind of vision that God uses to transform churches, communities, and nations. Only when we expect great things from God are we prepared to receive great things from God. In Ephesians 3:20, Paul said, “God can do anything – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!” (The Message) What would we attempt for God if we knew we couldn’t fail? The Lord Jesus stood by the sea of Galilee and called fishermen to reckless obedience. The fishermen left everything and followed Jesus with reckless abandon, without thought as to where the next meal was coming from or what chores must be done around the house. To live in reckless obedience indicates that we expect great things from God, but it also means that we will attempt great things for God. Faith is wonderful in the abstract, but there comes a moment of truth when we must get out of the boat and put our faith into action. Reckless obedience requires getting out of the boat. Many people have faith in theory, but on the night that Jesus came walking toward them across the water, only one disciple stepped out of the boat. Peter not only believed Jesus could enable him to walk on the water, but he acted on that belief. Faith is not simply knowing that God is there, that Jesus can save. It goes beyond mentally believing and requires doing something about that belief; it means getting out of the boat. In 1789, William Wilberforce stood before the British Parliament and called for an end to human slavery within the British Empire. Every year for the next 18 years he introduced a bill to end slavery, and every year for 18 years his bill was defeated, but he never gave up on his campaign. Then, in 1833, just four days before he died, Wilberforce saw Parliament pass a bill abolishing slavery. But it never would have happened if someone had not stepped out of the boat. In the late 1800’s, Wilbur and Orville Wright believed that “the age of the flying machine” had arrived, but for ten years their experiments continued to fail. Then, on December 17, 1903, on the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, their little plane lifted off the beach and a new day of air travel had begun. It never would have happened if they had not moved their dreams from idea to reality. They had to step out of the boat. Faith is the ability to trust what we cannot see. When we are willing to step out of the boat in reckless obedience, we are freed from the obstacles of life that would entrap us. Peter stepped out of the boat and joined Jesus in doing something no other man had ever done before. When Jesus said, “come,” Peter got out of the boat. It was a powerful moment of faith for Peter, followed by an equally low moment. He took his eyes off Jesus, just for a moment, to look at the storm, and he began to sink. He had stepped out of that boat with his eyes and his confidence fixed on Jesus, but as he began to look around, “when he saw the wind, he was afraid.” He began to look at his situation and his circumstances, and he had a "reality check". He began to think, “Wait a minute. I can’t walk on water!” That was when Peter started to sink.
Many of us have experienced something similar. God has called us to a task, and we have begun well enough, but we take our eyes off Him and begin to question ourselves. We look at the circumstances as the deciding factor in whether God's task can succeed or fail. We notice the wind and the storm, and we lose heart. Often, a crisis comes into our lives, and we begin to be engulfed by the situation. We wrongly believe that the challenge is too great, the conflict can’t be overcome, the wind is too strong. That is taking our eyes off Jesus. Sometimes we remove our focus from our God, who called and appointed us, and we begin to look at other people. It would not be surprising if Peter had looked back at the other 11 disciples still in the boat and thought, “Why are they in there and I’m out here?” It is altogether too easy to start paying attention to what other people are doing (and telling us to do), and we forget what Jesus has commanded us to do. Often things begin to fall apart when we look at ourselves. We second-guess ourselves and our situation. Even Peter came to the moment when he realized his own inability to walk on water. He was absolutely right! He could never do this thing in his own power. He would sink like a stone. Yet, for a moment, when he stepped out of the boat he wasn’t operating in his own power. He was walking in the power of Christ. When we walk in His power, recklessly obedient to His call, walking on water is like walking down a sidewalk. One of the amazing discoveries of walking with Christ is that it is in reckless obedience that we discover reckless grace. It is only when we are willing to step out of the boat in obedience that we are in a position to discover the awesome grace of God that is available to us. There are two important truths that we need to address. First, when we lose our focus on Jesus, we will sink. But it is equally true that even when we are sinking, Jesus is still there. His grace awaits our obedience by faith.
Peter would never have experienced the saving touch of Jesus in that moment if he had never stepped out of the boat. It is when we practice reckless obedience that we put ourselves in a position to discover reckless grace – grace without limits, grace that doesn’t depend on our abilities or our goodness, grace that reaches through a storm and brings us safely home.
Jesus Christ left behind the glories of heaven and came to live among us. And at Calvary, He covered us with the sacrifice of his own body. He gave Himself so that you and I can have life abundant. That is reckless grace. It is in reckless obedience that we discover reckless grace. How about you – are you ready to get out of the boat?
In His Grace,
Brownhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMrAafe7Mns