Life Outside the Boat
We love a good story about someone risking it all. The irony is that the best-selling chair in America is called La-Z-Boy, not Risk-E-Boy.
Human nature seems to be risk adverse, so is that a hindrance to following Jesus? Most likely not, because Jesus does not call us to risk our lives but to relinquish our lives. And there is a difference.
Whether you risk or relinquish your life, you will need guts. When you risk your life, you need what they called in the old western movies “guts,” the undaunted will to put your physical life on the line. Choosing to relinquish your life requires guts, too. But this type of guts is something you believe in, something you stand on, and something which you are convinced of. This is G.U.T.S., an acronym for “God’s Ultimately Totally Sovereign.”
When a Christ-follower becomes throughly convinced that God is sovereign, then life events are faced completely different. Take the Apostle Peter in Matthew 14. We see his GUTS. Jesus feeds the 5,000 and then sends the disciples off across the Sea of Galilee. Nine hours into a two-hour voyage, the disciples’ boat is losing the battle against the wind. You know the moment when you think you have hit the bottom, only to find out there is a trap door on the bottom floor? Well, that is exactly the story of these 12 men. When they thought they were dying in a storm, they now think they see a ghost.
Good news for them as it was no ghost, just Jesus coming to them in the midst of the storm.
You know the story . . . Peter is quickly white-knuckling the edge of the boat, but he refuses to take a step outside the boat until Jesus calls him. Lack of guts? Just the opposite. Peter had GUTS and knew he could only walk on water to Jesus if Jesus said it to be so.
Peter was patient in the crisis and waited for the call of Jesus. There is no greater display of GUTS than when you and I, in the midst of a crisis, trust the call of Jesus and obediently follow his command, no matter how crazy the call may seem. GUTS is the mix of faith and obedience, and when that happens, crazy things like water-walking happen.
Peter is remembered for sinking in the water once he took his eyes off Jesus. We sure give him a hard time for this. I think when we get to Heaven, God is going to lock Peter in a room with all of us and let him rag on us for a few thousand years. But I digress. The real story of that day was not that Peter sank outside the boat but that 11 men stayed in the boat. Only Peter knew the joy of following the command of Jesus and the splashes of water-walking.
Natural guts may get you on the edge of the boat, but only GUTS gets you walking on water. And life on top of the water is way better than inside the boat.
The next move is yours.
