Notes from July 8 & 10, 2016
Man rarely approaches faith with an adequate apprehension of grace. God instead allows us to see our failure and inability to solve ourselves. Then He undoes us by revealing Himself greater than our fears. This fear frees us from our fears, and releases us to risk a life of love, in more significant influence than we could ever dream. And grace is experienced as infinitely more than a hall pass of small religion. It becomes the only means to adequately experience my God.
We ignore Him in the storm until we have exhausted our own abilities. Then we accuse Him of not having cared about us.
The cost in losing hope of God’s willingness to protect me is this: whatever He was protecting me from is now back, fully on deck, wildly animated.
- He doesn’t really know my best
- He must not be able to feel what
I’m going through - He doesn’t understand what this is doing to me
- He promised me that I would be victorious
- He must not be in control of my world
- He seems almost indifferent to what
I’m going through - He goes furthest away when I need Him
most visible - He’s willing to leave me behind the parade
- He either forgets about me or is unable
to help me
God does not want you to feel threatened around Him
God does not want you to feel unsafe around Him
God does not want you to be falsely religious around Him
God does not want you to be cautious to approach Him
God does not want you to cover up yourself around Him
God does not want you to idealize yourself around Him
God does not want you to pretend in fear of His response
…God only wants that you would trust Him with you
For you to be truly safe in His love you must first be undone at how small you have made Him and experience Him in His endless strength, power and glory.
There is a fear that makes me run away
There is a fear that compels me to run toward
There is a fear that immobilizes me
There is a fear that protects me
There is a fear that causes me to hide
There is a fear which lets me reveal all hiding
There is a fear that causes me to live small
There is a fear that frees me to risk everything
There is a fear that makes me cowardly
There is a fear that reveals me as brave
There is a manipulative religious fear
that terrifies us of Jesus
There is a fear that ends my fear and causes me to never want to be anywhere but where He is
Knowing the storm would happen, Jesus could have kept them all back in Galilee that evening. And the next morning they would have awakened the same. In love with a wonderful Messiah, but not knowing Him enough to trust Him in danger and tragedy. Glued to self-dependent, self-serving strategies…still stuck in their secret fears, facing the day with little more power or protection than their own.
And they would have missed standing knee deep in water, with mouths wide open…at first more frightened by this God than by any storm on any sea. Then freed, in innocent love, fully knowing they were totally safe in the protection of the One who calms the storms.
Jesus doesn’t create calamities to teach a lesson. He employs what already exists to mature us into who we had hoped we were and might become.
- Jesus knew there was going to be a storm that night.
- Jesus was really tired and actually did fall asleep.
- Jesus knew they’d have a safer, less eventful evening staying back in Capernaum.
- Jesus knew they needed to experience events they couldn’t solve themselves to learn to trust His ferocious protection, power, love and goodness.
- Jesus knew they’d accuse Him of not caring about them.
- Jesus knew He would not leave or abandon them.
- Jesus, the wind and and the rain had rehearsed this scene.
