to jump from the ship of self and the flatboat of feeling

“‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.' Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, 'I believe; help my unbelief!'"  Mark 9:23-24

When passing through the darker and more difficult parts of our journey through this fallen world, a hunger rises up in us for help as we seem in the verge of unbelief. We want to see our risen Savior, to talk with Him as Peter and John did after His resurrection. Seeing ourselves on the threshold of giving up, seeing ourselves on the verge of throwing up our hands, we so want something more real, more tangible to help us in our helplessness and strengthen us in our faith.

Who in the journey of faith has not been confronted and crushed by all the unsaintly and unholy things within you and about you?

How many sinful issues and actions are there within you and about you that you cannot solve?

How many conflicts within and about you that you cannot handle or resolve?

How many hurts within you and about you that you cannot ease or comfort?

How many desires within you and about you that you cannot control or contain?

Each of these seeming to bear witness that you are so far from being God’s child, so far from your resurrected Savior.

Here you find yourself like the father crying for help to believe amidst all the things that told him it was hopeless to believe.

Here you find yourself like Thomas, longing, even demanding some tangible evidence that the Lord is near to you with His saving power.

Saying with Thomas, “I must see… If only I could see … I could the then believe … I could…”

To which the Lord assures you, “If you will believe… you will soon see…”

How simple and yet how incredibly difficult it is to simply receive the Lord who is nearer to us than we our sin and sinfulness, for these have been hidden in Him.

It is the gift of faith that frees you from wondering about yourself, about the Lord, and simply moves you on to just receive Him, receive His personal hand, His personal embrace, His personal bearing you up with each and every promise He makes to us.

For as He speak His promise, 

as you hear His promise, 

the Lord works and fulfills that promise to and for us personally through faith.

Such faith enables you to do perhaps the most difficult thing of all, 

to jump from the ship of self and the flatboat of feeling 

into the ocean of His love and grace that bears you up 

and carries you on His waves by His hand,

And on the very shores of heaven itself.

You may not feel or sense any seeming difference in you, 

but rest assured that on its way to you personally through faith is -

added strength amidst your most painful and crippling weaknesses,

the ability to see and understand in Christ beyond all feeling and experience,

an increase courage in the face of your greatest fears,

an unyielding hope in all that would discourage and deprive you of any hope;

and a growing realization that you are being kept by the living Lord. 

And it is this same Lord that overcame all things for you and now uses each and everyone of them to bless you.

- pmwl