“Ya’ Gotta Get Out of the Boat!”

Scripture: Matthew 14:22-33

Some time ago, we talked about taking risk in our faith – that a safe faith is no faith at all. In his book “If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat”, John Ortberg says he believes our courage, or the lack thereof, is directly related to the size of our God. If we live with a small God, then we live in a constant state of fear and anxiety because everything depends on us. We cannot be generous because our financial security depends on us. We cannot take risks because our safety depends on us.
But if our God is huge – larger than life itself - then nothing can hold us back, nothing can keep us down.

Read Matthew 14:22-24

When I was in the Navy, I remember several storms that came against us. On one particular evening, we were scheduled to refuel from the tanker that was in our group, and neither wind nor waves was going to interrupt that evolution. We pulled alongside the tanker, with a safe distance between us. I was an Electronics Technician, but I was also assigned to the forward refueling detail, and everything that night began in a fairly routine manner. Lines were put across, the messenger lines were pulled in, then the fuel lines. While we were standing on the forecastle going about our efforts, the wind kept us a little off balance, and mist was coming over the bow and soaked us pretty good, but we knew that it was only going to take 10 or 15 minutes to get our work done, so no one was too concerned.
But then it happened. Due to the excessive strain on the pelican hook – the device that held the fuel line to our ship – it broke. And just as we thought that we were going to be relieved and sent back inside the ship, orders changed, and the forward detail was assigned to hold the fuel line with all the strength that was in our arms and legs! So for the next 45 minutes, we alternately were standing at a 45 degree angle to the deck holding the line with all the strength we could muster, or either our feet would start sliding across the deck or we would loose our grasp on the line, loosing the fuel line. We then would have to pull it back up into position, and the process would start all over again. And as if the wind and waves and the exertion wasn’t bad enough, the Boatswains mate was constantly yelling at us to “hold that line”! We could have strangled him!
Eventually, though, we took on enough fuel to satisfy the Chief Engineer, and we got to head back to our berthing compartments to get some dry clothes and some badly need rest.

Storms at sea are nothing to laugh at, and that one has stuck in my memory for 45 years!

We were on a ship that weighed 7,600 tons and was 550 feet long, and we did a lot of bouncing around. Imagine what that storm was doing to the boat that those fishermen were on! We had powerful boilers and turbines to keep us moving, but the disciples had to row if they were to get to the safety of the shore, and it was taking them all night to make any headway.
We weren’t happy about being so exposed on the forecastle that night, but the disciples were in a lot worse condition in their storm than we were in ours! And they were alone without their leader – their “captain”, if you will.

Consider the plight of the church whenever we decide to make our own headway without our Captain present, without our Captain in command of the ship.

Read Matthew 14:25-29

And then the Lord appears to these wet, exhausted, and frightened men. It was the middle of the night – almost early morning – and they were seeing anything but straight! How could anything appear from out of nowhere in the middle of this storm? It couldn’t be human! It had to be an apparition! And then Jesus gives them a calming word and relieves all of their pain.

Now as an aside, I wish I could know just how the disciples felt at that moment. In one instant, they were terrified beyond all belief, and in the next to have a calm and reassurance that allowed them to know that the Lord was with them, and at least in Peter’s case, to call out to Jesus and ask him to invite the disciple to come out and join him. How great a change would have to come over them to allow a request like that? How great a faith must the man have received to even entertain such a thought? But Peter would soon discover that it wasn’t the waves or his great ability or his faith that held him up – it was the fact that as long as he stayed in Jesus, the Lord had a “salvation” hold on him!
Did Peter realize the risk that he was bringing onto himself?
Did he fully appreciate the hazards that the storm held in store for him?
Or did he fully understand these things, but because of the presence of Jesus at that moment, and the grasp that he had on Christ, that the negatives of the moment no longer had any control over him.

Will knowing, without question, that the Christ is with us, truly give us a strength and courage that can overcome any difficulty? It certainly seems that this is what came over Peter and the others, and it will hold us up, too. That’s what faith is all about. It’s faith that allowed Peter to have the confidence to step out of the boat that night, with the full assurance that nothing could harm him if he could just remain focused on Jesus.
They had to set out on this journey alone, knowing only that this is what the Lord wanted them to do. Jesus was nowhere to be seen. They had no idea as to what they would be doing once they got to the other side of the lake. They had no idea that a storm was brewing up and that it would catch them in deep water. They just went.
And sometimes the church is called to go, with no more explanation than that. No real vision of what the destination will look like, or what the task will ultimately be, or what the result of going will be. Will there be trials? Will there be obstacles?
We’re usually pretty good at imagining all of the potential problems in ministry and mission, but how often, even when we are faithful and just “go”, do we have even an inkling of what the final result is going to be? But if we focus on the “storms”, all of those negative possibilities, we will never even get in the boat, much less begin rowing! And what a shame that would be – never getting to know what our faithful start might bring about.

Read Matthew 14:30-33

There is a story of a young Naval Academy graduate, who after completing his first overseas cruise, was given an opportunity to display his talents at getting his ship underway and out of port. The young officer's efficiency established a new record for getting a naval ship underway.
He was stunned, however, when a sailor approached him with a message from their captain. “My personal congratulations upon completing your underway preparations exercise according to the book and with amazing speed. In your haste however, you have overlooked one of the fundamental rules -- make sure the captain is on board before you leave.”
-Bobby Ives, Greetings, Boat Notes, The Carpenter's Boatshop, Fall 1999 Newsletter, 1.

When Peter stepped up on the gunwale, and then out on to the waves, and then began walking toward Jesus, the Captain was fully in charge of his life. No hesitation, no concerns for the storm, no fear of the price that he might have to pay, just solid and unshakable faith. But then his eyes wavered, and his gaze shifted, and his Captain was no longer in charge of his steps. And he began to sink.

And that’s what happens when we decide that the power of earth is greater than the power of God. When we place more faith in the concepts and precepts of our society than we do in the Lord, when the things of earth become more important than the call of the Divine, we will always fail! We can never succeed!

We, too, have to be willing to take a step in faith, just as Peter did. If he had never got in the boat and set off toward the other side of the lake, if, at the first hint of a storm, he and the others had turned around and headed back to where they had come from, if his faith was weak and he never stepped out of that boat that night, he never would have walked on the water.
Don’t think about his failure! Stay focused on his walk on the waves! Stay focused on what was accomplished in faith! Give God the glory for what can be accomplished in a faith that’s the size of a mustard seed!

And when Jesus caught Peter’s hand and helped him back into the boat, the storm died out immediately. The winds didn’t stop when Peter left the relative safety of the boat, and Jesus didn’t stop the winds when Peter began to sink. The winds stopped when, and only when, the experience was completed, and it was then that the disciples fell down and began to worship the Lord with their entire being.

The church is called, over and over again, to get up and go. A direction may be given, but many times, there is no more than that. And when we respond to Christ’s call on our church, we can also expect that storms and other difficulties will also appear to make our way nearly impossible. But we can never turn back from what we feel the Lord is leading us into, even when the storms seem to be poised to destroy us. And it is at that very moment that, in faith, we need to stand up and say “Lord, give us even greater faith, that we might do the impossible in your name!”

We may think that we have been doing well in our faithfulness, but the truth is that we have only begun. When we head off into the unknown, trusting only that this is where the Lord wants us to go, we had better be prepared to row as hard as we possibly can, and when the winds begin to blow, and we are soaked to the skin, and we feel as though can’t row another stroke, that is the very time when we need to stand even taller, prepared to take that step that we know for certain is impossible to do.
“Get out of the Boat” must become the church’s principle of faith, for if we aren’t willing to take that step, the storms of this life are going to win. And that is not an acceptable future for the church that Jesus died and rose again for, the church that he came to save.