Walk on Water (Matthew 14:22-33)

“But Jesus immediately said to them: 'Take courage! It is I. [ego eimi {Gk}] Don’t be afraid.'” “'Come,' he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus” (Mt 14:27, 29). [Walk on Water.]

• Peter becomes frightened and begins to sink, not the other way around.
• "There are stages in life when there is no storm, no crisis, when we do our human best; it is when a crisis arises that we instantly reveal upon whom we rely. If we have been learning to worship God and to trust Him, the crisis will reveal that we will go to the breaking point and not break in our confidence in Him." Oswald Chambers, p811.

1. Do you intentionally create space for solitude and prayer in your daily schedule (Mt 14:22-23; 1 Th 5:17; Lk 18:1)?
• Are you more likely to pray before a crisis or when you’re already in one?
  
• Do you find strength in your own determined efforts or in communion with God (Jn 14:1; Mk 11:22)?
2. When facing personal storms where do you fix and focus your gaze? On your circumstances (Mt 14:25-26; 8:24-25) or on God (Mt 14:27; Heb 12:2)?
• Should your ideal Christian life include "no storms" (2 Tim 3:12; 1 Pet 4:12)? Why (Mt 10:24-25; Jn 15:18-20)?
• Who is Jesus (Mt 14:25, 27)? How can you apply this to your life (Gen 1:2; Exo 3:14; Dt 31:6, 8; Ps 23:4; Isa 41:10; 1 Jn 4:18)?
3. After having initial faith how do you sustain it (Mt 14:28-30)?
• Do you cry out to God for help (Mt 14:30)? Believe He hears you and will respond without doubting (Jas 1:6)?
• How can you keep your eyes on Jesus when the winds feel overwhelming (1 Pet 5:8)?
4. What doubts weaken your trust in God (Mt 14:31; Jas 4:3)?
• Do you doubt His power (Mk 11:23)? His goodness (Ps 136:1)? His willingness to intervene (Mk 9:22)?
5. Through this storm, what did the disciples realize about Jesus (Mt 14:32-33)?
• Can you experience who Jesus truly is without facing an impossible crisis?

Mt 14:29 (Oswald Chambers, p433. My Utmost for His Highest, June 18). We are all inclined to recognise ... the real thing and reckon with the actual. Here the wind was boisterous, the water was water, the waves were high. But Peter did not see any of these at first. He did not reckon with them, he simply stepped straight out in recognition of his Master and walked on the water to go to Jesus. Then he began to reckon with actual things, with the wind and the waves, and down he went instantly.

If I recognise Jesus as my Lord, I have no business with where He engineers my circumstances. If He gives me the thrill of enabling me to do something wonderful, and then suddenly alters my circumstances and puts me, so to speak, at the bottom of the ocean, what right have I to be afraid? If Christ can keep me walking on the top of the waves, He can keep me underneath them. Let actual circumstances be what they may, keep recognising Jesus, maintain complete reliance on Him.

God often does things in order to teach us whether we are denying ourselves or only thinking about it. We step right out in faith on God over some matter, then self-consideration enters and down we go. ...learn how to rely completely on God; let actual things be what they may, we have to keep recognising Him. Whether it be walking on top of the waves or underneath them makes not the slightest difference to God, therefore it need make no difference to us. 

When we look at the actual things we cannot recognise Jesus, but are overwhelmed, and the rebuke comes—“O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Mt 14:31) Christ is educating us to the point of giving up our right to ourselves. How can I empty myself of my self? By not thinking any more about it, but by taking the road. Recognise Jesus as Lord, obey Him, and let the next thing happen as He wills.

p764. Many of us are loyal to our notions of Christ, but how many of us are loyal to Him? Loyalty to Jesus means I have to step out where I do not see anything (Mt 14:29). Loyalty to my notions means that I clear the ground first by my intelligence. Faith is not intelligent understanding, faith is deliberate commitment to a Person where I see no way.

p1306. Passionate genuine affection for Jesus will lead to all sorts of vows and promises which it is impossible to fulfil. It is an attitude of mind and heart that sees only the heroic. We are called to be unobtrusive disciples, not heroes. When we are right with God, the tiniest thing done out of love to Him is more precious to Him than any eloquent preaching of a sermon. We have introduced into our conception of Christianity heroic notions that come from paganism and not from the teaching of Christ. Jesus warned His disciples that they would be treated as nobodies; He never said they would be brilliant or marvellous. We all have a lurking desire to be exhibitions for God, to be put, as it were, in His show room. Jesus does not want us to be specimens, He wants us to be so taken up with Him that we never think about ourselves, and the only impression left on others by our life is that Christ is having unhindered way. 

Mt 14:29. Walking on water is easy to do impulsively, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Christ is different, Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus, but he followed Him afar off on the land. We do not need the grace of God to stand crises; human nature and our pride will do it. We can hunker down and face the music of a crisis magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live 24 hrs a day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a saint, to go through poverty as a saint, to go through an ordinary, unobtrusive, ignored existence as a saint, unnoted and unnoticeable. The “show business,”--so incorporated into our view of Christian work to­day--causes us to drift far from Christ’s conception of discipleship. It is instilled in us to think that we have to do exceptional things for God. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, be holy in mean streets, among mean people, surrounded by sordid sinners. That's not learned in 5 min.

Jesus took the early disciples in hand to train them. At the end of 3 yrs of intimate companionship with Him, they all forsook Him and fled. Then they came to the end of themselves and all their selfsufficiency, and realised that if ever they were going to be different, it must be by receiving a new Spirit. After the Resurrection, Jesus “breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:22). Do you really believe you need the Spirit? Are you basing your Christian life on your impulses, natural affections, what others tell you? Or are you basing it on what Jesus wants you to be? Jesus guides you by making you His friend.

Mt 14:19; Rom 12:1 (p1284). God never uses those who are sentimentally devoted to Him; He uses only those who are holy within in heart and holy without in practice. The significance of all the detail in Leviticus is that a servant of God must keep himself unspotted from the world, sternly and guardedly holy, not for his own sake but for the sake of his calling. No man has any right to break the Word of God and feed the people of God unless he is without blemish spiritually through the Atonement. That standard is being blotted out nowadays. “And no one takes this honor on himself” (Heb 5:4)—nearly all do, though. Preaching is worthy in God’s sight when it costs something, when we are really living out what we preach. The truth of God is to be presented in such a way that it produces saints.