At the end of April, my team and I had the amazing opportunity to baptize one of our girls, Liz, in the South Pacific of Lima, Peru.
My girl Liz and I at the beach 🙂
As we stood in water struggling to keep ourselves from falling over as the waves crashed into us, we spoke life and love over her and declared her newness of life in Christ. We kept waiting for the waves to become somewhat bearable so that we could baptize her “properly” as we had seen done before in calmer waters. But the intensity of the waves only increased and finally we realized that instead of fighting against the waves, we needed to work with them. We saw a massive wave coming and took our opportunity and as the wave washed over Liz and took her under, she was baptized and raised to life with Christ.
Many times in life we see the waves coming, and so we wait for them to slow and become a bit more bearable.
And we wait… and wait.
But what if, like that day in Peru, the waves never stop coming? What if instead of waiting for them to go away, we embraced them?
The thing about the “waves” in our lives—whether they be struggles with relationships, finances, sickness, spiritual warfare, identity, self-esteem, loneliness, or grief—is that they are in our lives for a purpose. The Lord wants to take us under and teach us how to rely on HIM to provide us with all that we need to resurface and overcome… He wants to use these waves to bring us into full dependency and surrender. If we remain on the shore and avoid confronting the waves, we will miss out on the beauty and redemption that come upon resurfacing.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sit on the shore anymore, wondering when the waves will subside. I want to dive in headfirst, trusting fully in my Creator to teach me how to swim and navigate the very water that He spoke into existence.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4
