“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think or hope or dream!” Ephesians 3:20
I have heard all my childhood that God wants to give us a life exceedingly above what we can ask, think, hope, or dream… but why is it that I see so many Christians living such safe, boring, unadventurous life. When I look around me I don’t see people who feel like their live are “better than they can dream”. So I began to question, does God lie or are we as Christians doing something wrong?
Of course God came and showed me that duh, He isn’t lying. He explains himself… Living a life bigger than we can ask, think, hope and dreams requires absolute dependence on God. The type of dependence that if He decides not to show up that you would fall straight on your face. He brought me to the story of Peter and how he decided to step out of the boat. Peter could only walk on the water when his focus was 100% on Jesus, the moment Peter started looking to anything else, he started sinking. Living a life of complete dependency looks like living your entire life on the water.
Back to my question, then why do so few Christians live this life? God explained that people decided to build their lives on the shore. Some people live close to the water while others live hundreds of miles away. In our country we hear people boast about how “close to the water” they are living
by saying things like, “I make sure to read my bible everyday, I go to church every Sunday” and so forth, but when Jesus calls them to actually step out onto the water they are to afraid to leave the life the built on the shore. “It is easier for a camel to fit into the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Mark 10:25 Many times we like to read this verse and believe that I’m not rich so this doesn’t apply to me, but the reality is that if you have built any kind of life, have any possessions to call your own, if you have a life on the shore this verse does apply to you.
As Christians we spend our entire lives trying to build these magnificent houses near the water to “display the glory of God and his goodness” but we think that is as far as we are suppose to go. Building life on the shore makes sense… it’s stable, you can build things up, and at the end of your life you can pass it down to another generation. But as we know the closer we are to the water, the more likely the water is to take out what we have built.
This is how I feel like my relationship with God looks… the closer I get to Him the more He calls me to let the water wash away my comforts that I’ve built up. Throughout this race and specifically this morning He has asked me to take it a step further. He asked me to let the water take away everything I have built and come out onto the water. This means leaving behind my family and friends at home and traveling the world for 11 months spreading His love. This means letting go the need for a logical explanation when He tells me to do something. This means letting go of the issue of feeling like I am either “too much” or “too little” for others and just being what I feel. This means letting go of the people who have walked out of my life and letting go of that fear of it happening again. Ultimately this means letting go of the life that I’ve known and the safe guards that I have put up, and putting my life in the hands of the Father.
For those of you who know the story of my middle name is Marie (meaning bitter). Since I was little I determined I wanted to change it, but never had a reason why except that I felt like the name didn’t fit me. I decided I wanted it to be Zoe (meaning God given life) but again I never knew why. Now I do. Marie is the life I live on the shore, bitter over all the experiences in my past but as of today I am stepping into life on the water, stepping into my Zoe life.
I don’t know exactly what life on the water looks like yet, but I will share with you when I experience it a little bit more. Love ya!
