Walking on Water

Today is the first day of a 3-day fast. I need direction. I have a host of challenges in my life right now and I need some answers. I have faith. But I’m feeling like I’m failing to use it somehow. 

 

I spent my beach time trying to focus my intentions on this fast. My mind was all over the place. I want miracles. I’m not going to lie. I want bills miraculously paid off. I want sales to blow up at work. I want a vacation. I want to be a successful writer. I want to be a mom. The miracle list is deep. But I also want to be closer to God. To know Him better and to have a more obedient heart…okay I want to actually be more obedient. I suppose I have somewhat of an obedient heart, but I just don’t always let it have its way.

 

As my beach time came to and end, I closed my eyes and whispered prayers for the day. Just before I opened my eyes again I felt a desire rise up inside me.  “Oh, how I would love to see Jesus walking across the sea toward me.”  That was my thought as my eyes opened. The sky was cloudy, the water a calm dark silvery gray. But no Jesus. An instant later a beautiful white sea bird flew across the horizon. “Close enough,” I thought. The bird flew north drawing my gaze with him as he passed by two stand-up paddle boarders, who looked for all the world like they were walking on water. Both stood on the sea, thin black figures against the gray sky.  The taller bigger one in front being followed closely by a slightly smaller one. A thought entered my mind whole and complete in that way that causes me know that it is God speaking.

 

“You want Me to walk on water for you. I desire that there be two of us upon the sea.”

 

This is where the paradigm shifted. The “a-hah” moment in the heart.

 

As I got up to go I began reflecting on Peter’s experience as he saw Jesus walking on water. “If it is you, Lord. Bid me come to you.”  Peter knew instinctively the very thing I have been avoiding. “If it is you.”  It is conditional. If it really is God and not our imagination or some trick of the lights, then surely He will call us to Him to do the very fearsome thing He is doing right along side Him. And isn’t that the very crucible of truth? If a thing is true then you will know it when you yourself can stand upon it and not sink.

 

I have been desiring miracles. Asking God to walk on water for me. But He is asking me to get out of the boat and walk beside Him. Unlike Peter I have not been quite so eager to hurl myself overboard. I feel like I’ve been cowering behind all of the other awestruck disciples with a look on my face of, “Who? Me?!” I guess that time has come to an end.

 

The miracle will not be winning the lottery. It will be acting upon a God inspired idea to create wealth and learning to use my money more wisely. The miracle will not be thousands of new customers that come out of nowhere. It will be working hard and praying hard over every new venture that I put my hand to. The miracle will not be free plane tickets to an exotic destination. It will be saving money for a vacation. The miracle will not be running into a book publisher at Starbucks and having  him offer to publish anything I write. It will be sitting in front my computer for hours, days, months, writing and rewriting until the job is done and then shopping a manuscript around all the while praying and staying faithful to God. The miracle will not be becoming a mom in my 40s. Okay, yeah it will be that. But it will also be taking care of myself and getting proper rest and letting God show me how to “be” a mom before allows me to become one. 

 

God is almost absurdly partnership oriented. He does not need my help. My help is deficient in almost every way. My weaknesses abound and I lack perseverance. But against all logic He desires my assistance in His plans. He desires me.

 

There is a poem that I wrote when I first started coming to the beach over a year ago. A single stanza that has echoed through my journals like a song.  I wrote it one bright summer morning as the sun burned quicksilver on the surface of the energetic ocean.

 

Thy silver path is upon the waters. You call me to walk upon the raging sea.

 

I know now that poem is actually a prayer that is being answered. So this then is my intention for my fast. To enter into a partnership with God for the outcome of my life and accomplishment of all that He desires in it. To finally get out of the boat and walk on water.