Take courage

Recently, I was given the privilege of ministering a message to our youth at Beyond Church.  This particular message had a title that was keep your eyes on Jesus.  I don’t know about you, but, I tend to have a very hard time keeping my eyes on Jesus sometimes.  It is second nature at church but when I am out and about, being faced with things everyday, sometimes its just flat out difficult.

I began meditating this story in the bible this past Monday and let me just say, by Wednesday night service, I was ready to rock because the Lord really brought some things out.  Its found in Mathew 14:22-34 in the NLT.  The story starts out with Jesus insistently telling the disciples to get in the boat and cross the waters.  Jesus himself stayed behind to send the people home that just filled up their tummies.  All 5,000 of them!!  Can you imagine what it would be like to communicate to that many people without a sound system?

I know that Nike coined this phrase but Jesus was the original Beast Mode.  Upon completing that daunting task seemingly effortlessly, Jesus heads to the hills to spend some time communing with God.  It says that night fell while He was up there…  Lets just say that it got dark at 10 o'clock at night where He was…Well, it wasn’t until 3 o'clock in the morning that the disciples saw him walking on the water.  That is 5 hours!  My guess is that after a full day of healing, delivering, and feeding people, Jesus didn’t go home and plop down on the couch. He went to a quiet place and continued spending hours in the presence of God.

Meanwhile the disciples were in the middle of the worst night of their lives.  Waves are smashing, water is splashing, things are getting tossed out of the boat, people are bouncing off each other, they are probably throwing up from sea sickness and they were far away from land…In other words, they had nothing to stand on that was solid. Have you ever been there?  Like no matter what you do, things don’t work.  That was when Jesus showed up.    Now, just because they saw Jesus didn’t mean that immediately the storm stopped and everything was perfect like a Crest commercial.  The wind continued, the waves continued, the splashing continued, and every other seemingly frightful thing continued.  One thing was different though.  Jesus showed up and in the midst of a life threatening situation, He tells these men, don’t fear!  Take courage! I am here!

I think that no matter where you are in life today, Jesus would look you right in the eyes and tell you not to fear.  Take courage!  He is with you! The fact that He met these men in their darkest hour is amazing.  All the commotion of what was going on around Jesus didn’t even remotely phase Him.  I believe the pressure of that storm encompassed Jesus but couldn’t touch, or harm him.  Guess what, If He is with you, the storm won’t touch you either.  We need to take some courage today and remind the storm that He is with us!  We don’t need to fear because God is with us and has delivered us out of the devils hands!