WHEN THE WAVES ARE WINNING
(Matthew 4:22)
Bob Marcaurelle
Peter’s walk has little to do with walking on water. It has to do with facing the storms of life, like the disciples who were delivered at the last minute. . It has to do with Simon, trying to obey Jesus, and failing. The Psalms use drowning as a picture of life’s slippery footings\. Psalm 69:1-2 says,
“Save me O God! For the waters have come up to my neck ... I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me."
We can identify with the Psalmist. There are a lot of drowning folk here today who feel they are going down for the count.. There are all kinds of waves, but I want to speak on the tidal wave is the apparent loss of God, in your troubles. We can face anything as long as we know God is with us, but the disciples rowing until all strength was gone and Simon going down had to wonder if God was with them.
A. THE CAUSES
God has promised never to forsake us. He said, “I am with you always.” (Matt. 28:18-20). But we sometimes feel like the old farmer who refused to fly, and when asked why, said, “The Lord said, low I am with you always. He didn’t say anything about high.”
We a like my secretary’s mother in law. She fell down some stairs and when she wasn’t seriously hurt, my secretary said, “Mama, the Lord was really with you.” Her reply was, “If so, why did He let me fall?” One reason we think God is gone is that we believe lies.
1) The Lie Concerning Disobedience
We almost always think troubles come because we are outside of God’s will and He is somehow punishing us. Remember this, the disciples were in that storm because Jesus sent them there. Matthew (14:22) and Mark (6:45), tell us Jesus “made His disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of Him.” Jesus let them be afraid in this storm so they could develop bravery in storms. Jesus let Peter tackle something too tough for him so he would learn to keep his eyes on Him when the going gets rough. Troubles do not mean God has abandoned us, they often mean God is teaching us.
2) The Lie Concerning Doubts
When we doubt God’s presence, some see this as proof that God has left us because a Christian is not supposed to have doubts. The perfectionists and victorious Christian life crowd tell us we can have a life without doubts. We can, they say, walk in victory on top of life’s trials and always be at peace. We who have our ups and downs wonder if we are really Christians. No more harmful lie ever came out of hell than this. It is not true to life. Peter had his ups and downs. Jeremiah lived on a perpetual down. David, in the Psalms was up on the Mountain Top in one Psalm, and down in the valley of despair in another.
3) The Lie of Concerning Deliverance
The third false belief is the wrong use of this text, saying God always delivers us if we cry to Him in faith. You are going down today because you have prayed and your depression still rages; you husband or wife is still dying; your kids still what nothing to do with you. Just say the right words to God, in faith, some say, and Peter’s experience will be yours.
The prayer of faith, they say, always delivers. Well, about 30 years later, in the greatest storm of his life, God did not deliver Peter from being crucified upside down by Emperor Nero. Sometimes God delivers us, sometimes he leaves the burden on us to develop us and sometimes God delays his deliverances until we have learned the lessons He has for us in the storm. If God does not deliver you, you are in good company. Jesus’ cross and Paul’s thorn were not removed even though both begged God three times to do it.
B. THE CURE
1) We Need to Look for a Purpose.
Jesus was not teaching Peter and the Twelve about storms at sea, He was using nature to teach them about the storms they would face in the years ahead as they served Him in a hostile world.
The biggest difference between us and God is that we want to be happy and He want is to be holy. Happiness to us is the absence of storms. Holiness, however, comes by developing strength as we row through storms and developing faith, as we try to walk on water.
On the bow of our battered boats, like Joseph, in the OT, we must write Romans 8:28, “For we know that all things work together for good to those who love God.” We must say when we are struggling against the wind, or sinking in the waves,
“No matter what happens to me, I know there is a God who loves me and He is working out some kind of purpose as he fits me for heaven.”
No one had more trouble in God’s will than Joseph. He rowed against the waves all his life. He was attacked by his brothers. They sold him into the living hell of slavery. He was thrown in prison for something he didn’t do. He was left in prison by a man he helped who forgot the help get him out. After years of this, he got out and later told his brothers, “It was not you who sent me here, but God…to save your lives.” (Gen. 45:8,7)
If we live in the will of God, like these early disciples did, we can be sure that every bad thing that happens, He can use for good.
Illustration: Just this week a young girl who grew up in our church, now in her thirties, said this about her son who has incurable cancer, “A counselor told us early in our struggle, that our lives would be better and richer for it, and I thought she was out of her mind. She called her son’s name and said he and the people they met in the Hospital and organizations like “Hunt of a Lifetime” had changed her and her husband’s lives for the good, more than anything else had ever done. With tears in her eyes, she said, “We are better people because of what happened to _______.”
Keep your eyes on God’s purposes and not on life’s problems. Peter did all right on his water walk until he lost sight of Jesus in his storm. All he could see was the storm. Maybe a big wave hit him from behind and knocked him forward, and another hit him in the face and twisted him sideways, so he didn’t know, for a moment, where Jesus was. That’s the way troubles sometimes bombard us again and again. We lose our faith that God has a purpose for us. And when that happens, the fight is over. No matter how severe the storm, we are all right as long as we believe the Lord is with us.
2) We need to look for a Person.
Peter, like you and I, was going down but he did not find the bottom of the lake, he found the hand of the Lord. Keep praying and sooner or later God shows up- with a little truth or a verse written just for you; or with a big miracle like Joseph’s elevation to Vice President of Egypt.
As a pastor I have walked with people wandering by faith through the storms of things like cancer and bereavement. But instead of finding despair and depression they find a stronger faith, a new closeness to God, and a peace they cannot explain. Life’s heaviest blow is not cancer or death, it is a sense of going nowhere. It is living without a reason to live. It is fighting without hope of winning. When God shows up, life becomes an adventure and a joy.
3) We need to Look for a Power
When we are going down beneath the loads of life, and Jesus seems gone or unconcerned the only cure to cry out to Him with the tiny faith we have left. The only cure for the loss of faith is to use the faith we have left. And faith is always expressed through prayer. Prayer puts legs on faith. We may not have anything to say except, Lord, deliver me! That’s all Peter could say.
Illustration: The man who wrote Psalm 73 had such an experience. He said:
“Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold because I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are strong and healthy” (1-4) ... in vain have I kept my heart clean. All day long I have been stricken, and chastened every morning” (13-14).
This man was losing his faith. He was going down for the count. He loved God (v. 25) but he couldn’t figure Him out. The waves were winning! And what did he do? He said:
“When I tried to understand all this, it was too much of a burden for me, until I entered the sanctuary of God” (16-17).
He drew near to God, and God drew near to him. He found some answers, but most of all he found God.. He said:
“Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory” (23-24).
Application: You may have tried prayer and have been disappointed by prayer. One of the great mysteries of God is that He does not always deliver us immediately. The disciples fought that storm all night before Jesus came to them. God takes His precious time and we wrestle with inbred sin or with inflicted sorrows, tortured not only by them, but by God’s apparent refusal to help.
All I can say is- keep on praying! This psalmist did. Peter would have cried out for Jesus as long as he was alive. One day, one blessed day, your answer will come. Your God will come. Your deliverance will come. Your unspeakable joy will come.
Illustration: Leadership Magazine told of one Pastors 10 year battle with pornography. He would resolve to quit, pray, weep, wallow in guilt and make resolves and in weak moments give in again. He felt utter aloneness, separation from his family, his fellow pastors and his God. He thought many times of suicide. Finally, after ten years of praying, God delivered him. And he made this statement,
“I do not know why the ten thousandth prayer worked when the nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine others didn’t. I only know that it did.”
