Step Out In Faith Series

He was their entire life. And they were incredibly thankful. They knew people who had never been able to have children, and even those they only had one, he meant the world to them.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t conceive, that they were able to do, but some cruel twist of fate made his wife unable to carry a child to term. And then she did. It wasn’t an easy pregnancy, and it was an even harder delivery, but they had a son and he was perfect and he was their entire life.

They named him after his grandfather and they doted on him. They said they didn’t spoil their little boy, and when they said that their friends and family just rolled their eyes. The sun rose and set on their child.

And then one day, the boy said he wasn’t feeling well when he woke up, soon he was burning up with a fever and couldn’t get out of bed, and their whole life began to fall apart.

This is week three of our Step Out Series, and we are looking at various times in the Bible that people stepped out in faith.

Over the past couple of weeks, Rob and I have looked at how Abraham’s journey began when he stepped out in faith. A journey that eventually led to the nation of Israel.

And every journey begins with a single step. It doesn’t matter if it is simply walking across a room or flying around the world, your journey begins when you take that first step.

And that is true of a physical journey, a relational journey or a spiritual journey. When we travelled to Australia, it began that morning of August 14, 1990, when we stepped out of our kitchen and walked toward the car that took us to the airport.

The 38-year journey of our marriage began the day I asked Angela to go for a Banana Split at the Dairy Queen in Sussex. The 40-year journey that I’ve taken with Jesus, began when I stepped across the line of faith at First Wesleyan Church in Saint John, New Brunswick on September 2, 1979.

Today’s story happens very early in John’s narrative. We are told that this was the second miracle that Jesus performed in Galilee, the first being when Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana.

But this wasn’t Jesus' second miracle, but it was the second miracle that he performed in Galilee. We know that because earlier in the narrative we read this, John 2:23 Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many began to trust in him.

And so, it is here that we read the story of a sick child and a desperate parent. And many of us have been there at one time or another. A child, a spouse or a parent is sick and there is nothing we can do. We’d fix it if we could but we can’t. We do everything we can think of, everything we can do, and still, it’s not enough.

This is a story, not of one step but of many steps.

Let’s go back to the fact that every journey begins with a single step. And I truly believe that, I recognize the importance of that first step.

If you want to lose weight, you need to start tracking your food. If you want to get fit, you need to start exercising. At least that’s what I’ve been told. If you want to get control of your habits, you need to start to get control of your habits. You don't take the next drink, you don’t light the next cigarette, you stop doing what you don’t want to do, or you start doing what you do want to do.

You don’t just arrive at your destination, you need to start the journey.

It was Mark Twain who said, “The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

And that practically perfect nanny, Mary Poppins who said, "Well begun is half done!"

And as much as I believe in the power of the first step, we also need to know and understand that the first step isn’t the only step in the journey.

I said earlier that our trip to Australia began with one step. It began that morning when we stepped out of our kitchen and walked toward the car that took us to the airport. And while that is the reality, there was a pile of steps in between Truro and Brisbane, and at any point we could have stopped taking those steps and our journey would have been over.

We could have stopped in Toronto, or LA, or Fiji or Sydney and that would have been where the journey ended.

When I was a teenager I was really good at starting things. I started my ham radio license, I started my scuba certification, I started my private pilot’s license and I started guitar lessons. But in each of those cases, I didn’t finish what I started, I just quit.