Category: believer

Straining at Your Oars

“He saw the disciples straining at the oars because the wind was against them.”

Mark 6:48

It’s good to know that Jesus sees our labor.  He truly understands all that concerns us, and he understands every issue that concerns us.  Attentive and keenly aware He comes to our boat.  It’s quite common for us to think that he isn’t aware, and we may feel that He’ll pass us by without a word.

Jesus watches over us all the time. 

He knows all about our battles, the fight we have with our flesh, the difficulty we have with the challenging people in our lives. I often struggle to steer my boat. Jesus knows when and why I labor like I do.  And He doesn’t condemn me.

The disciples were straining hard to keep the boat afloat. 

Every oar was being used and every man had his seat.  They must work together.  Some were frantically bailing, and a couple gripped the tiller. A lot of effort was being expended but nothing was working.  The wind continued to push harder against them. 

This is really quite perplexing.  If you remember, they’re simply trying to obey the command of Jesus to cross the sea. They were being obedient, and yet they were starting to sink.

Why do things have to be so difficult?

I’m intrigued by believers who expect sunshine, blue sky, and red roses just because they are doing God’s will.  They don’t seem to think through the issues of conflict and challenge, weakness and humility. That’s not how it’s suppose to work.

“It is necessary to go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”

Acts 14:22

Doing the will of God will often mean that there will be a headwind directly at us.
 The seas will become impossible, and we may even be driven back.  But special comfort comes when we realize we’re being watched.  Jesus is doing constant surveillance on us, and He sees our toil on the oars. And then He comes to us, walking on the water.
Even in our storm, our hearts should trust and rejoice.

“Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”

Matthew 28:20

Catching Hearts Like Fish

Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” 

–Matthew 4:19

The invitation to these fishermen was a ‘call’ to Himself. 

This is critical for us to note.  Jesus is not directing them to a broad set of religious ethics.  He is calling them to follow Him.  He is the exclusive Savior of everyone who needs a Savior.  We follow a man, not an idea.

There is also the intertwining of two distinct issues: That of evangelism, and that of discipleship.  The church for centuries has split these two, allowing them to be seen separately, and it hasn’t been healthy. These two distinct callings are to be welded together as one.

Typically we are focused on one or the other.

People will gravitate to their own gifting or temperament. But there is a potent strength when discipleship is paired with evangelism. We need disciples who can evangelize; and evangelists who are also disciples.

There is a sense of the comedic here in His call.  Jesus is suggesting that He will be teaching these veteran fisherman how to fish.  It’s apparent that these wizened men of the sea, had been fishing since they were mere boys.  Jesus essentially orders that Peter and Andrew stop what they were doing and follow, now.  Jesus would teach them “human fishing”– catching men!

By following, their old way would be forfeited. 

They could not do both, (but they did try and once even followed Peter back to the old life).  But a separation happens as hearts and minds become set apart on the invitation, and then jump out of the boat on to the beach.

Jesus would teach these men.  They would learn the most critical and vital truths ever communicated on this planet.  Their classroom would follow them, and their instructor was eminently qualified and supremely gifted.  These new followers will ‘rock’ their world.  They would truly become, ‘Fishers of Men’.

“The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.”

Billy Graham

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I am Jonah

1 “But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

 4 But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?”

Jonah 4:1-4, NIV 

Jonah is the very essence of the modern Christian who prefers God to be just like them (only more so.)  Just like Jonah we can be:

  1. unbelieving,
  2. unaccepting and
  3. unforgiving.

When you mix the three, (in a kind of “Jonah smoothie”) you will have something quite religious– but very toxic.  A toxicity that normally should require protective clothing and a quarantine.

Jonah has a sense of who God really is.  But, he disagrees.  In his eyes, God is way too excessive, way too elaborate in His love.  He makes way too many possibilities for forgiveness.  It drives him nuts, to serve a God that is way too liberal with His love.  It seems to push Jonah to try to readjust the love of God on his own.

In the eyes of Mr. Jonah, he simply must modify the “way of salvation.”  In his way of thinking, he can’t let God, be wholly God.  Jonah simply must step in, and dial back the real tendency of God to venture into His excessive and foolish love.  He must be thinking that what God is doing is way too outrageous, and far too far for human reasoning.

Amazingly, Jonah knows God deeply.  He knows, and he is afflicted by the grace that God has for these Ninevites.  Jonah doesn’t get vague, rather he gets specific.  He becomes more aware.  Verse 2 states Jonah’s deep awareness that God is simply too good for people, He is far too rich and generous with the behavior of people who live way too loose.

Since God seems so excessive we feel we must adjust Him.

It seems we must work to make Him more acceptable, and to redefine Him into a more focused kind of religious faith.  Something that makes sense to us His followers.  Something in the way the World perceives Him.  It so seems that this is a job that almost every believer jumps at. (I vote to send God to “rehab.”) :-)

We feel we need to dial God’s grace down.

But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?”  The Lord speaks specifically to Jonah.  He asks a question, which is a very good idea, when confronting foolish thinking.  “Have you any right?”  This question reverberates and echos through the corridors inside our hearts.  It seems our right doesn’t extend that far.  Being “angry” with God (and the way He does things,) is never an acceptable way of thinking.

Simply put, you have no right.  You have nothing.  There isn’t any allowance or prerogative given, that allows you to alter and adjust the way God wants His reputation and character to be made public.  Sorry, you can’t “airbrush” Him to meet the perceived ideas of the mass population.  He will not allow you to “photoshop” His face or presence, to make His love more presentable.

His Impossible Love

“Nothing in the church makes people in the church more angry than grace. It’s ironic: we stumble into a party we weren’t invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in.
Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus’ irresponsible love, we decide to make grace “more responsible” by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it, are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include.)” 

— Michael Yaconelli

*****

Things seem this way at times.

Often there can be a frustrated hostility simmering just below the veneer of a religious person.  It can be seen in sudden outbursts of irritation that seems to come from nowhere.  It is often encountered when they feel the ‘spigot of grace’ has been open too long, too much water is being used, and the people are getting a little wild in showing their enthusiasm.  “They’re acting like ungodly pagans.”

Regulating the watering hole becomes a compulsion, and a necessary work of the “Church.” Jesus’ love is for all is a confirmed fact, but we must have some standards of decorum and appropriate levels of conduct and respect.  “We the keepers-of-the- spigot are called to take some responsibility in this,” we end up saying.

Celebratory shouts of joy are simply not acceptable.  Dancing in the mud is way ‘out-of-line.’  But there is an outrageous element to grace.  It is preposterous and disturbing.  It is untamed and wild, and not at all logical.  “We definitely prefer the thinking side of our faith,” we say.

Judas rebuked Jesus as he was getting a foot massage from the ungodly woman.  She had no business to be there in the first place.  And secondly, she has just poured this incredible fortune on the feet of Jesus!  Judas said, “way out-of-line!”  

But there is a irrepressible love that always pushes its way forward.

For those of us who have first experienced God’s love and grace we must keep an alert out for our hard hearts.  First, He is in charge of how the water is utilized.  Second, [and we MUST believe this] when a man or woman connect with the water, there can be spontaneous displays of joy!

The dance of grace

We must change our thinking, e.g. repent, and insist that we ‘cease and desist’.  Our attitude is not acceptable or true to the Spirit of Christ.  We are the ones way “out-of-line” and we have not been good witnesses about his grace and love.  We had better turn from this sin, and ask Jesus to free us again.

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  
John 8:32

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