Extreme Faith
From the Series—Extreme
September 25, 2003This evotional begins a new series of evotionals titled Extreme.
This week marked the grand opening of the church @ Ballston Common Mall. NCC is now one church with two locations —the movie theaters @ Union Station and the movie theaters @ Ballston Common Mall. If you’d like to read my reflections on launch day you can read my blog in the resource section of our website.
Fear Factor
Matthew 14 tells the story of Peter walking on water. None of us will find ourselves in those same exact circumstances, but that passage is a microcosm. It’s not just one episode in the gospels; it’s about an all-encompassing approach to life.
The disciples were “terrified” when they saw Jesus approaching them on the water. They thought they were seeing a ghost until they recognized Jesus’ voice inflections and heard him say, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
That phrase—“don’t be afraid”—is the most repeated phrase in Scripture. The significance of that is this: one of God’s primary goals is to help us overcome our fears!
Last summer our family joined a community pool and I’ll never forget one of our first trips to the pool. Summer, our six year-old, was jumping into the pool and I noticed Parker, our seven year-old, standing on the edge of the pool. I knew he wanted to jump but I could tell that he was scared. So I said, “Parker, why don’t you jump?” And in classic kidspeak, my son Parker said, “Dad, my legs won’t move.” His brain was saying “jump.” But his legs were frozen in fear. I went over and held his hand and he made his maiden jump. By the end of the summer, Parker was a fish. He was doing cannon balls and 180’s and headfirst dives into the pool. But it started with him facing a fear.
As a father, my tendency is to overprotect my kids. But one of my responsibilities as a father is to help my kids face their fears! It’s part of parenting. In the same sense, God is in the business of bringing us face-to-face with our fears. I love the way John Ortberg says it. “God has an inextinguishable habit of asking people to do things that are scary to them.”
That may not sound very appealing, but think about the alternative. Most of us try to avoid fear, but the truth is if you look back on your life, you’ll discover that sometimes the scariest experiences are the greatest experiences and the greatest experiences are the scariest experiences.
I don’t think I’ve ever shared this publically, but I don’t think I’ll lose my credentials at this point. When I twenty-two years old, I went to a week long conference to get my credentials. I had already met all the educational requirements, but I had to complete this conference to get credentialed.
It was freezing cold that week and people in Illinois have a habit of just leaving their car running when it’s freezing cold and they’ll only be away from the car for a few minutes. Well we started pulling pranks. We’d jump into a running car while no one was looking and move them a few parking spaces away just to play mind games with people. We felt like it was a harmless prank, but here’s what we didn’t think about. If you see someone jumping into your running car you don’t know they’re moving it two spaces. You think they’re stealing it.
We ended up trying it one too many times. One night I got into a running car and when I did someone came sprinting out of the conference center. It was actually an employee at the district office. I threw it into park. I jumped out of the car, jumped into the “getaway” car with some friends and we took off. The guy chased us. I think we topped out at more than 100 mph. It was “pure fear.” Probably “pure stupidity” too, but definitely “pure fear.” My credentials flashed in front of my eyes!
It was one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had, but it’s amazing how your perception changes after that kind of experience. You forget how scary it was and you remember how fun it was.
It’s tough to describe, but there’s something about fear that makes us feel alive. I like the way David Whyte said it. “The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears.” I think another way of saying that is this: the alternative to fear is boredom.
Following Christ is anything but boring! John Ortberg says, “The choice to follow Jesus is the choice for the constant recurrence of fear.”
Unlearning
Let me give you a definition of faith. Faith is the process of unlearning your fears. If you look in a medical reference book you’ll find about 2,000 classified fears or phobias. There is even phobiaphobia— the fear of phobias. Here’s what’s interesting. According to psychologists, we’re only born with two fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. That means that every other fear is learned. And that means that every other fear can be unlearned.
And that’s where God enters the equation. God is in the business of bringing us face-to-face with our fears so that we can unlearn them. I John 4:18 says, “Perfect love casts out all fear.” In other words, as we grow in our love relationship with God, we unlearn those fears that paralyze us emotionally and relationally and spiritually. And we learn to live by faith.
Here’s how it works. When I was a kid I had all kinds of allergies and I used to get allergy shots. The way they treated allergies back then was by exposing you to small quantities of the allergen. That’s how you build up immunity.
The cure for the fear of failure is not success. The cure for the fear of failure is failure. The cure for the fear of rejection is not acceptance. The cure for the fear of rejection is rejection. You’ve got to be exposed to small quantities of whatever you’re afraid of. That’s how you build up immunity.
When I was in Seminary in the Chicago area, Lora and I tried to plant a church on Chicago’s Northshore. We had a core group. We had a name. We set up a bank account. One minor detail— we never had a service! And I’ll be honest. It was embarrassing because we told everybody that we were going to plant a church and then we fell flat on our faces. And it was disillusioning because we thought that’s what God wanted us to do. It was a colossal failure. But it was also one of the best things that ever happened to us. It’s not like I like failure, but somehow that experience released us from the fear of failure. It built up immunity! When we had the opportunity to become part of this church plant in DC, we weren’t afraid to fail. I sort of felt like we couldn’t do any more damage than we did in Chicago.
Get Out of the Boat
Matthew 14:29 says, “Peter got out of the boat, walked on water and came toward Jesus.”
Let me give you another definition of faith. Faith is the willingness to look foolish.
If you hit the mute button so you don’t hear the dialogue between Peter and Jesus, you don’t hear Jesus say “come.” All you see is guy stepping out of a boat in the middle of the night in the middle of the lake in the middle of the storm. To an innocent bystander it looks pretty foolish. But faith is the willingness to look foolish when you hear Jesus say “Come.”
Noah looked foolish building an ark in the dessert. Sarah looked foolish buying maternity clothes at ninety. The Israelites looked foolish marching around Jericho blowing trumpets. David looked foolish attacking Goliath with a slingshot. The Wise Men looked foolish following a star. Peter looked foolish stepping out of the boat. And Jesus looked foolish hanging half-naked on the cross.
But that’s faith—a willingness to look foolish. The results speak for themselves. Noah was saved from the flood. The walls of Jericho came tumbling down. Sarah gave birth of Isaac. David defeated Goliath. The Wise Men found the Messiah. Peter walked on water. And Jesus rose from the dead.
I think one reason why some of us never walk on water is because we aren’t willing to look foolish. We’d never verbalize this, but we hedge our bets. “I can’t pray for someone to be healed—I might look foolish. I can’t share my faith—I might look foolish. I can’t seek out counseling for my problem—I might look foolish. I can’t change majors or change jobs—I might look foolish.”
Let me just say it like it is: if you’re not willing to look foolish you are foolish. Here’s what happens if you refuse to look foolish. You stop learning and you stop growing.
One reason kids are such prodigious learners is because they aren’t worried about looking foolish. Jesus said, “Unless you become like little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” I think part of becoming like little children is losing some of those inhibitions that keep us in the boat.
One of the things I love about Peter is that he was willing to look foolish. Peter makes lots of mistakes. He has lots of miscues, but I think one reason God used him in such a powerful way is because he was willing to look foolish. He gets out of the boat and walks on water.
Second-Thoughts
There is part of me that wishes the story ended there, but there is another part of me that’s glad it doesn’t. Matthew 14:30 says, “When he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, cried out, ‘Lord, save me’!”
Let me tell you something about stepping out in faith: you almost always second-guess yourself. You make the decision to get out of the boat—you change careers or make a move or end a relationship—and you have second-thoughts. You wonder if you made a mistake. Did God really tell me to get out of the boat? I think Peter second-guesses himself. He loses focus—he looks at the wind and the waves. He loses focus and when you lose focus you lose faith.
I’d like to tell you that all you have to do is step out in faith and you’ll live happily ever after, but the truth is that it’s so easy to lose focus and lose faith.
I’ll never forget the last weekend of January at the beginning of this year. It was the weekend of our leadership retreat and the weekend that I share our annual state of the church message where I cast vision for the coming year. I cast the vision of launching another location to our leadership on Saturday. And then I cast the vision of launching another location to the entire church on Sunday.
This is a little embarrassing, but I had second-thoughts on Monday. I think part of it was the fact that it was incredibly taxing weekend physically and emotionally, but I remember feeling depressed on Monday. I don’t have a whole lot of down days, but Monday, January 27th was one of them. Let me read what I wrote in my journal on Monday, January 27th.
I feel like I’ve got “postpartum depression.” Once I cast the vision for the launch I had this feeling like, “Wow, we really need to do this now.” It was that “scary, uneasy” feeling that you get every time you try something you’ve never done before.
I’ll never forget sitting at the Starbucks on the 1st floor of Ballston Common Mall and reading a book by Andy Stanley. Have you ever read a book and you feel like the author wrote the entire book for you? It’s exactly what you need to hear when you need to hear?
Andy Stanley wrote, “There will always be an element of uncertainty. Generally speaking, you are probably never going to be more than eighty percent certain. Waiting for greater certainty may cause you to miss an opportunity.”
It’s hard to explain, but that released me from the second-thoughts I was having. Most of us want certainty—we love 100% money-back guarantees. But the problem with that is this: there is no such thing as risk-free faith.
In his book, Divine Appointments, Erwin McManus says, “Don’t wait for God to remove all the uncertainty. Realize He may actually increase the uncertainty and leverage all odds against you, just so that you know in the end that it wasn’t your gifts but His power through your gifts that fulfilled His purpose in your life.”
Play to Win
Peter gets a bum rap. He’s the guy who sinks, but we forget the fact that he’s the only one who walked on water. Peter is the disciple who denied Christ three times, but he was the only who got close enough to Jesus to get caught. Peter is the disciple who cut off Malchus ear, but he was the only one who came to Jesus’ defense.
It’s easy to criticize Peter from the comfortable confines of the boat, but I love what Teddy Roosevelt said. “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.”
Here’s what I think: sinking is better than sitting. When everything is said and done, I think our greatest regrets will be the risks we didn’t take. We won’t regret sinking. We will regret sitting. Goethe said, “Hell begins the day God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.”
There are two approaches to life: playing to win and playing not to lose.
A week ago the Washington Redskins were behind 17-0 to the Atlanta Falcons and something happened that I’ve seen a thousand times. A team has a commanding lead but they lose the momentum because they stop playing to win and start playing not to lose. In other words, they stop doing the things that got them the lead in the first place and they end up losing the game.
The same phenomenon happens in the business world. What makes businesses successful is risk-taking. But once they become successful there is a temptation to stop taking risks. And they end up losing market share because they play not to lose.
The same phenomenon happens in relationships. When you’re dating you generally play to win. It’s easy to lose momentum when you get married because you can play not to lose.
What does that have to do with this passage? Here’s the difference between Peter and the other disciples. Peter is playing to win. The other disciples are playing not to lose. Here is the playing not to lose mentality: if you don’t get out of the boat you can’t sink. And that’s true, but you can’t walk on water either! Peter has a play to win mentality: you can’t walk on water if you don’t get out of the boat.
There are two ways to play the game of life: you can play to win or play it safe. Here’s the big idea: playing it safe is risky! This evotional is about so much more than one step of faith. It’s about an all-encompassing approach to life that refuses to play it safe! Jesus said it this way in Matthew 16:25, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
Come
In Matthew 14:29 Jesus simply says, “Come.” If you read the gospels you’ll find that Jesus was always inviting people to come. He said, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened.” He said, “Let the little children come unto me.” He said, “Come follow me.” And here in Matthew 14:29 he just says, “Come.” It’s a standing invitation.
I want to challenge you during this evotional series to take the first step or the next step in your relationship with Christ. I don’t know what boat you need to get out of, but I do know this: playing it safe is risky!