By Pr Isaiah White
The Bible records Jesus Christ and Simon Peter walking on water in Matthew 14:25-30. We need to address the question of which waters Jesus walked on, and how that applies to us today.
The water
The lake that Jesus walked on was troubled. It was turbulent and violent.
He walked on waters that were not just threatening the life of the expert fishermen in the boat, but were also about to destroy their lives.
Christian faith is founded on the fact that we worship and believe in a God who is neither part of our struggles nor challenged by the same struggles. He is above them.
Those who worship idols and demons worship gods that are part of their problems and are victimised by the same problems.
These are gods that need help to help their worshippers. The Christian God gives help and needs no help. He is wise and cannot be informed.
If your troubles are as rough and threatening as the ocean, God holds them in the hollow of His hand (Isaiah 40:12).
Whether your pains and sorrows are immeasurable as the heavens, to God they are not just measurable but manageable.
The God who lifted our sin burden on the Cross will not fail to lift our social burdens.
For such, He picks them up and puts them on His scale. Your problems may be immense and big, but your God is bigger.
Constant worship
In the event of the boat and the storm in Matthew 14, the disciples are directly and indirectly worshipping the storm.
Worship in this situation is the veneration and praise of the situation.
They are telling each other and whoever cares to listen, how big and how strong the storm is. They are analysing how hopeless they are and their belief system compared to the storm.
It is an undeniable fact that whenever a man is in trouble, his faith shifts from God to his troubles.
Because of his fears of the fierce circumstances, man indirectly starts worshipping and praising how great the problem is.
He laments how strong his problems are and in the process, he is demonstrating how weak his God is, in contrast to the problems.
In the language of many people in pain, the glory goes to the diseases.
They retort about how effective the disease has been and less about how good God has been amidst their struggles.
The object of worship becomes their pain and struggles.
Gradually, pain gets you to a point where God is not the object of your worship.
The appearance of Jesus walking on the waters that had troubled the professional fishermen was provocative.
When the fishermen saw Jesus walking on what they ‘worshipped’, they concluded it was a ghost.
They were so deep in worshipping the problem that their imagination could not assume any man walking on what they had esteemed stronger than man.
They were so entrenched in fear that they had lost their belief in God to think it could be Him.
This is how best the devil utilises problems in life.
Satan uses problems to shift our attention from the true object of worship of God, to the problems themselves.
Once we concentrate on and worship problems, even the solutions look like ghosts to us.
Worshiping problems leads to more problems, not solutions. Imagine struggling with the storm all night and eventually what shows up is a ghost.
Faith in Christ reminds us that Jesus Christ is the exclusive object of worship, with or without problems.
Waters in your life
The waters in your life that have turned into turbulent problems which threaten to consume you are the very waters that God walks on.
All those problems are under the feet of God.
However, you are naturally designed to be consumed by these waters, you can only walk over them, survive them and neutralize them if you are with God. That is why the Lord says: “Abide in me, and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4).
In the event in Matthew 14, the survival of the disciples depended on their being with a God who walks above their troubles.
You need Jesus in your stormy boat of a marriage, business, career, Church and family.
For without Him, you will start worshipping your situation.
The writer is a life coach and pastor.
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