Monday, September 29, 2008

Let God Drive

I am in the middle of a sermon series right now that I have entitled What Does the Lord Require of Us. Recently, I ministered that among the many things the Lord requires, mostly it is for us to have faith in Him "Without faith it is impossible to please God" Ahhhh Faith. It seems these days in these uncertain times, that the word faith takes on a new meaning.

I am reminded of one of my fishing experiences when I was about 16 years of age. As I have mentioned before I love to fish and so does my dad who of course, taught my brothers and I how to fish. On this particular fishing trip we found ourselves about 5 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River out in the Gulf of Mexico at one of our favorite offshore oil rigs where we were loading the boat with snapper (at night- we would frequently spend the night on the boat as it is a great time to fish during the summer). We suddenly began to notice some lightning that was being generated by a thunderstorm that was barreling down on our position, you certainly don't want to be caught in 800 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico in a bad thunderstorm at night. So my dad decided it best to head back for the river. That area of the gulf can be very confusing at times because of all of the lights generated form the many oil rigs and the ships coming in and out of the river, so needless to say it was a pretty scary ride back, as a matter of fact about half way there I found myself on the floor of the boat in tears begging my dad to stop. For a second there I just wanted to push dad out of the way, grab the wheel and turn around, even though dad kept on telling me that it would be O.K. that he knew where he was going. Low and behold he was right and he put us dead center of the river and brought us back to safety. I was so relieved and remember thinking of how smart my dad was.

I said all of this to say that, life is just like this at times. I have found myself so many times on the stormy seas of life wanting to take the wheel from God and try to fix things myself, because I am not sure that I totally trust Him. This is faith, trusting God when trusting Him is hard, when we can't see nor do we know where we are going. Remember the Bible says that Faith is the evidence of things hoped for and the substance of things not seen. Sometimes we can't see the evidence, but it is in these moments that we have to trust our heavenly father that indeed He knows where He is going and what He is doing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Enjoyed reading your comments on Faith. If there ever was a time that we needed to hold on to God's promises, it is now. Many years ago I heard Pastor Roy Stockstill of Bethany World Prayer Center quote T.L. Osborne's definition of faith. He said, " Faith is acting like God told the truth". That has always stuck w/me.