Hold Your Nerve & Keep On Trusting | Matt 14:31 | Andy Croft | 20th January

hey everyone welcome to today's take heart hope you're doing all right there's a moment in matthew 14 where the disciples are struggling in a storm in a boat and jesus appears to them and he says to them verse 27 take courage it is i don't be afraid and pete responds really well at this particular moment he says lord if it's you command me to come to you and i'll come out there on the water which is not what i would have said i would have said lord if it's you would you come over here so i can double check it but pete responds with this fierce boldness and he steps out the boat he walks across the water the other 11 are stuck in the boat just being spectators and he walks towards jesus but then um kind of famously really in this story he loses his nerve and it says in verse 29 um or verse 30 but when he saw the wind he was afraid and beginning to sink cried out lord save me immediately jesus reached out his hand and caught him you of little faith he said why did you doubt matthew 14 you have little faith why did you doubt and um i i don't think jesus says this you know when we see jesus in the gospels i don't think he's saying this in a super cross voice to people why did you doubt what's got you know what's wrong with you and he's saying that what he's saying is oh pete you muppet look how far you've come look how close you got you know the fact that i think the fact that it says the moment jesus the moment pete starts to think jesus immediately grabs him to my mind what that says is pete is pretty close to jesus at this point it doesn't say the moment pete began to think jesus sprinted across the waves and grabbed him he just reaches out his hand and grabs him because pete's so near jesus at this point and yet he starts to sink and so i think the sensor is pete you made it this far why are you why are you doubting now the way the message puts it is jesus says to peter what's got into you what's got into your pee and i read this a couple of weeks ago when i was having a particularly low day i don't if you're having any of those right now but i've had a fair number of them and it was just after they'd announced the schools were shutting and i was thinking oh my word here we go again trying to juggle kids and work and um you know it's just great it's horrible it's january and the weather's terrible there's nothing to do and you know and and um i was just really struggling and on top of all of that just feeling worn worn down really from the last year and i just read this passage uh it just came up in my reading for the day and i just felt like the lord just spoke to me through it just through what he says to peter here which is that hey don't stop trusting me now you've come this far don't stop trusting me now and we have come this far and i know it's been a rocky road and i know for lots of us will have made mistakes and we'll have things we wish we'd done better but do you still want to serve jesus i know i do do you still love him do you still want to bring glory to his name i know i do we've come this far let's not stop trusting him now let's not start doubting him now let's keep going let's hold our nerve even though we feel like we're probably in the worst part of the storm so far and what peter does and again this has been i think talked about many times is he looks at the wind and he's just overwhelmed by it he takes his eyes off jesus and he puts them as it were onto the storm and what happens when he does that is of course the external storm becomes an internal storm and in a way the physical storm becomes like a storm in his his spirit he loses his peace he loses his courage and he's just churning with fear inside and um for us it's it's it's such a great example of how it's almost classic it's almost cliche but just the reality is it's true as well which is that we can take our eyes off jesus and we put them on the the latest news reports and all the stuff that we're seeing around us which is scary and it's like another wave of um kind of like bad news and another gust of uh kind of some other possible thing that could go wrong and and then internally we feel that wave of fear and we that gust of anxiety churning us up and and it's not that we shouldn't be looking at the news we need to be engaged a hundred percent but it's just that that sets our sets the tone for what's going on in our spirit and the um the the key to i think maintaining trust in jesus is keeping our eyes on him the eyes of our hearts keeping meditating upon who he is the trouble is that is a lot easier said than it is done and in the last 10 months i think we must have said it so many times let's all keep our eyes on jesus but the uh knowing the theory doesn't doesn't make any difference there is no benefit to knowing the theory as far as i can see you know what knowing that i should eat five fruit and veg a day doesn't benefit me unless i actually do it perhaps better to know than not no but actually even knowing it doesn't make any difference and um i only get healthier if i consume the veg and the fruit in the same way knowing that we're to keep our eyes fixed on jesus because that's the key and instead of listening to all the noise around us to to look to him um knowing that doesn't make a difference practicing it does though practicing it makes all the difference in the world and so um this is a time to double down this is a time to resolve once again that we're going to do this and so finding a little slot when we wake up in the morning to just look at him and remind ourselves of who is that we serve and who walks beside us in the middle of the day snatching a little window here or five minutes there or or three minutes here just to meditate on a name of jesus or a verse or a promise of jesus at the end of the day before we close our eyes at night to make sure the last thing we're looking at is him and meditating on him and who he is these things day by day as we do them they begin to infuse us with confidence and with hope and yes with trust and yes with faith some of the names that i love to meditate on are the good shepherd it's one of jesus names for himself i love that because i'm his stupid thick little sheep he doesn't have a clue and he is the strong protective loving shepherd the savior is another great way of just meditating on you he's the savior he saves me from my sin from my selfishness from my mistakes he delivers me from he's my redeemer there's another one he doesn't just take something that's broken and fix it but he redeems it for a positive purpose so it can be a blessing not just a story of something mended but a story of something transformed to the point where it gives life to others he's my redeemer and the um the good news and we can finish with this as well is that we we we do want to do this i think we should aim to do it we should be ambitious to try to do this but even when we fail um we only meet his mercy you know our hope doesn't rest on how disciplined we are thank goodness for that it rests on how faithful he is our foundation is not our own two feet it's his grace that that sits beneath our feet and that catches us every time we fall our hope is in his goodness and his faithfulness not our own goodness and definitely not our own faithfulness and so when we have days where we fail spectacularly at keeping our eyes on him and we are overwhelmed with absolute panic and we're terrified about what's going to happen and we feel really low and really far from him all we need say is help and just as he did with peter he will grab us and jesus i think wants us to grow in our trust for him and so he'll use circumstances he doesn't cause these circumstances but i think he uses them to help us trust him a little bit more and trust him a little bit more because that's how we mature as his followers and as his disciples but he's always there to grab us when we stumble and i think of it like a parent trying to teach a toddler how to walk you know if you've ever seen that but they'll stand a little distance away from the toddler and they'll say come on you know they'll hold out their hands come on you can do it and if the toddler takes a step the parent might take a little step back come on keep going come on keep going and they're pushing them and they're stretching them because they want them to to learn how to do this but then if the pa if the toddler looks like it's about to fall the parent will grab them the parent is like the safety net and i think in the same way jesus because he loves us he wants us to mature and develop he'll say to us you can trust me through this come on i know you can do it you've made it this far take another step come on just another step you can do it another day just trust me with another another fear you know i'm good for it and then when we stumble and if we fall he just grabs us and all we meet is mercy but then he might also say to us come on you know what why why what's got into you you know i'm trustworthy you know i'm the lord of all you know i'm your savior don't you why don't we try again tomorrow how about tomorrow you fix your eyes on me this is a time to hold our nerve to fix our gaze on him and to keep walking towards him through the storm one day at a time god bless you

Channel: Soul Survivor

Views: 2,924

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: soul survivor, nsn, Mike Pilavachi, Andy Croft, Worship, Teaching, Ministry, Holy Spirit, Ali Martin, Festival, Christian, Christian Festival, Youth Camp, Summer Camp, Jesus, God, Discipleship

Id: -wlYFuSW_vA

Length: 10min 38sec (638 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021