Courage

When Jesus told Peter that he was the Rock upon which he would build his church…could it be that in saying this he was outlining the kind of people he was calling as one body to be his church? Would his rock need to consist of people just like Peter who were courageous, on the move, forward looking, eager to please God, followers of the path they would need to walk…out there in the world where storms raged and the winds blew.

In this reading Peter clearly demonstrates his courage.

Courage to:

Rise: up and away from the security and relative comfort of the boat he was sitting in; out onto the ‘stormy seas’, where his master was himself walking.

(quote, boats are quite safe in the harbour, but that’s not what boats were meant to stay.)

Focus: entirely upon Jesus. To forget about himself, and concentrate upon him. How easy it has become for us in this world to centre our lives solely upon ourselves. We are blasted from every side by the media with the enticing words,’You need to have THIS, because you’re worth it!’ 

Materialism, undergirded by affluence, has  sadly come to dominate our thinking and desensitise our spirituality.

Stand up: when everyone else was sitting, just looking. Only dead fish go with the flow, so the saying goes. Are we dead or alive in Christ, asleep or awake; comfortable or living on the edge? Have we allowed our faith to become sidelined to the point of extinction as secularism has come to dominate our worldview? These are the question all Christians need to answer? A poster once asked, If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Heed the call and commit himself: once he had committed himself. ‘Come!’ says Jesus. Making that decision to take control of the will and just do it, because Jesus has called us!

Take a Risk: (and throw caution to the winds.) Anne Morissy, a Christian writer, calls this stage the hardest part, for it is here, at the very point of considering the consequences of risk, that we can encounter the Iron cage of Bureaucracy; an influx of all the reasons why we should NOT go forward; all of them very reasonable and plausible; but if we succumb to them we get nowhere.

But if we still go forward at this stage she says we then encounter the ‘Cascade of Grace.’ The reward of walking where Christ walked and to see the miraculous, the God- coincidences and Blessings above measure happening all around us to those we reach out to.

Act: He actually walked on water a few steps, before he floundered! A miracle in itself. When people tell this story they seem to concentrate on Peter’s failure to trust, but they forget what he did achieve, and what lessons he teaches us today!

His courage only failed him, when he took his eyes off Jesus, and saw how high the waves were and how fierce was the wind. But he walked on water; not like the eleven others who simply sat and watched it all happen.

Peter was so impulsive, his head did not rule his heart; it was the other way around; time and again we see this in the gospels; but Jesus saw that big transparent heart of his, his courageous heart, and he loved Peter for it. In the bible Jesus advised his followers to first count the cost before building a tower, here is Peter doing the very opposite!  Nevertheless Jesus reached out to him, and lifted him up and saved him on his journey of faith.

Someone once said, ‘A saint is not someone who never fails, a saint is someone who gets up and goes on every time he does fail!’

Lord gave us that same courage in our Christian journey; to keep on travelling the challenging road with you.