by Ken Costa
Surely it would have been simpler to ask Jesus to come closer and show himself to the disciples. Or, more sensibly still, to ask Jesus to calm the wind and the buffeting waves. What could be the benefit of Peter walking out to Jesus on the water?
It seems to me that Peter wanted proof of Jesus’ presence, which would be validated through him; Peter wanted to be a part of the miracle.
But there is another possible explanation: Peter wanted to be where Jesus was. And it is Jesus’ habit never to turn down anyone who wants to come to him, wherever he is and whatever the circumstances. So Jesus called, “Come” (v. 29), and Peter responded to what he believed was the voice of Jesus commanding him. He stood on the word of Jesus. He had to take a risk. The act of faith was not, as my picture depicts, Peter getting out of the boat but Peter responding to the voice of Jesus without guarantees.
At this point, he held on to the word. I suspect he could not see Jesus in the crashing waves and sea spray. All he had was what he thought was Jesus’ voice calling him over. Then the waves overwhelmed him, as adversity can overwhelm us.
We are not guaranteed that our steps of faith will succeed. If faith were knowledge, it would not be faith, and there would be no need to trust. Trust is the way Jesus tests our relationship with him. And though Peter’s trust diminished, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” And in response, Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.
Without Jesus, failure is a sink-or-swim situation. With Jesus, it’s not sink or swim—it’s saved. His hand reached out to Peter to save him. This is the huge comfort we have when we are facing the failure of a dream. Even if we embarked on the action, believing it was in response to Jesus’ word, he doesn’t leave us to sink under our failure, but to survive with his favor. This can only be understood as pure grace: actions taken in faith, even if they fail, will not cause his love for us to falter. Peter failed to do what he wanted to do. True. But Jesus prevailed in what he wanted to achieve: to show his grace whatever the circumstances might be.
Will you keep walking toward Jesus in the moments of life when you cannot see the way ahead? All of us face fear, failure, and disappointment in the course of our lives. You might be in the middle of an almighty failure right now, and you might feel as if you have burned all your bridges. But there is one bridge that will never burn: Jesus’ grace saves again and again.
In 1854, Elisha Otis stood on a platform that had hoisted him above the New York crowd milling around him. He then instructed an axman to cut the rope that had hoisted him to that height. The crowd held their breath. To their astonishment he did not fall from his lofty position to the ground. Instead the platform dropped only a few feet. The new braking system he was demonstrating for his new safety lift locked into position and held the platform without the security of the rope. For the first time people were given the confidence to use what the Americans call an elevator.7
The rest is history. Otis elevators are now operating in most of the tallest buildings in the world. The equivalent of the entire population of the planet is moved up and down in buildings throughout the world every seventy-two hours. And we now have the possibility of an elevator one kilometer high as the result of technology developed from that first risk taken by Otis. But Otis himself did not think it was a risk. He knew he would be held safely by his automatic braking system. But the people around the prototype elevator gasped.
So it is with the Christian life. Yes, we take risks. Yes, we know that the rope needs to be cut. And yes, we may fall, sometimes quite spectacularly. But above all our failures and our falls is a God who is above and beyond all things. God, in Christ, has overcome all things. And he is here to catch us. He is the automatic braking system that can always be relied upon.
Jesus will not let us drop to the ground when we act in faith. We may stumble and fall, but we will not be lost or broken. As Psalm 37 puts it,
The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
when he delights in his way;
though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the LORD upholds his hand. (vv. 23–24 ESV)
That knowledge is the single most important determinant of my Christian life. I can never grasp its fullness. Many times—just as when I use an elevator—I presume that when I step out in faith there will be someone whose hand will reach out, as it did for Peter on the water, and catch my fall. And though I might sometimes fall further and harder than I hoped, God has never let me down.
What a God! By him I am loved, known, and called. Fear cannot break that bond. What a calling to follow him!
SEVEN
CALLED TO FOCUS
JESUS HAD A CALLING SPECIFICALLY FOR HIS DISCIPLES. HE gave them very precise, almost labored instructions on their missionary objectives: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and do not go into any town of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5–6 AMP).
I have puzzled over this teaching for many years. It seems strange that Jesus told the disciples not to spread the gospel among the Gentiles. Were they less important?
I have come to understand that this is a key teaching with regards to following the call of Jesus in our lives, and for one powerful reason: it deals with the restrictions on our callings. Jesus used the one word we hate more than most: no. But we will never mature in our callings until we have learned to say it ourselves.
Telling the disciples not to go to the Gentiles or Samaritans was not for racially prejudiced reasons. Jesus wanted to be sure that the disciples would not be distracted from their task, which was to minister specifically to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He then reinforced this singular objective by insisting that they not take any extras: “no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff” (v. 10 NIV). He set clear objectives and removed the clutter that could distract. Priorities are key to calling.
Clutter is a big issue in modern living, and as Christians, we need to deal with it regularly. There is just too much stuff. There’s always stuff on our smartphones, stuff in our inboxes, stuff clogging up our attics, our lives. “Simplify your life, and your calling will be clearer,” a wise friend once said to me.
I am a terrible packer. I have a “what if” bag about which my family teases me mercilessly. It almost always leads to excess baggage charges. It has every imaginable extra that might be required for the journey. I do not travel lightly—sometimes a pair of skiing gloves makes its way on safari in Africa! I had a conversation with the adventurer Bear Grylls about packing before he climbed Everest. Bear’s simple comment was that, if you are climbing Everest, you don’t need unnecessary clutter and weight. You need to stay focused. You have to declutter.
So what about us? Like the disciples, we don’t need unnecessary clutter. And typically for us, clutter equals distractions. There are many times when we have to say no, however hard it is, if we are to avoid diluting God’s call. As The Message translation puts it: “All I want is for you to be able to develop a way of life in which you can spend plenty of time together with the Master without a lot of distractions” (1 Corinthians 7:35).
DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION
We can be distracted so easily in this technologically driven, hyper-connected, always-on society. Jesus’ teaching ensures that we fulfill our callings and are not tempted to devise other, often more interesting tasks. It’s worth going through a few of the biggest distractions.
1. DISTRACTED BY MISSION CREEP
Jesus had a specific call on the disciples’ lives, as he does on ours, and he wants to guard against our dissipating this call. Often logic would dictate other courses of action: “Why not go to the Gentile cities on a mission? Don’t they need Jesus?” But logic can be wrong: mission creep is a danger to most callings and Christian ministries. There is always a temptation to widen our objectives through ill-discipline, a failure to focus, or a reluctance to prioritize. I have seen many people waste their callings by adding to them. But there is an imperative “Do
not go!” in Jesus’ instructions.
We are often tempted to try to do more than we are called to do. Whenever I question such additions, people tend to reply that there is “great need” to create some additional activity. And there usually is, just as there was a need for the Gentiles to hear the gospel. But their time had not yet come. And the need is not the call. There are many needs in the world today. We cannot satisfy all of them. God knows our needs and those of the world. He also knows the right timing for our actions.
Some distractions are legitimate—but only if they are part of the overall calling. Jesus was apparently distracted from his objective in the story of Jairus’s daughter found in Mark’s gospel. While Jesus was on his way to Jairus’s house to heal the man’s daughter, a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years sought out Jesus and touched his cloak, believing that she would be healed (Mark 5:21–32). It was legitimate to stop and deal with her request, as healing was part of his primary purpose and his specific calling. It appeared to those around him as a distraction. But to Jesus it was determinative of his mission.
There are times, however, when we are drawn away from a clear purpose only to slip into a side stream. This stream may be a good cause and flow to fruitful outcomes, but it is not where we should be. There are few diversions so potent as the worthwhile side stream. It seems legitimate and appears to bear fruit, so we are likely to diverge. Often this occurs with highly motivated people, or businesses that are successful, or growing churches. New ventures and opportunities with seeming legitimacy divert them from the main stream. The side stream might be refreshing, but it is not the river.
I think of the catastrophe that hit LEGO when it decided to move away from its basic business of giving young children the opportunity to use their hands and minds to make interesting constructions. The key desire of the original owner was that LEGOs would be an educational, time-consuming, and engaging activity for children. It was just too easy for the new management to decide to add video games, clothing, and theme parks to the suite of toys. The diversification seemed like a good idea, but it was a huge distraction.
Video games in particular are more entertainment than education and require instant responses. The key objective of enabling a child to take time to do something was lost. In the end, the company practically collapsed. They then redesigned their product offering and went back to their original bricks. What appeared a legitimate distraction almost destroyed the destiny of a company.1
2. DISTRACTED BY DISTRACTION
Of course, it’s not just mission creep that can distract us. T. S. Eliot wrote the words “distracted from distraction by distraction,”2 which captures something of the spirit of our age. While every age has its measure of distractions (and T. S. Eliot was clearly concerned with those of his), the potential for distraction seems to have exploded in our times beyond anything that could previously have been imagined.
Distraction is everywhere, and more worryingly, there is an increased desire for continuous distraction from real life. It is as if our attention spans have shortened and it is becoming harder and harder for us to focus on one thing for any length of time. But focus matters. And it is hard to fulfill our callings without it.
Stimulus addiction is the great addiction of our age. The pressing need to have constant digital stimuli—whether to text, tweet, check Facebook, post photos on Instagram, send e-mails, surf the Internet, Skype, Periscope, or watch television—is apparently uncontrollable and insatiable. And now all of these can be done on the go wherever we are from one handheld device.
The precise claim of a distraction is that it requires very little concentration. That is why Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram can be such a diversion. We can absentmindedly scroll away to see what snappy thought grabs our attention. We linger for a moment and then speed on. Twitter is a wonderful tool, but its use needs to be guarded. Even good things can become curses through overindulgence. The world is no longer at our feet; it is terrifyingly and dizzyingly at our fingertips.
How strange that we now talk about TV, Twitter, and the like as digital “feeds.” Are they feeding us as human beings? Are they nourishing and strengthening our humanity? Recent studies have shown that Internet addiction may produce just as much plaque on the brain as do alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine addictions.3 Digital distraction, if untamed, can make us numb to God.
3. DISTRACTED BY THE NEED FOR INSTANT GRATIFICATION
Driving through London, I notice the enormous billboards at big junctions promising that if we commit to a particular broadband package, we will have supersonically quick Internet connections. We are persuaded into a deal because of its speed—as if speed equals efficiency. Have we made speed an idol? The level of irritation we feel when, for some reason, our laptops do not open a new Internet page at lightning speed is an indication of how far we have mutated in the last decade or so. It’s almost as if Wi-Fi capacity is a God-given right, and it is deeply irritating if service providers don’t deliver at the breakneck, mind-blowing speed to which we have become accustomed.
Snatching food, information, and images at such speed is not conducive to hearing God. The pace of our age is often out of sync with the rhythms of God’s timing. If we succumb too much to the pace surrounding us, we will miss his subtle signs.
At times God does deliver quickly, but it is far more likely that he will take time, longing to develop a relationship of trust with us by interacting in real time. God is not a search engine. His replies tend not to be instantaneous. It is easy to expect God to identify our destinies fast—and then to get on and fulfill them just as quickly. We want immediate answers and instant gratification. But sometimes slower answers, a longer wait, a deeper wrestle, and further reflection bring more nourishing outcomes and are closer to the heart of God for whom continuing relationships matter more than anything else.
If we’re hungry, it’s easy to shove a ready meal in the microwave, press six minutes, and be done. Maybe occasional slow cooking would remind us of the rhythms of life not lived in the fast lane.
Likewise, it can be tempting to fall prey to short-termism, particularly where money is concerned. If we “live now, pay later”—perhaps by incurring unwieldy debt—there will, of course, come a time when we have to pay. Our generation is one that says, “Why trade enjoyment today for what may not be around tomorrow?” And so we become distracted by the immediate at the expense of the long term. This attitude has a colossal consequence in the level of debt that society is incurring under the erroneous assumption that it doesn’t need to be paid back yet. The problem is that anxiety over money distracts us from our callings. Money always holds that danger as we balance a pragmatic and wise approach with the peril of being seduced by the right salary for the wrong job.
4. DISTRACTED BY OUR OWN BAD CHOICES
“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2).
I was speaking to a young skiing instructor named Anton, who was searching for meaning in his life and unsure of where the future lay for him. At one point in our conversation we somehow got on the subject of sin. He looked blankly at me. No, he said, he didn’t think he had any sins and was not really ashamed of anything. Although, he admitted, he had made many mistakes. But then, don’t we all? I realized in that conversation that the concept of sin—acts that cut us off from God—has been airbrushed from the consciences of a generation.
But our sins, our bad habits, our wrong choices—whatever you want to call them—are so often our main distractions, and we must face them to be set free from their shackles.
Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychoanalysis, was once asked to comment on the people who came to see him for help. He said that the majority were not suffering from mental illness but were “stuck.” They had become trapped in patterns of behavior from which they could not escape or in a groove of anxiety.4
Christians can be like that. We get trapped in cycl
es and patterns of sin that drag us down and rob us of the Spirit’s movement in our lives. But the Spirit changes us. He makes all things new and gives us just the right push to keep us going. Jesus wants to give us life in all its fullness (John 10:10). He does not plan for us to be stuck in a behavioral rut from which there is no obvious escape.
But when we sin, we are cut off from God and his face is hidden from us. Sin is the real reason we get stuck. Sin is not simply a mistake, as my friend Anton was inclined to think. It is not something that affects only him.
Some say that the prayer God answers the quickest is, “Lord, show me what I have done wrong.” Normally a plethora of wrong choices come to mind, and we recognize where we have gone astray.
We need to lay off doing that which we know to be wrong. It’s not an easy process, and there is no shortcut. It requires an act of the will. If I have been turning in false expense forms to my employer, all I have to do is stop. If I am lying about the progress of the report that is expected of me, I need to stop and dare to live a life of honesty. God sees what you are doing, even if your boss does not. And God will honor you for the honest choices you make. There is no equivocation about it—if it is wrong, stop it. That’s it. Courageous integrity is what we are all called to.
Sometimes, however strong our willpower, we won’t get off the starting block without help. That is when the Holy Spirit provides the power to get us going again. But we must turn to him for help.
A DESTINY DESTROYED BY DISTRACTION
Samson had one great God-given task, a clear calling. The prophecy had been given to his parents before he was even born: Samson would take the lead in delivering Israel from the oppression of the Philistines (Judges 13:5).