Have You Talked Yourself Out of Trusting God?

My number one, life-long recurring dream has high school band as its setting. I’m playing the French horn in the front row during a concert. It’s lovely, and all is well until I remember…

The French horn is not my instrument. I don’t know the first thing about how to play the French horn! Needless to say, the dream goes rapidly downhill from there.

Maybe counselors would have a field day with all this implies about my emotional entrails, but for me, it’s a straight shot to Peter’s experience of walking on water in Matthew 14.

In the story, Jesus leaves behind his mountain prayer closet, steps onto the stormy Sea of Galilee, and walks toward the boat where his disciples are struggling against the wind. Seeing Jesus walking across the top of the waves, Peter asks for an invitation to join Jesus there.

“Come,” Jesus replied, and Peter actually does it. The fisherman who spent his career in a boat defies all the properties of water he has come to accept and treads across the waves as if they were solid ground. The text says he “came to Jesus,” but somewhere along the way he begins to notice the wind.

It’s a moment straight out of my dream: “Hey, wait a minute! This is crazy! I can’t walk on water!”

And so Peter starts to sink. Jesus reaches out a hand to rescue him, stills the storm, climbs into the boat, and the story ends with worship.

Eyes on Jesus in Trust

Here’s where the parallel between the biblical account and my crazy dream starts to break down because there is no miracle of brass instrument competency forthcoming. Yet I do wonder how often I have talked myself out of trusting God because of fear or adverse circumstances or simple impostor syndrome.

Here’s an example: When I first started teaching the Bible to the women in my church, I was terrified. In the very middle of a lesson, I would have visions of handing my notes and Bible off to someone else and fleeing from the room. I knew this was a calling God was holding me to, so I stuck with it, and to help me keep my head, I started numbering the pages of my notes in fraction form. I could look at the upper right corner of the page and say, “Okay, I’m on page 6 out of 12. Half-way through. I can keep trusting for grace to do this.”¹

Tim Keller spoke wisdom about trusting God, which puts the emphasis where it should be. If you’re falling off a cliff and grab hold of a branch on the way down, “strong faith in a weak branch will be fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.” If the branch is weak, it will break no matter how much you believe in it. If it’s strong enough to hold you, it’s worthy of your confidence, no matter how small that confidence may seem.

“Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.” (Isaiah 26:4) He is worthy of your trust.

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God is that strong branch. He was worthy of my faith twenty-plus years ago when he suggested to me that I might be a Bible teacher. He was worthy of Peter’s faith when Peter stepped out of the boat.

Isaiah switches the metaphor, but his advice is sound:

Trust in the Lord forever,
    for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.”
(Isaiah 26:4)

Is God calling you to a new assignment?
Is he challenging you to be more disciplined in your eating or sleeping?
More fervent in your study or your evangelism?
Is he suggesting that you might step out of the safe boat of your comfort zone and trust him?
He’s “an everlasting rock.”

Your steps may falter, but he will not fail.

Holding You in the Light,

1. Twenty years have passed, but I still number my pages this way. ↩︎

Is God calling you to a new assignment? Is he suggesting that you might step out of the safe boat of your comfort zone and trust him? He’s “an everlasting rock.” Your steps may falter, but he will not fail.

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