Do you know how to survive being suddenly hurled into deep water without an exit in sight?

Head back. Arms out. Lay down. Breathe.

So simple. Lay back and relax. Let the water carry you along. Keep your eyes open, use your hands to gently steer yourself clear of obstacles. When you finally come into view of a way out of the water, then exert some effort to pull yourself toward it and out to safety.

It’s not much different than finding yourself splashing into life circumstances that make you feel like you’re drowning, is it? The solution to not going under in life is similar.

Look up to the One who is your help. Rest in His character and his upholding hand. Breathe in His peace that passes all understanding. Keep your eyes open for His way of escape, and when you see it, allow His strength to help you move toward it.

So simple.

The success of both scenarios, however, rests in our initial response to the surprise of our situation. If we panic in either case, we drown. The more we fight the water, the more we wrestle with life’s circumstances, the more exhausted we get and the less effective our efforts. Our response must be trained to be one of trust. In the water, we have to trust that the scientific laws of body composition and hydrodynamics will work. In life, we have to trust that God’s character is good, His ways are righteous, and His love for us is perfect.

How does one train that reflexive response, though? How do you get to a place where your automatic instinct is to put yourself in what looks like a vulnerable posture and let yourself be carried along?

In the water, we take swimming lessons. We go to a known, safe place with a trained, skilled teacher. We try out the skills. Little by little, we gain trust that the scientific laws hold and that our body, in the right position, will stay afloat. Soon, we’re adopting that position independently and playing with how to return to that safe place no matter where our positioning begins.

In life, the same principle holds. In the peaceful times, seek out those who are skilled at trusting God. Look for those people who seem to ride on top of life’s waves instead of being sunk by them. Ask them to teach you the skill sets: prayer, holding onto Bible truths, remembering the testimony of God’s faithfulness, listening to Holy Spirit. Practice, practice, practice those skills in the kiddie pools of life, when the consequences aren’t so big: when your day goes a little sideways, when a plan doesn’t go as planned, when you get a minor sickness. The more that you test and find the spiritual laws of God are consistently trustworthy, and that He is a good God who wants good for you, the more you will find your response to increasingly large problems being one of rest and trust.
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It's a process. There will be days that you swallow some seawater. There will be times that you struggle against the current in your own strength before you remember to rest in Him. You’ll find that you identify so much with the disciples that walked with Jesus; desiring to trust Him and allow Him to be your safety, but also eternally grateful for His patience and gentleness with your weakness. There will, over time, become testimonies of you surviving shocking falls into a watery abyss, having righted yourself and found the surface, lain back and trusted in the Truth that upheld you, and made it safely to shore. Then you get to teach others to live and not drown!

As I asked the Lord what He would have me share today, He brought to mind an old journal entry. Let me set the scene:

It was 2018. Dan and I were set to go on our first trip to Kenya; a foundation-laying trip that has impacted our lives ever since. One week prior to our departure, every detail of who we were to meet, where we would be housed, and our in-country itinerary fell apart. We called our third team member, our friend Josh, and the three of us prayed. Coming to the conclusion that we had our flights purchased already, and God had clearly called us to go, we decided unanimously that we would still move forward. The rest is history; God did as God does. By the time we set foot in Nairobi, new connections and itinerary were in place and the Lord has continued setting our path before us, step-by-step, from that time to now.

That intervening week, however, was brutal. We faced incredulity from people who had previously been supportive. Brothers and sisters in the faith, mentors and spiritual leaders in our lives began questioning and poking holes in our willingness to follow God into vastly unknown places. It was from this place that the following was penned. May it embolden you to listen only to His Voice when your obedience causes others to clamor for you to play it “safe.”

Boldness is not the same as recklessness. Fearlessness is not the same as naivete. Optimism and Hope are not the same as ignorance or blindness. Bold, Fearless, Optimistic, Hopeful people who walk in Faith and Confidence are not unwise simpletons in need of a condescending hand to keep them in check.

These are the people who truly trust Him who called them. These are the people who obey despite constant disparagement. These are the world-changers because they refuse to be contained by fear, pessimism, and reasons why living their calling is imprudent.  The Scripture says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…it then follows that those who grow in wisdom also grow in awe and honor of the Lord. His direction to them becomes the very voice of wisdom. They do not follow in blindness, but rather in crystal clear sight of Him – but of Him alone. And in the light of Him, physical danger means little, financial struggles are temporary, the derision of those who are truly blind and unwise – though constant and tiring – falls away unheeded. He is everything.

So you may call us what you will. Reckless. In need of a bit in the mouth to turn us. Naïve. You may ignore our talents, gifts, and history of victory and growth. You may dismiss the multitude of things you don’t know about us because we don’t present our resume. You may decide that we have no valuable words because we hold back our opinions and insights often, choosing to let God work in His timing to straighten our path. You may choose only to judge our forward trajectory and tut-tut at what you see as ill-thought-out. I wish you knew us. I wish you knew all that He who has called us has worked. But you don’t.

So I will leave it all – our reputation, your perceptions, your slighting of our growth, understanding, and ability to walk rightly – everything you don’t see, don’t know, and judge amiss; I will leave it in the hands of the One who sees, knows, and continues to count us worthy of the calling. I strive to please Him and Him alone, knowing that that will almost always displease you. Because just as this is not about you…it’s not about us, either. It’s all about Him.

So I will fix my eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of my faith; the prize of the high calling; the crown and joy at the end of the race. I will continue to walk in fearless, bold, hopeful, joyful, child-LIKE faith. And if you cannot see that as anything more than child-ISH, then I pity that you do not know the freedom in Him as I do. 

The old hymn, “His Eye is on the Sparrow” has been an earworm for me this week. Are you familiar with it? The lyrics of the second verse run:

               “Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
               And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
               Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see,
               His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I’ve been pondering about the little sparrow that He’s watching. It’s easy to absorb the direct words of comfort found in this verse. The call to rest on the goodness of His character is clear. But what does the comparison of that sparrow have to do with me?

Since childhood, I’ve heard this hymn and just accepted the comparison; the sparrow is tiny, and in the grand scheme of the world, I’m tiny, too, but God even sees the tiny stuff. But it is deeper than that. In two of the Scriptures that mention sparrows and compare them to the Father’s care for us, the monetary value of the bird is mentioned. In Matthew 10:29, two sparrows are sold for a penny. In Luke 12:6, five are sold for two pennies. I suppose Luke found some kind of a “buy two sparrows, get a half of one free” deal, but either way, sparrows were extremely inexpensive. Neither verse mentions purchasing just one; to get anything worth anything, you had to have at least two.

Have you ever felt that way? That your worth was in your comparative value as assessed by others, and that it didn’t add up to much? We equate our earning potential with how valuable we are. We take stock of our material gains and decide that those holdings somehow translate to an expression of our personal significance. So many of us look around the marketplace and figure that we deserve to be in the bargain bin.

That’s not at all how God sees us. That comparison to sparrows that we find in Scripture is to point out that, from His point of view, NONE of His creation is in the half-off sale. It’s not that God sees “even the small stuff;” it’s that to Him we ARE NOT small stuff! That kind of devaluation and underestimation comes from ourselves or the world around us, but NEVER from the One who knit us together with great care. Those itty-bitty sparrows that we require two of to be worth our time and effort? They are important enough to draw His gaze to the extent that He notices any time that any single one of them falls from the sky.

The scripture is telling us that our scales are wrong! The measures we are using to determine our value and worth need to be calibrated by His truth. God pays attention to that tiny bird because He formed every detail of it. He taught it to sing. He designed its wings to perfection. He selected the color palate of its feathers. He had purpose for its life when He decided to add it to His creative vision. He cares. How much more does He care for us? The ones He calls His children. The ones He sent His own son to redeem. The ones whose hair count is known to Him because, again, He desires to know every detail about us. The ones who bear His own image in their faces.
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Don’t let your heart be worried and restless. Rest in His goodness. Let Him have your doubts and fears. Even if you only see one step of the way forward, remember: He has placed immense value on the sparrow and watches over it carefully. He has placed eternal value in you. He sees you. He knows you. He has called you worth His attention and care. I’d accept the valuation of the expert. 

Driving home from a restful, restorative weekend getaway, Dan and I were suddenly startled by the roar of three sports motorcycles as they swerved out to pass us on the winding, two-lane road. Adrenaline spiked by the auditory onslaught, we remarked that this was so dangerous; we had seen so many accidents on that road because of reckless driving.

Sure enough, as we rounded the next bend, two riders were nowhere in sight while the third – no motorcycle in view – lay on his back in the middle of the road. The first to arrive, we called 9-1-1 and went to speak to him, assess his condition, and help to calm him while we awaited emergency services. Two neighbors who had also seen him lying there came over to help locate his bike (in the ditch) and belongings. Sitting beside him, holding his hand, I asked “Do you know Jesus?” …  A quiet “No.” … “Is it okay if I pray for you?” … “Okay.” So, I did. So did Dan.

Emergency services arrived. They loaded him up and took him to the hospital. We thought that would be the end of our interaction. However, we had used my phone to call his wife as he lay there, so they had my phone number. In the wee hours of the next morning, we received a text. The gist of it was that he had miraculously only suffered a dislocated elbow and wanted to apologize for denying that he knew Jesus; he had experienced many difficulties in his life and was laying there in pain and fear, doubting that God had ever seen or cared for him.

Isn’t that just like us?

In fact, the disciples who walked with Jesus every single day experienced this kind of doubt. The book of Mark, chapter 4, details one of those moments. Jesus and his disciples had spent the day among a crowd that had come from all over the region because of the miracles He had performed and His teachings that had spread. Wanting to hear, see, touch, and receive from this man who seemed to have a lot to offer, people travelled to the seaside to get what they could from him. Every healing, every teaching, all of the things that drew people to him, were witnessed first-hand by the disciples. The Scripture even says that they got the behind-the-scenes explanations for what Jesus said and did. Theirs was not a passing, surface-level acquaintanceship with Jesus.

Then, the storm came.

Out on the sea, in the boat that had been prepared ahead of time, a windstorm blew up. The account in Mark says that the waves were “breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling.” (Mark 4:37) This wasn’t a tiny summer shower that would pass quickly. It was a storm. My mind imagines thunder and lightning, salt spray and seafoam flying high into the air, disciples finding whatever vessels they could to frantically scoop water out of the boat and stay afloat. Amid the noise, the chaotically sloping ship deck, and the survival efforts, one of them hollers, “Somebody go wake up Jesus!!!” It was their 9-1-1 call!

Wiping the remnants of slumber from his eyes, rising up from the cushion in the stern of the boat where he had been peacefully resting, Jesus rebukes the wind and sea, calming them instantly. We often leave the story there. Kudos to the disciples who knew where to go for their help; hooray for the Jesus who calms our storms.

That’s not where Jesus left it that day. Once the circumstances settled, He turned to the disciples and asked “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40) There’s a bit of a testy sense of frustration under those words. These disciples were men who had walked with Him. They had seen all that He was capable of doing and had been privy to his motivations and a deeper understanding of His teachings. Yet, they hadn’t learned to look to His actions as a guide for their own. His peace and emotional regulation weren’t yet the model for theirs. They still thought that circumstances were more powerful than He was. God’s love, faithfulness, power, and authority in their lives was still seen through the lens of their perception of His activity in the chaos around them.

They doubted. They denied that His posture of peace was the RIGHT response to the storm, and demanded that He join them in their panic. They were rebuked for it.

Y’all, it’s not easy. The storm gets loud. It turns our world sideways, sometimes in an instant and often due to our own actions. It’s scary. It hurts. It looks like doom. In the middle of it, rather than demanding to know why Jesus isn’t freaking out alongside us, maybe let’s take a breath, check out what His posture is, and join Him in that posture. If He’s at rest, the likelihood is that He knows the outcome will be in our best interest, so we can rest. If He’s at work, then we can actively join Him in working toward the outcome that will be in our best interest.

Bottom line: He is always and ever working things together for our good and His glory. It’s okay to ask Him for answers, but let’s be careful not to doubt His character.