Here are some quotes from the first chapter of "If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat."
"I believe there is something--Someone--inside us who tells us there is more to life than sitting in the boat. You were made for something more than merely avoiding failure. There is something inside you that wants to walk on the water--to leave the comfort of routine existence and abandon yourself to the high adventure of following God. So let me ask you a very important question: What's your boat?" "Your boat is whatever represents safety and security to you apart from God himself...." (your job, success, personality, money, a relationship, secrecy, sin) In what area are you shrinking back from FULLY and courageously trusting God? Fear will tell you what your boat is. Leaving it may be the hardest thing you ever do. But if you want to walk on water, you've got to get out of the boat.
Each time you get out of the boat, you become a little more likely to get out the next time. It's not that the fear goes away, but that you get used to living with fear. You realize that it does not have the power to destroy you. On the other hand, every time you resist that voice, every time you choose to stay in the boat rather than heed its call, the voice gets a little quieter in you. Then you last you don't hear its call at all.
"We tend to seek a world of comfort. We try to construct manageable lives with some security and predictability to maintain the illusion that we are in control.
Then God "passes us by" (Ex. 33:22) and shakes everything up. The call to get out of the boat involves crisis, opportunity, often failure, generally fear, sometimes suffering, always the calling to a task too big for us. But there is no other way to grow faith and to partner with God."
Pray for me as I step out of the boat. Pray for courage and humility, as I get out of my personality and get into people's lives in order to love them more deeply.
