"Stepping Out In Faith" by Amy Duncan
As a graduate student at Baylor University, I sometimes drove the 100 miles to Dallas on weekends to stay with my grandparents. One Friday evening, I left late enough that it was already dark, and before long, rain started sheeting down on a lonely stretch of four-lane highway. I found myself stuck behind an 18-wheeler, practically blinded by the spray of water shooting out from underneath the truck. I signaled to change lanes and began to pull around to the left of the truck, only to be absolutely pummeled by water shooting out from the side. Almost immediately, I slowed up and pulled back behind the truck. This was an impossible situation. I couldn’t stay where I was because I could barely see the front of my car beneath the spray of water from the truck tires. I needed to move to the side to pull ahead of the truck, but I was terrified of going through an even greater spray and moving forward in the lane where I couldn’t see what was ahead.
I repeated this pull-ahead-fall-back maneuver at least three times before I finally muttered a prayer, clenched my teeth, and just powered through. Deliverance! Once I was past the truck, I couldn’t believe how much better I could see, how much lighter the rain seemed, and how quickly the truck fell away in my rearview mirror.
Many times throughout my life I have looked back on this incident and have understood that God used it to teach me an important truth. It is possible to be stuck in a situation in which we simply must move forward, even though the path ahead seems too frightening or perhaps too unsure to follow.
In Matthew 14, the disciples were terrified at first when they saw Jesus walking toward them on the water. In verse 28, Peter called to Jesus, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.” Peter wanted to step out of the boat, wanted to try the water walk, wanted to move closer to Jesus, wanted to have that much faith, but he also wanted to wait until Jesus gave him the signal. He wasn’t quite ready to “clench his teeth and power around the truck.”
What is it that you might want to do, or know you should do, or even must do, but you are waiting on God to ask you to do it? Stepping out of the boat toward Christ is always moving in the right direction. The path may seem unclear or even impossible, but we are called to step out in faith. Jesus said to Peter, “Yes, come.” And on that stretch of highway, he said to me, “Yes, go.”
*I so appreciate the Potter’s Wheel Bible study class and Rolland Yoakum who led our discussion of Matthew 14. Our conversation about this story was both meaningful and encouraging and helped me formulate my thoughts for this blog.