'gator Infested Waters

Saturday, 28 Sep 2002

Did you know that people in Florida actually rent canoes to paddle around in alligator infested waters! They do! I was just talking with my friend last night and they are camping this weekend. They rented a canoe, which they have done many times in the past, and were out paddling around with the 'gators. In fact, as they paddled my friend's oar hit a 'gator under that dark murky water and made the 'gator a little mad. So, it swung its tail into the side of the canoe, hitting it with a thud, I would imagine. I think that would increase anyone's heart rate immediately!! My friend said if the canoe had tipped over, which they easily do you know!!...she would have probably been like Peter...walking on water!! Oh the crazy things we do for enjoyment. It seems sort of strange to people like me out here in California, but then again, our freeways are to be feared and we think nothing of driving on them all the time!!

Do you know that we actually live in 'gator infested water all the time? You were wondering how this was going to tie in, weren't you? I was too! And who saves us from that dangerous water? God does, of course!

Micah 7:7
As for me, I look to the Lord for his help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me. Do not gloat over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again.
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In the ordinary things in life, we are able to glide pretty easily over those dark waters, knowing that should the canoe tip over, it wouldn't be much of a problem. There are only small 'gators down there and they won't hurt much. A small nip or two in the leg, a loss of a little toe perhaps, maybe a finger, but nothing life threatening. We think we need not worry about the boat tipping over or needing to walk on water until the "water" gets deep and the 'gators are huge! Until it gets so dark there is no light under there. Until we wouldn't know which way to turn if not for God's help.

I experience two types of challenges in my life right now. The ordinary kind of decisions about our future, decisions about the car, the house, the job. Whatever it may be. And then there's the big "Gator". The one that will eat me alive if I'm not walking on the water, so to speak. You probably know what that big 'gator is, it's the loss of Phil. It waits to devour me any chance it can get. I wouldn't dare bump it with my oar or it would probably do more than swing its mighty tail at me, it would chomp the canoe in half, taking me with it. It lurks, and it prowls and it waits for me to lose my focus so it can take me down into the deep dark water of life.

BUT!!! I stand strong! I keep my focus, and I paddle with care through the murky waters of this world. I have been through the school of "professional canoeing" at this point, and it has taught me so much. Hard lessons, for sure, but important ones.

Lesson Number One:
Allow God to steer.
God knows where we are going and He will guide us there.

Lesson Number Two:
I may not see the final destination, but there surely is one.
1 Peter 1:5b -It will be revealed on the LAST DAY for all to see.

Lesson Number Three:
The "gators" are there only to test our faith in the One who saves. They can't harm us!
1 Peter 1:9 Your reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.

I'm sure there are many more lessons along the way, but these will get us started!

Do you know that when we get into the "canoe" with God we are only small babies? When we take that step of faith and say "yes" to Him in our lives, we're just youngin's. We start out this journey with Him knowing nothing about Him really, except that we are drawn to Him and we want to know more about Him. We get into that canoe by stepping in of our own free will, and then the rest of our lives we are on an entirely new journey. The rest of the world who have no belief in God feel that this world is their home. Those of us in the "canoe" know it is not. We feel like foreigners here. A fish out of water, so to speak.

1 Peter 2:10-11
"Once you were not a people;
now you are the people of God.
Once you received none of God's mercy;
now you have received his mercy."
Dear brothers and sisters, you are foreigners and aliens here.
So I warn you to keep away from evil desires because they fight against your very souls.
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Keep away from those "gators" that seek to kill and destroy! We are not meant to be swimming around in there with them, get in the boat!! In the water you are swimming unprotected! If not for God's protection, we would be eaten up by the evil in this world.

1 Peter 1:5
And God, in his mighty power, will protect you until you receive this salvation,
because you are trusting him.
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We step into the canoe as babies, and then what?
Well, here's your birth announcement! You can fill in your name!

A New Life:

All honor to the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
for it is by his boundless mercy that God has given

____________
the privilege of being born again. (1 Peter 1:3a)

Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead.
For God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children. (1 Peter 1: 3b-4)

God has delivered ____________!

The Lord will bring ___________ out of the darkness into the light - (Micah 7:9b)

Obey God because you are his children. (1 Peter 1:14)

For you have been born again. Your new life did not come from your
earthly parents because the life they gave you will end in death. But this new life
will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. (1 Peter 1:23)

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Wow, born right into this new life and the world is waiting for you! God welcomes you into His family and loves you like no other person has ever loved you before. Does that get rid of the "gators?"

No! They are still lurking. Why? Because you were born again into God's family, but you still must live on this earth with the Enemy. He has always wanted to destroy you!

Can he? One way to stop him is to "grow into the fullness of your salvation"!  1 Peter 2:2

1 Peter 2:2-3
You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation.
Cry out for this nourishment as a baby cries for milk, now that you have had a
taste of the Lord's kindness.
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Do you crave God? I do now. I can't say that I did before I experienced the things of late, but now that I have, I am addicted to God. I need Him every day. I need His spiritual milk, which eventually becomes a soft food and then becomes the meat of our existence.

We are God's children, and we were born into this world, but this is not our home. When Phil was born, we as his parents gave birth to him, but it ended in death just as that verse in 1 Peter 1:23 said it will. When God gave Phil life, it ended in life, a new life that will last forever.

1 Peter 1:24-25
As the prophet says,
"People are like grass that dies away;
their beauty fades as quickly as the beauty of wildflowers.
The grass withers,
and the flowers fall away.
But the word of the Lord will last forever."
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And that is the "gator" that will eat me up! Death! The death of my son! It seeks to destroy me, but I seek God more! I place my confidence in God. It's like a "Twilight Zone" Jim and I watched the other night. They are bringing it back, did you know? In color! In this episode, a young doctor dies and from his sitting position on a bench he slumps to the side, gone. Then his spirit gets up and looks back at his body lying there. The doctor is changed. He no longer looks tired, his brow is now longer furled from the aneurysm that was giving him headaches. He is no longer sweating and rumpled. He is calm and refreshed. I loved it! That is what Phil must have felt! He must have looked back at his body lying on the bed swollen, bruised, pale and he must have felt so refreshed! It is what I believe but do not see, but when I see it displayed on screen, it brings it home to me in picture form. That is what believers will do. We will leave this tired body behind, and feel so calm and refreshed in God's presence.

1 Peter 1:21
Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And because God raised
Christ from the dead and gave him great glory,
your faith and hope can be placed confidently in God.
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It also says in 1 Peter 1:20 that God chose Christ for this purpose long before the world began, and He was sent to earth for all to see. And He did this for us.

It makes me think of the ants I saw a few weeks ago, remembering something I had read before, as they were crawling along the seam in the sidewalk. There they were, the whole bunch of them scurrying about, to who knows where, bumping into each other, going around clumps of dirt in their way that must have seemed like mountains, thinking this was all there was to the world. That is all they knew. They had no idea that I was standing there watching them. They had no idea I even existed. And yet, I had such power over them. I could have picked them up and carried them away, or put my finger down in their path and changed their direction, maybe blown on them and scattered them to different places, or whatever I chose. And they would not have even known where it came from. They would have just gone on as best they could, doing whatever it was they were doing. They had no idea that the sun that shone on them or the air around them was what was keeping them alive. They had no idea that the world they lived in was HUGE, because all they knew was this little piece of the cement for now. Oh sure, they could crawl a distance into some dirt or grass, or perhaps someone's home but they would still be oblivious to the world and the universe that does exist. Oblivious to all of us! They don't care, and they don't know, and they never will.

That's why Christ came. Like the Bible verse we are learning right now with our Tuesday morning group:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Colossians. 1:15
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Christ became visible so we could see God. He is God's image. He became an Ant so we "ants" could know God. Those ants "stumble because they do not listen to God's word or obey it, and so they meet the fate that has been planned for them". (1 Peter 2:8b)
But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests,
God's holy nation, his very own possession.
This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of
the darkness into his wonderful light.
1 Peter 2:9.
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We may be foreigners here now that we have been born into God's family, but at least we know the way home! We were brought out into the light and we look forward to the special blessings that will come at the return of Jesus Christ.

We know who and what the "gators" are and how to avoid falling into their jaws! They are anything that takes our focus off of God and places it on this world and those fiery trials that we must endure for the time being.

We know that these trials are only to test our faith.
1 Peter 1:7

These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold - and your faith is far more precious to God that mere gold.

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It reminds me of that TV broadcast: "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. This is only a test, if this had been an actual emergency..."

Don't we all hate tests? Well maybe not all of us but most of us. But can we avoid them? No, they are a part of life. In school and out!

But what is an actual emergency?! Well, it seems like an actual emergency is when your child gets cancer, or when your spouse leaves you or when your house burns down, but is it? Or is it just a test? Is it merely a distraction devised by the evil one, or an actual emergency?

The Bible says, no matter what, keep your faith intact. Keep your focus on Jesus so you can walk on that water. Should your canoe tip over don't be sucked under and eaten alive! If you know the answers to the test, USE THEM!

So if your faith remains strong after being tried by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
1 Peter 1:7b
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The whole world will see Him! Even the 'gators! The enemies seen and unseen! The Bible says that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen. There is a world that we can't see just like there is a world that the ants can't see, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. That is what faith is all about.

We are God's children. We have been adopted into His family when we "stepped into the canoe" and believed. We are fish out of water, "foreigners here on earth". We don't "blend", as I heard in a movie way back when. ("My Cousin Vinnie")

1 Peter 1:17-18
So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time as foreigners here on earth. For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. He paid for you with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.
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I don't like the idea that Phil inherited an empty life from Jim and me, but it is true. We gave birth to him into this world, but it was temporary. When He accepted Christ and was born into God's family, he inherited a full life, a life that will last forever. That I do like. He lived as a foreigner here a very short time, but now he is not a foreigner where he lives for eternity. He is home with the family of God and he sees all.

He trusted when he could not see that God was standing above him watching over everything. He trusted when it hurt and it didn't make sense and when the cancer came back over and over. He trusted.The reward for that trust was the salvation of his soul. Everything for him here was not an "actual emergency". It was a test. He found the answers for the test and he was prepared for the real emergency...leaving this world for the next.

Phil might have left this earth pretty much still drinking "spiritual milk", although in his last days I believe he quickly moved from that to soft food to thick steak. This was serious business and it required serious nourishment. He "cried out for this nourishment". This "emergency" called for nothing less.

We don't always have such emergencies as we go through our day to day living, but everyone will experience them at some point in their lives. Those 'gators will not go away just because we don't want them to be there, and we need to grow up and become strong so we need not fear them.

1 Peter 2:5
And now God is building you, as living stones, into his spiritual temple.
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Hopefully we are growing from babies to living stones. Something very soft to something rock hard. That is not to say our hearts are hard, it is to say that what is in this foreign land cannot penetrate into a heart filled with God's love. It cannot harm us. Yes, it can hurt and it does. Losing Phil hurts, but that is different than it harming me to the point of destroying me. It will seek to devour me, but it has no power to do it when I focus on my Savior. I can be in that canoe and it can be overturned by those very 'gators, and I can walk on water right over the top of them as one of God's children. Safe and secure in Him.

Malachi 3:17-18
"They will be my people," says the Lord Almighty.
"On the day when I act, they will be my own special treasure. I will spare them as a
father spares an obedient and dutiful child. Then you will again see the difference between
the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not."
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Are you God's people?

Have you learned how to fight off the "gators" by walking on the water?

Are you in the "canoe"?

Jim (my husband) said after reading this, "The truth is, no one is just standing there watching. You are either in the canoe, or you're in the water".

If you're in the water...this is an "actual emergency"!!

Stay tuned!

Living in His peace,
Diane