Launch your faith out into the deep…

Jesus alone is the captain of my ship…

God has His way of stirring up our nest, in order to force us out of our comfort zone, on to the path He has destined us to travel.

Do you remember when Jesus took a young child onto His lap and told His disciples that unless they become as this child they cannot experience the Kingdom of Heaven (Mat 18:3).

Children are like sponges, always looking for new experiences, always trusting, always teachable.

We were like that once ourselves, what happened?

The older we get, as a rule, most people do not like change.

They would rather stay in the safe harbors of their nostalgic past, where they feel most comfortable, where they are no longer challenged or forced to learn new things.

This is NOT God’s way at all!

As Christians, if we are to be used of God, we have to be prepared to flow with the Spirit and to launch our faith out into the deep, wherever He leads us.

Jesus was constantly challenging those who counted their religious traditions on a par with God’s word; those old religious practices that have long ago gone stale, their original meaning long forgotten and now have become empty ritual.

You don’t want to be an old wineskin.

“No one puts new wine into old wineskins: otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins: but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins”
— Mark 2:22

Catch the imagery in the following verses regarding the eagle:

“He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, the LORD alone guided him, no foreign god was with him.”
— Deut. 32:10–12

Moses penned these words at the end of his life. In his final song, his parting words, Moses likens God to an eagle stirring up its nest.

Likewise, God often will stir our nest up, to make us uncomfortable, in order to get us to move.

In the Bible, we find that God NEVER does a miracle the same way twice, He’s always doing things differently, so we also have to be willing and able to adjust to whatever He’s doing and the way He does it.

John 3:5-8

5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.

So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

None of us, as Christians, are built for safe harbors; we all need to learn to launch our faith out into the DEEP because that’s where the Spirit is moving today.

The Winning Walk

YOU CAN’T STAY WHERE YOU ARE

There is one place that God will never let you stay…and that is the place where you are.

Once God touches our life, we can be certain that we will never be the same. He will move us; He will change things; He will shake us up to get us where He wants us to go.

For the Christian, there is simply no such thing as status quo.

Change was the hallmark of the early church, but many churches today resist change.

Someone has said that the seven last words of the church are: “We’ve never done it that way before.”

When God revealed His plan to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, the Jewish Christians were faced with the need for radical change.

Old beliefs and attitudes had to die so that new ones could take their place.

The Christians at Jerusalem were content to be a Jews-only brotherhood, but God had other plans. Change was in order.

There is a chorus I have sung with thousands of teenagers over the years on beach retreats.

I never get tired of it. It challenges me as much as it does them:

“Will you stay where you are, or will you reach for a star?

Play the game? Be a fraud? Or die to self and live to God?

This could be victory’s hour, claim His grace, claim His power. Will you stay where you are, or reach for a star?”

Memory Verse

II CORINTHIANS 5:17
Therefore if any man is in Christ he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.

Come join the Adventure!

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