FAITH AND FEAR

FAITH AND FEAR

“But seeing the wind, he became afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, "Lord, save me!" Matt. 14:30

The call from our previous article yesterday was immediately followed by a great adventure which the Lord knew would be a floundering experience. Christ knew that weakness must be discovered before power and victory can realize desire. Here he does the impossible. It is the story of a man who, suddenly lifted to a wonderful height, saw the possibility of the impossible in fellowship with Christ; asked for permission, waited for orders, and having received them, obeyed and actually walked on the waters just as his Lord had been walking on the waters. He placed his frail, feeble foot outside the boat on the wave, and did not sink; he was upheld; he did the impossible thing under the authority of the Master; his will was yielded to his Lord, his body was yielded to his yielded will, and between the frail man and the Lord Jesus a union was established so that as he touched the waves Peter did not sink beneath them. He walked on the waters to go to Jesus.

Now his defeat. The reason was he saw the wind that was powerful. That was the assault of sense. The sensual and the spiritual are close together and forever antagonistic. One must reign and whichever reigns masters the other. If the sensual reigns, the spiritual is dwarfed and imprisoned. If the spiritual reigns, the sensual is kept within bounds and never allowed the mastery of life. The sensual has local and temporary rewards while the spiritual gives reward long after the flesh has failed. Peter was feeling the assault of the sensual and its temporary, local reward was instantly received.

Closely associated with the sensual and spiritual is faith and fear. In the moment when Peter yielded to the assault of the senses, taking his eyes from the Lord, looked at the waves and became conscious of the winds, fear dispossessed faith. The failure of faith came when he became conscious of self as opposed to winds and waves. Then he knew the actuality of his humanity, its weakness and its inability to walk in the difficult and impossible place.

Immediately following came the material, physical expression of that spiritual experience of the failure of faith, "beginning to sink." Paralysis of power followed when the wavering of faith failed to make connection with the Lord. He found the waves too weak to hold him, strong enough to drown him, and he began to sink. This is not to call in question the fineness of his heroism, his high hour of vision, when he made his adventure of faith. The sinking is not the inevitable sequence of the walking, it is the outcome of failure to keep in close connection with the Lord, resulting from the assault of the senses, so that fear takes the place of faith, paralysis in the place of power, and he is back again on the ordinary level of human life.