Walking on the Waves (The Prince of Peace)

The Room Experience TRME
Jan 25, 2019
5 min read

#myshadowsandlight

Entry 39

Anchor Verses:

Peter replied, ‘Sir’, he said, ‘are you really Jesus? Then say to me, “Come here! Walk on top of the water.” ’

‘Come to me’, said Jesus. So Peter climbed out of the boat. He walked on top of the water and he came towards Jesus. – Matthew 14: 28-29

Hey!

A prosperous and healthy new year to you and all that’s yours. Ehmmm…that greeting came a bit late 🤭, but…well, this is the first episode of S&L for this year and for a very long time at that. I’ve seen a lot, been through a lot and done a lot since the last time we met here. It hasn’t been easy, but faithful is He that calls and WHO will also do it.

So, it’s a promising new year and it has been full of great prospects so far. Not that I haven’t battled with obstacles at all; in fact, towards the end of last year till present, the devil has rearing that his ugly head 😏; but despite it all, the standard of the Holy Spirit in my life has always been at an all-time high 😂.

So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him. – Isaiah 59:19

And this is exactly what will bring us to the crux of this episode’s focus. You see, life is never a bed of Rose for anyone. Everyone on earth, in one way or the other, has a challenge he/she is trying to surmount. There is no one without a problem, however little. So, literarily, life is one giant battlefield where no one is actually safe from the tremors of battles. We are all soldiers; we started fighting the long, unending war the moment our first cries forced themselves out of our mouths and we’ll fight the war till our spirits leave our bodies to go back to the Maker.

You know the funny thing? It is that war, despite all the descriptions that have been given to it, is actually a beautiful affair. Yes, war is actually a thing of beauty. However, whether you see it as being beautiful or ugly depends on which side of the war that you are in and which ending of the war favours you. Now, when a war is on, there can only be two ways it will end for either party – Triumph or Defeat. And trust me, war is only beautiful when you’re on the triumphing end. No one loves Defeat. But, sadly, this is what life specialises in doing to people – defeating them. And the only thing sadder than that is that many people have actually come to see defeats as being a NORMAL part of living. This is not so.

The war raging continuously in life is merely an extension of the ancient war that has been going on between the two forces of nature right from the foundation of the earth – the never ending war between good and evil. The forces of hell have been trying without success to vanquish the forces of light right from the beginning, but the salient truth is: no amount of evil can defeat good. Light will always penetrate the thickest darkness. Good always wins! Therefore, the consistent endings of the battles we all fight in the unending war of life is totally dependent on which side of the war we are in. Your victory or defeat is a manifestation of whether you belong to God or the devil. And well, when you’re on the side of God, there is only one way for you to walk in – the way of victory. After all, victory belongs to Jesus. (as I write this part, Todd Dulaney’s song – Victory belongs to Jesus – kept ringing in my head)

To further illustrate this, recently, I came across Oral Robert’s book, How To Get Through Your Struggles, and I realised that life could be likened to one big ocean, and every human goes through/over it in a ship. However, the ocean is a stormy one, one filled with raging waves and persistent instability. But you know what the good news is? It is that Jesus, while He was here on earth, also experienced a situation like that. And you know what He did? You guessed right. He walked on it! Now, take note that while Jesus was on earth, He was fully man and God. The mortal side of Him didn’t interfere with His immortal side. And while He walked on that stormy sea, He did it as a man that is subject to the physical part of nature. Jesus Christ was not a Spirit when He walked on the water; He was a Son of Man.

As if to further prove the feasibility of this to someone like me, the Bible recorded that another human, the apostle Peter, also walked on water with Jesus. That was it! Two sons of men, with flesh and blood, walking on a water that was conformed to be a floor under their feet. Fine! Agreed! Jesus was both God and man; but what of Peter who was fully man?

As I meditated on this, I realised something. Jesus, despite being both God and man at that time interacted with that storm with His physical body. However, this interaction was backed up by something else – His faith. Of course, you would wonder why Jesus needed faith to perform miracles since He was God Himself. But the truth is, at moments like that, in His physical body, when Jesus was performing miracles, He was not acting as God; He was acting as a human being, a Son of Man, whose spirit-man is being empowered by His faith in God to bend/twist the laws of nature. Jesus Christ needed faith to enable His body to be subjected to His Spirit and to consequently cause His feet to thread on water! And Peter, well, Peter was able to walk on water because of His faith too. His faith in Jesus. The thing is, at that particular moment when Peter asked Jesus if he could join Him on water, he wasn’t seeing Jesus as “Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter, a carpenter Himself”. He wasn’t seeing Jesus as his friend and the leader of the circle of friends he belonged to. Peter saw Jesus at that moment as God. He saw Him as his Maker who has the power to do all things. And as a result of his faith in Jesus, he was able to cross to the winning side in that particular battle of life. Peter, a full human like me and you, was able to walk on water because he trusted and believed in Jesus.

This showed me one thing – that I can only walk on the stormy waves of life if I lean totally on Jesus. I can only sleep peacefully in the dangerously rocking boat of my life if only I allow the Prince of Peace to do that which only Him can do. I can only win life’s battles and will only end up triumphant at the end of my life’s journey if I move to the side of Good, the party of God. And this war, this unending war of life – I can only see it as beautiful if I deliberately decide to walk with Jesus, the Captain of my salvation, on the stormy waves of my life.

So, here, now, the question is – why won’t I choose Him?