©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

10-09-05

Recovering From The Crash

10/9/05 Recovering From The Crash

For the next thirty minutes

I’m going to be talking to myself

about some things I have relearned during the past week.

I have chosen to allow you to listen in

because I think some of what I have been relearning

will be of value to you as well.

But before I begin

I thought I should let you know

that I am talking first of all and most of all to myself.

I have rarely had a more difficult time

preparing for our time together this morning

than I did this past week.

And it was all the more difficult

because it caught me completely of guard.

When I left here last Sunday

I already had a clear mental idea

of where I wanted us to go this week

and how I wanted us to get there.

In fact, I had even planned to plunge right into it Monday morning

and get some of the ideas written up

before they fell out of my head and were lost.

But before I got down to the writing

I thought I’d do a little computer maintenance

on my now aging but still incredibly reliable Dell Inspiron 8000.

While Sandee and I were in California

I spent some of my time researching

and then purchasing an external hard drive

to be used as a back-up system for my files.

It came with some bundled software

and I tried to get the system to work correctly

but found it wasn’t doing what it was suppose to be doing.

I fiddled with it and fiddled with it,

and the more I fiddled

the worse it got

so I finally resorted to the use of that remarkable Widows XP feature called “system restore”.

It is suppose to allow me to return my computer

to an earlier date,

basically to remove all of my most recent fiddling

and get me back to a point at which everything was working correctly.

In the past it has often delivered me

from my worst computer blunders.

I’ve always had great success with it in the past,

but this time something went terribly wrong.

When the restore program finished doing whatever it was doing

in its attempt to return me to an earlier configuration,

once the computer rebooted

all I had on the screen was my background picture.

I mean that was all.

There was no start menu,

no icons,

not trash can,

no nothing.

I will not relive the pain of what I then went through during the next two days

in an attempt to reclaim my little computer world,

but I will say that after endless hours on the phone with Microsoft,

reformatting my hard drive twice,

and reinstalling my operating system a total of four times,

by mid day Wednesday

I was finally sort of back to where I began.

Every time I go on line now

every few minutes I get these messages

telling me my registry is corrupted

and I’m suppose to go to some site to get help in fixing it,

but apart from that

everything else is working great.

(If any of you know how I can get those messages to stop

please talk with me afterwards.)

But after having my life consumed by computer stupidness

for most of two and a half days,

when I finally sat down to write up my notes

whatever thoughts I’d found so fascinating Monday morning

were long since gone.

Twice I tried to recreate them.

Twice I wrote up several pages of notes.

And twice I then read over what I’d written,

felt rather sick to my stomach at the meaninglessness of it all,

and started over.

But it wasn’t just computer problems that made my preparation so difficult.

In fact,

it wasn’t even mostly computer problems.

For some reason this past week

I found myself wondering

if what I do here Sunday mornings

is really accomplishing what it should accomplish.

I know how this thing is suppose to work.

I know what’s suppose to take place

as a result of the time we spend together.

In fact I’ve taught it,

and my belief in it

has been a central theme of most of my adult life.

Paul laid it out for us clearly.

EPH 4:11-12 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

If I do what I’m suppose to do

during the few minutes you choose to allot to me each week,

it should serve to equip you

for the life God has called you to live.

But this past week...

well, this past week I did the same thing

that my good friend Peter did so many years ago,

with the same result in my own life.

I could read the account to you directly from Matthew chapter 14,

but I think I’ll use my own imagined recreation of the event instead.

If you’ve read the passage yourself

you’ll remember the setting.

It was night.

The disciples of Jesus were on the Sea of Galilee,

rowing against the wind,

trying to get back home.

And I’ll let Peter tell the rest...

Whitecaps broke on top of rolling swells as we rose and fell with each new wave sweeping under us. Then I saw something, two swells over, moving our direction. The human mind does not adjust easily to the impossible. We were in a boat, several miles from land, at three o’clock in the morning. Something tall and thin was protruding from the sea about fifty feet from our boat. It couldn’t be a rock, because it rose and fell with the waves. I thought it must be a log of some sort. But then why was it floating on end? . . . And why was it wrapped in a robe? . . . And why did it appear to be walking? . . . And why did it have arms . . . and a head . . . and a face?

I dropped my oar and stood up for a better look. As soon as I rose, the others followed my gaze. I heard James put into words what everyone was thinking, “What is that thing?”

Then, as the “thing” rose high onto the churning swell directly across from us, we all recognized him at the same time. It was Jesus . . . walking toward our boat . . . on the top of the water. Someone behind me muttered, “It’s a ghost! It has to be his ghost.”

As soon as the word “ghost” was mentioned, we all pulled back from the side of the boat. Even in the full moon it was difficult to see clearly whatever was coming toward us, and no one was volunteering to be official greeter. It looked like Jesus, but with the waves splashing up against him and his hair and clothing whipping about in the wind, it was the most frightening Jesus we’d ever seen.

Then he spoke. “Take courage, it’s me; don’t be afraid.”

Even in this wind I knew that voice.

Rarely have I troubled to think before I speak, and that night was certainly no exception. I took a step forward, leaned over the side of the boat, and bellowed back, “Lord, if it’s you, command me to come to you on the water.”

It all took place so fast, I didn’t realize what was happening until after it was all over. As he looked at me, clutching the side of the boat, I saw that incredible, contagious smile spread across his face and heard him speak just one word, “Come!”

And I did!

To this day I don’t know what got into me, apart from just being my normal, unthinking, impetuous self, but as soon as he said the word, I sprang over the side of the boat and dropped to the water below. I remember hearing my feet hit. They hit with a thud rather than a splash. It was the strangest sensation. The water gave firm, solid support, and yet the surface on which I stood kept moving up and down with each new wave passing under me. Even with the sea providing firm footing, I should have been flung off balance immediately by the violent movement of the churning breakers. But my muscles seemed to know instantly how to flex and bend with the fluid chaos under my feet.

Jesus stood waiting for me about thirty feet away. I let go of the side of the boat and took a step toward him . . . then another . . . and another. I was doing fine until I took my eyes off of where I was going and looked back at where I’d come from. I saw eleven anxious faces staring at me in concerned disbelief. No one else was following me. If anything, they appeared to be clinging to the boat even more tightly, obviously glad I was out on the water and not them.

Faith by majority vote is never a safe path for the child of God. Rarely does our Lord give others faith for the work he seeks to do through us. In looking back I allowed the others to vote on the wisdom of my trust in the Master. The vote was eleven against one. When I turned back to Jesus, I no longer saw him; I saw the storm. I no longer heard his voice saying, “Come!” I heard the wind blasting around my ears. I no longer felt the solid footing under my feet. I felt the spray of the sea soaking my face and legs and arms and hands. And a great wave of terror flooded over me.

My muscles went rigid. The waves that just a few seconds earlier had been rolling harmlessly under my feet now smashed against my legs causing me to lose my balance. I knew I was going down and reached out instinctively to break my fall. As I went down I caught a breaking wave full in the face, and my arms plunged deep into the churning caldron around me. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, and my waterlogged clothing wrapped itself around me in a sort of cocoon that made swimming impossible. I was going under—I knew it! At the top of my voice I let out one great, terrifying wail. “Lord! Save me!”

Immediately I felt his strong grip on my right forearm. I closed my fingers around his arm in response as he lifted me effortlessly back up on top of the waves. He wrapped his left arm around my back, and together we walked to the boat. Until my left hand touched wood I didn’t realize how tightly I was gripping the Master’s arm. I flopped onto the deck, still spluttering the water I’d inhaled. Then Jesus climbed in next to me.

As I lay there on the deck, feeling foolish and relieved, he knelt beside me and said, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” As soon as the words left his mouth, the wind stopped, and the violence around us ceased, leaving a small fishing boat bobbing gently under a full moon shining down on the night sea. On deck, eleven men grouped around a twelfth man lying on his back with his Savior kneeling beside him.

Perhaps to you, not hearing his tone or seeing the expression on his face, the words Jesus spoke to me on our boat that night might seem like words of condemnation. They were not. Jesus knew I would doubt before he ever called me onto the water. The title he gave me as I lay there before him was accurate; I was a man of little faith. It was not a condemnation; it was a statement of truth. The great gift he gave me that night was not the thrill of accomplishing the impossible. It was not the honor of being the only man other than himself to have ever walked on water. The great gift he gave me was that single question with which the episode ended: “Why did you doubt?” It was this question that Jesus wanted me to ask myself, and keep asking until I knew the answer.

Why did I doubt? He had already given me proof of his faithfulness. I was already walking on the water. The storm had not intensified. The waves were not increasing in size. My circumstances had not changed. And yet one minute I was walking on the sea, and the next I was being destroyed by it.

The twofold answer to the question was obvious. I took my eyes off my Master, and I focused instead on where I was coming from and what was going on around me. The illustration of that night has become a lifelong part of my walk with the King. I now know where doubt comes from. I know where fear comes from. It does not come from seeing the storm around me; it comes from not seeing who stands beside me. I have certainly not lived a life of flawless faith since that night on the water. In fact, all of my greatest blunders were yet to come. But the principle Jesus gave me through our water walk together is now a solid anchor for my life. When I fear, when I doubt, when I allow my past to define my future and feel the stress and anxiety it brings, whenever I feel myself sinking once again, I know I am not seeing my Lord correctly.

Why did I doubt? I doubted because I took my eyes off the only true source of hope and security in this world. I took my eyes off my Lord Jesus Christ.

Folks, I wrote those words at least six years ago,

but writing truth

and living truth are two very different things.

This past week

once again I did the same thing

that Peter did that night on the sea.

With me, though, it wasn’t a physical storm that drew my attention away from my King,

it was the storms raging in the lives of people I care about very much.

There are things that creep up on us

as a result of our union with Jesus Christ,

things He does within us,

things that slowly, yet so powerfully alter the courses of our lives.

There are two such things

at the very top of that list.

The first is that He fills our spirits with a love for our God

and with that love

gives us a longing to live a life that honors Him.

This is just a little bit of a side-track here,

but I had a question come up last week

in response to my comments about how there really is only one central battlefield,

one central issue in all of our lives,

that of our discovering the truth about the nature of God’s love for us.

The question then came up

about the importance of our choices.

If discovering the love of God is the center of all things,

then don’t our practical moral choices make any difference?

Of course they do,

but the great difficulty we face

is that moral choices are always choices against the current.

They are choices against the powerful flow of this culture in which we live.

And they are choices against

the powerful flow of our self-centered, ego-driven flesh.

With every moral choice we ever make

there is an apparently easier, more enjoyable alternative shoved in our faces.

True honesty frequently requires great courage.

Sexual purity and morality

frequently goes directly against the physical demands of our bodies.

Kindness and compassion

nearly always come with a personal price-tag.

Saying no when everyone else is saying yes

never ever just happens.

Every moral choice we ever make

is a choice to move against the current.

Certainly those choices

are the only choices

that have the ability to create for us

the rich quality of life we long for,

but with all such choices

at the time we make them

we frequently do not see the long term affects

and there must be a compelling immediate reason

for choosing what is right.

Religion will attempt to provide that reason

through generating tremendous fear of judgment,

or through creating deep feelings of guilt,

or through trying to promise some future reward.

But all such motivations last

only as long as the feelings last.

There is only one adequate motivation

for a life that moves toward true moral purity -

the discovery of the love of our God for us at the deepest personal level.

Only our moment by moment awareness of His presence in our lives

and our longing to live a life that honors Him

can ever provide us with an adequate motivation

for a life of true moral purity

and the courage for the sometimes incredibly hard moral choices we face in life.

And it all comes back

to that battle we’re fighting

for our ongoing discovery of the love of our God for us.

To know His love

is to know why we choose what is right,

and without the knowledge of that love

we all ultimately become slaves

of those forces that seek to destroy us.

But let me get back on track here.

I started to say that the first two powerful changes

that the Spirit of God begins to make within us

are, first, His creating within us a love response to our God,

not a fear response,

not a guilt response,

not even just a reverence response,

but a true, deep heart love response to Him,

and second, His creating within us

a growing ability to love the people around us.

It is what He does.

And every growing Christian

will discover that people begin to matter

so much more than they ever did prior to God’s entrance into our lives.

But His developing within us that ability to love,

to really care about those He chooses to entrust to us

is not unlike His sending His disciples out on that sea at night in that storm.

It will cause upheaval in our lives

because their storms become our storms

and their pain becomes our pain

and their life struggles will affect us deeply.

And, as I look back over this past week,

I think the thing that caused the most turmoil in my life

was not the crash of my computer,

but rather the fact that I allowed the struggles,

and the pain,

and the confusion,

and the turmoil in the lives of some of those that I care about very much

to become my point of focus.

And I felt overwhelmed.

I didn’t realize the degree to which I was losing perspective

until I tried to put it into words to Sandee Friday morning.

I told her

that I felt as though nothing I did made any difference,

nothing I taught changed anything,

my input into the lives of those I care about accomplished nothing.

She responded by saying that hearing the truth

is often like being given grains of sand.

Each tiny piece in itself doesn’t change our lives,

but over time,

bit by bit,

step by step,

it really does change us.

That helped

because I knew it was true.

I knew it has been true in my own life.

Bit by bit,

step by step,

truth upon truth

our profoundly corrupted thinking processes

gradually are brought into greater and greater conformity to the truth.

And then I went into my office,

sat down at my computer

and once again attempted to put together some thoughts for us today.

And as soon as I started writing

that event from the life of Peter that I read to you a few minutes ago came to mind.

As I read it once again

I knew exactly what had happened to me.

I think the computer thing provided the doorway for the attack.

It took my eyes off my King

and turned them onto the mess around me.

But from there it wasn’t just the mess in my computer that seemed so overwhelming,

it was the messes I saw in the lives of some of those I care about very much.

And when I finally saw what was happening,

I realized, too, where the answer was.

I had to get my eyes back onto my Lord.

And I want to be sure I say this

in a way that doesn’t lead to confusion.

I’m certainly not suggesting that we should try to live in some sort of pretend world

where we ignore the problems

or the pain around us.

I could have tried to ignore the blank screen on my computer

but it wouldn’t have changed a thing.

And I could try to ignore those things that trouble me

in the lives of those I love,

but it won’t help them or me

just as Peter trying to ignore that storm around him

would not have prevented him from going under.

What I had forgotten all week long

is that critical point of focus

that determines how I relate to everything else in my world.

Why did you doubt, Peter?

Why did you doubt, Larry?

He doubted,

and I doubted

because we both took our eyes off the Center of the universe

and turned them onto the storm around us.

The answer I needed,

the thing I needed most to remember

was not what’s going on around me

but rather who’s going through it with me.

And it also helped me to remember once again

that I can’t and never have been able to “fix” anything.

I can’t heal myself,

and I certainly can’t bring healing into the lives of those I love.

But I don’t have to.

All I have to do

is to keep my eyes fixed

on the One who can.

We’re not quite done with that sword of the Spirit we were looking at last week,

but today I want close by reading the next thing Paul says

after sharing with us the armor of God.

Listen to this!

EPH 6:18-20 With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

And pray on my behalf...

I love that.

I love knowing that Paul,

the one who literally knew it all in his head

asked his fellow Christians to keep praying for him

so that what he knew in his head

would move to his heart and his life.

And I, too, make the same request of you...

as God’s Spirit brings it to mind,

please pray on my behalf.