Page 14 - Of Course You Can Walk On Water - eBook

When Peter stepped from the boat and began to walk along on the water he was not
moving in a trance; he knew what he was doing. He experienced the strange, yet real,
sensation of water swelling beneath his bare feet, carrying his weight without breaking
open to swallow him. He felt the turbulent wind whipping his garments about his legs and
body.

What is the situation here? Now that Peter has taken his eyes off Jesus, is he seeing the

facts as they actually are? Does faith block out reality, and doubt see it? Or is it the other
way round?

The answer could be something like this: Faith has a way of overriding even the largest
difficulties and dangers potential to a situation. Any threatening or unfavorable reality is
overshadowed by a confidence in God's ability to look after it. In this sense the greatest
obstacles become no more threatening to the Christian than the ordinary hazards one
might encounter while walking down a street. And these generally concern us only
minimally. There are valuable truths in this thesis, and it could be our answer. But it is not
the best one, for there is a weakness.

This solution to our problem of the wind suggests that the reality is seen but is more or

less neutralized. It is virtually swept aside by faith.

That is only partially the picture. Let's find the better answer.

When the servant of Elisha, the prophet of the Lord, looked out around Dothan he saw the

army of the enemy mustered to destroy them. A threatening reality indeed. Then,
following Elisha's prayer, his eyes were opened, and he saw the mountains around the city
"full of horses and chariots of fire"-the army of the Lord.

The army of Syria was reality. But faith revealed the greater fact-the army of God.

So the solution to our problem is this: faith does not ignore the reality of our physical
senses. It accepts the fact that it is there, but reveals the higher, the preeminent, reality-
God's.

Paul says something to this effect in 2 Corinthians 4: 18: "We look not to the things that
are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the
things that are unseen are eternal."

This concept is difficult for many of us mortals to grasp. The flesh-and-blood enemy, the
flashing spear, the broad shield, the neighing horses, the iron chariots-all of these are

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