Page 16 - Of Course You Can Walk On Water - eBook

view of the higher reality. We see only the army of the Syrians-or, to get back to our
figure, the wind and the waves.

So it was that Paul wrote, "The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of
God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are
spiritually discerned" (2 Cor. 1: 14).

"But when he saw the wind." Curious, isn't it? The wind was undoubtedly blowing with
the same force when Peter called to Jesus to invite him to come. What was the difference?

We have just seen it. When the spiritual eye is taken off Christ, faith weakens. The higher
reality disappears. We perceive only the wind and the waves. Suddenly the impossibility

of a situation moves into fearful focus and gathers itself to sweep upon us as we stand
defenseless. We are vulnerable indeed because our faltering faith has taken us away from
our old security, leaving us with nothing. We are in a worse situation than if we had never
exercised faith. We are in the midst of the sea. And we have left our boat.

Thus it was that the impact of where he was hit Peter. He was walking upon that most
tenuous of surfaces-water!

At the same moment that the force of the situation hit Peter, he saw it-a monstrous wave,
only a few yards away, sweeping swiftly and implacably upon him. Then the wave rolled
between him and Jesus. It was no longer possible for him to look at his Master. A terrible
fear gripped him. At that instant he felt the water give way beneath him somewhat as a

plank one is walking on over a stream suddenly breaks and gives way. He plunged
helplessly downward. He felt the cold wetness-he knew physical reality-as he began to
sink.

Gone now were Peter's pride and self-sufficiency. Possessed by fear, he had only one
thought. Jesus. "'Lord, save me!'"

When the wave came between Jesus and Peter, making it impossible for that disciple to
see his Master with the physical eye, he might still have beheld Him with the eye of faith,
had self not come between. But in the crisis, faith too gave way.

Peter was to have another, darker, more mountainous, more lethal, wave roll between
himself and his Lord. It also came at night-the darkest night of the soul for Peter. It came

for the same reasons-self-sufficiency and a looking away from Jesus.

And it was only because the eye of the suffering Christ pierced for a moment that dark

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