Our spiritual life and walk with God should be a voyage – I’m not talking about a boat trip on the water, but an adventure, a lifetime journey that gets our blood pumping and our hearts racing and our passions stirred, and yet for many of us, I’m not sure that’s how we see our life or our faith. For too many of us, our walk with God has become predictable and routine. We go through the motions week after week and yet nothing changes. We worship, we might pray and read the Bible but nothing in our families, at our jobs or in our lives really changes. This isn’t how it is supposed to be. Jesus said he came so that we would have an abundant life and God has promised to fill our lives with power and purpose which should fill each and every moment with passion, but for many of us, this is not what we experience.
In his book, Dangerous Wonder, Mike Yaconelli says that the most critical issue we face today is dullness. We have lost our ability to be astonished and amazed by the adventure of our faith and the passion of our savior. Christianity, he says, is no longer life changing. What happened to the kind of Christians whose hearts were on fire, who had no fear, who spoke the truth no matter the consequences, who made the world uncomfortable and who were willing to follow Jesus wherever he went? What happened to the kind of Christians who were filled with passion and gratitude and who every day were unable to get over the grace of God? We have lost the sparkle in our eyes, the passion in our marriages, the meaning in our work and the joy in our faith.
Does any of that sound familiar to you? I have to say that it does for me. At times we all struggle with how to keep the passion of our faith alive and sometimes just understanding that we need to recapture that passion is a good place to start. So if you want to experience a life-changing faith, then I want to invite you to join me on this voyage that can begin to turn things around.
Today as we set sail we are going to be asking 3 critical questions:
1. Who is your captain?
2. Are you a passenger or a member of the crew?
3. Are you going to stay in port or head out into deep water?
Who is your captain? The Christian life begins by making a decision, who is going to be the captain of my life? The reality is that someone is in charge of our lives. It might be you, it might be someone else, it might be God, but someone is in charge and the question we need to ask ourselves is who is it? Who is the captain? Who is the one in control? For most of us, we want to be in control. We want to set the course, make the decisions and be the one at the helm of the ship, but becoming a Christian means that we let go of the ship’s wheel and allow God to take control. To call Jesus lord means we allow Jesus to direct our lives.
Allowing Jesus to be our captain is where the real adventure of faith begins because being a Christian isn’t just about God forgiving our sins so we can go to heaven, it is that, but it so much more – it is about God giving us life. Listen to how the apostle Paul talks about the Christian life in Romans 8:10-11,15 (from the Message).
If the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bring you alive to Him! When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! … This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid grave tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike, “What’s next, DAD?”
When we allow Jesus to be our captain he doesn’t direct us from the outside, he brings his passion and power - his life - to us on the inside and that is what brings transformation. That’s when the adventure starts. Now the decision to make Jesus the captain of our lives is not made once, it is a decision we need to make daily. Every day we need to wake up and ask Jesus to be our captain because the temptation we face every day is to take over the helm.
John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, gave us a great prayer that we can use every day to make sure that we keep Jesus as our captain. We have given this to you in the next steps and I encourage you to pray this prayer every day this week. Put it on your bathroom mirror, refrigerator door or steering wheel of your car, or someplace where you will stop and use it as means of asking Jesus to be your captain, the prayer says:
Jesus, I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
So Be It. AMEN
So who is in control of your life? Is it you or is it God? Do you know what is best, do you make the decisions and set the course or have you allowed Jesus to be your captain? There are three men in the Bible who are faced with this very question and it is their stories and their voyages on the water that we are going to look at during this series and they are Noah, Jonah and Peter.
Let’s start with Noah. His voyage began when God looked at the earth and what he saw troubled him – Genesis 6:5-6. The way people treated one another pained God so much that he was sorry that he even made human beings and so his solution was to simply flood the earth and start over again, but then God saw Noah. Noah was a righteous man. It says, Noah walked with God. Noah had made the decision to allow God to lead and direct his life. God was his captain and God wasn’t going to give up on Noah, so God told Noah of his plans to flood the earth and his decision to start over with him and his family. God told Noah to build and ark and then gather 2 of every animal and place them into the ark. And look at Noah’s response – Geneses 6:22.
In Noah we see what it looks like to have God be the captain of our lives. Is this what our lives looks like? Would we, are we, willing to do what Noah did? Noah put everything in his life on hold, he faced the ridicule of friends and neighbors and he had to work hard at a seemingly impossible task in order to be faithful and obedient to God. Would we be willing to do this or would our response look more like Jonah?
Jonah is the second story we are going to look at in our series and just like with Noah, the world was evil and violent in the days of Jonah and God called Jonah to do something about it. He wasn’t to build an ark, he was to speak out against this evil - Jonah 1:2. God called Jonah to go to the people of Nineveh who were wicked and evil and tell them to repent of their ways and turn back to God. Jonah did not want to do this because Jonah did not like the people of Nineveh. They were the enemy and honestly, Jonah didn’t want them to repent – he would have rather God send a flood and wipe them out, so while Noah said Yes to God, Jonah said No. No way God, I am not going to do it. I am not going to those people; I’m not going to tell them to repent. I’m not going. And to make his point clear, Jonah decided to run away from God.
The people who first heard the story of Jonah would have caught the humor here and we can too if we look at this on a map. Jonah is here and God asks him to go to the people of Nineveh who live here and Jonah says no and gets on a ship that is going here.
Ever feel like doing that? Ever feel like running away from God? Ever feel like just turning around and going in the exact opposite direction? We’ll look at this more in later weeks, but while we can run from God, we can’t hide and Jonah couldn’t hide. For now what we need to see in Jonah is that God wasn’t the captain of his life at this point and he wasn’t sure he wanted God to be the captain of his life at any point, so he turned and ran- and many times we feel the same.
Making Jesus the captain of our lives means there will be those times when we sense God leading us and asking us to do difficult things and the temptation is to take control of our lives once again. It might have to do with a relationship, a job, decisions about how we spend our time or money or even like Jonah – a mission God wants us to radically give ourselves to – and the struggle is to say yes to God. There have been times in my life when I have said no to God and tried to run in the other direction and yet what I want to do is respond like Noah and do everything God asks me to do without whining or complaining, but the truth is I am somewhere in between – which leads us to Peter and our third nautical story.
Peter was a fisherman, the only one of the three men who knew anything about the water by the way, and Peter had been fishing all night without catching anything so he was now on the shore with his partners mending their nets. Jesus had been teaching along the banks of the lake and he gathered such a huge crowd that he was being crushed by their presence and unable to really speak in a way to be heard, so when Jesus comes upon Peter and his boats, he asks Peter if he would allow him to use his boat as a kind of floating stage – and Peter agrees. So Jesus gets in the boat and they push out into the shallow water a few feet from the shore where Jesus speaks to the crowds.
When Jesus is done he asks Peter to go out into deeper water and let down his nets. Suddenly Jesus is acting like the captain of the ship telling Peter where to go and what to do and Peter is somewhat skeptical and reluctant. After all, what does Jesus know about boats and fishing? Jesus grew up the son of a carpenter not a fisherman. He knows about wood and nails not waves and nets and why would Jesus want them to put their nets down now – it would be a waste of time because Peter knows there are no fish here, they had been fishing that part of the lake all night long with no results. None of this makes sense and Peter pretty much tells Jesus this – Luke 5:5a.
Peter has not yet become a follower of Jesus, but he is beginning to experience what it will mean to follow him – it will mean doing what Jesus asks even when it doesn’t make much sense. And this is Peter’s response – Luke 5:5b.
Because you say so, I will go. I don’t want to, I’m tired, I don’t think it makes any sense at all but because you say so, I’ll go. This is often the response that I give to God. I push back when God asks me to do something, I find excuses not to, I try to state my case – try to exert my control. In the end I hope I do what God wants me to do, I just wish I could do it without all the whining, complaining and questioning. I wish I wasn’t so skeptical and reluctant. I wish I could be more like Noah and just go and do whatever God asks, but I’m not there yet. I’m glad I’m not Jonah running in the other direction - I’m just more like Peter – struggling to give control of my life to Jesus - struggling to make Jesus the captain. Who is your captain? Who is in control of your life? The Christian life and the voyage of a lifetime begins by making the decision to let Jesus be the captain and I hope you will do that today and every day.
Now the next two questions we need to look at quickly. As you set sail on this journey are you a passenger or a member of the crew? A passenger has everything done for them. A passenger is waited on hand and foot and never has to do anything – those of you who have been on a cruise know something about what this might be like and while for many of us that may sound wonderful and it may be nice for a while, the real action and adventure in life isn’t found when we are being served as a passenger but when we serve as part of the crew. Crew members get involved. Crew members give and sacrifice in real ways and when they do they find more satisfaction and power and joy then they ever thought possible.
Think about Peter in the boat with Jesus. Do you know what happened when he followed Jesus’ command and put his nets down into the water? Look at Luke 5:6-7. Now think about what Peter would have missed if he had just sat back and told Jesus, no – you cast the nets over into the water. Peter never would have been part of hauling in the largest catch of fish anyone had ever seen. He would have missed the adventure, the excitement and the passion of the moment. If all we ever do is remain a passenger – life will get dull, but once we join the crew – life becomes an adventure.
The truth is that we are all in the process of going from passenger to crew. If you are new to following Jesus, or new to the church, it’s ok to sit back and be served, in fact we want people to climb on board this ship we call Faith Church and just experience life with God with us, but at some point we want you to know the full power of Jesus which we believe comes when we become part of the crew. When and how that happens God will make clear to you, just be willing to make that transition.
And then the last question is are we going to stay in port or head out into deep waters. The truth is that sitting in port is safe. There are no storms, there is no seasickness, there is no risk… but once again, there is also no adventure and there is no life. The thrill of life is found in deep waters when we take risks and push our faith and trust in God to the limit. The deep water might be big life-changing decisions, or they might be our simple daily routines done at the direction of God. Think about Peter, going out into deep water was really just part of his job, but he did it this time for Jesus. Maybe God is asking you to just pray for someone at work, or reach out and visit a neighbor who has recently experienced a loss. These may not seem like big things but they can move us out of our comfort zone and it's when we move to those places that we begin to experience the passion and the power of God. Now the deep water might also be something big, like exploring a new job, moving to a new community or maybe thinking about helping in a new mission and ministry in the life of the church. These things might seem risky and scary and you know what – they are, but God will be there to turn the fear into a faith and the anxiety into an adventure.
It’s sad to say this, but most of us never leave the safety of the port. We listen to the fear and make excuses instead of acting boldly in faith and the result is that we never experience the fullness of what God has for us. That kind of faith is dull, and that is not what Jesus calls us to. When he is our captain, he will steer us into deep waters where as part of his crew we will experience the power of God. So make Jesus your captain and experience the voyage of a lifetime.
Next Steps
The Voyage ~ Our Captain
Make Jesus Your Captain
• If you haven’t already, make the decision today to give control of your life to God.
• Ask Jesus to be your captain every day by using this prayer:
Jesus, I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
AMEN
Become part of the Crew
Find 1 way you can serve this week instead of being served:
• Commit to praying for the people on the prayer list.
• Sign-up to help with this week’s Appreciation Dinner.
• Commit to purchasing a net to help end malaria.
Leave the port and head out to deep waters.
Take 5 minutes to listen for the Captain’s voice every day and be willing to trust and obey its authority, direction and commands. Rev. Adam Hamilton says, “Do you want a great adventure? It’s not likely to come as one huge task. It’s going to come in small ways, in listening every day for the Captain’s voice, and doing what he calls you to do.”
