Heart Tracks - When Truth Sleeps

"They came and woke Him up saying, 'Master, Master, we're going to die!' Then He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves. So they ceased and there was a calm. He said to them, 'Where is your faith?' " Luke 8:24-25...."The disciples knew the sea and what their condition was. They had allowed their circumstances to convince them that the 'truth' was their imminent death. But they were wrong. Truth was asleep at the back of the boat." Henry Blackaby

What do we do when Truth, for us, as it was for the disicples, is "asleep in the back of the boat?" In our journey with Him, we will all come to that place. The place where everything that is against us will appear far more real than the One who has promised to always be with us. The place where the raging winds and waters scream that they are our reality, and that He has forgotten us. I have been in that place more than once, but there's one spot where the memory of those raging winds and waves is burned into my memory. The place where I thought that the truth was the winds and waves and the sure destruction that they held. In that place, their power seemed more real than the promise of His.

Our church was in the midst of seemingly impossible financial conditions. We had stepped out in what we felt was His leading, and signed a lease that doubled what we'd been paying for rent in our former location. A lot of prayer and conversation preceded this, and everyone professed to be on board with it....except that when we made the move, we found that professions often don't match realities. Several key families decided they weren't going to go with us. They left, and with them, their financial support. Our reserves quickly dwindled, and by our second year there, we were in desperate need. Each month the question before us was whether we could pay our rent. The pressures increased, especially upon me. The "winds" and the "waves" grew stronger and higher, and the harder I fought against them, the more intense they grew. Eventually, all I could see was what was against us. Nothing I did could stem the tide, and in all of it, I couldn't see Him. Like the disciples, I could only cry out, "Lord, we're being destroyed. Where are You?" I'd reached the end of my own abilities in the situation. And that was the key, for it was there that I finally entered into the beginning of His.

I had been trying to "save" the church. I lost sight of the truth that it wasn't mine to save. It was His. I had been looking to my resources, our resources, and was blind to His. I had been in control of the "boat," and because of that, Jesus, the Truth, appeared to be asleep. But it was appearance only. When I took my weak, exhausted hands off the rudder, I found He was never asleep at all. He immediately put His on. And His miracles began to unfold. Special gifts and offerings came from seemingly nowhere. In countless ways, He moved, delivered, made a path where there was none. Despair was replaced by hope. Seeming death by new life. If Truth had been asleep in the back of the boat, it was only because my, our desire to deliver ourselves had put Him there. When we yielded all to Him, we found He'd been aware all the time. The winds and the waves ceased their raging, and the Lord got us safely to the other side of all of it. And none who made that "voyage" were ever the same after it.

When Truth sleeps for you, how do you respond? Do you row harder, fighting the waves and wind in your own strength? Or do you allow yourself to see that He only sleeps because you've been unable to believe and trust Him? I had never faced such monetary pressure before. I never had to trust Him so deeply in the financial realm. When I did, I was broken by the strain, but in my brokenness, I discovered in a new and deeper way, His Truth. And in the midst of what seemed my and the fellowships approaching destruction, came the Truth of His Presence and deliverance. Before, I was more familiar with the threat than His Truth. On the other side, I had learned that no threat can hinder His Truth. I still learn that today. There are many "other sides" yet to get to. Truth will be in the boat with me, and with you. Do we let Him go on sleeping as we exhaust ourselves trying bring about our own deliverance, or do we simply yield to His hand, and find ourselves on the other side?

Blessings,
Pastor O