Get Out of the Boat

So, on to Week 4 updates (but Week 3 in terms of groups. And Week 6 in terms of the summer.). Chris and Kyle told us this is the point in the summer when people tend to run out of steam, and they were right. At first, the 7-hours-of-sleep-at-best thing is manageable. You're tired but it's not anything two cups of coffee can't fix. The group is loud but you can shout over them to give directions. You get annoyed at mixed-up restaurant orders and whiny group leaders, but you can talk yourself down before you lose your temper with anyone.

But exhaustion is cumulative. You're on your third cup of coffee and it just makes you feel sick rather than alert. The obnoxiously boisterous kid always sits behind you, and your driver is hard of hearing to begin with, so navigating--which is normally your strength--becomes an ordeal. That same driver is the sort who needs a multi-level bullet point outline of everything that will be happening at every point of the week. He therefore asks you about a hundred questions a day, but you know the answer to about twenty of them. On your free night, your director invites your group to the ball game, and as a result you aren't actually off for the evening. And then you get stuck in standstill traffic twenty feet past the last exit that you could have taken to get around an accident, and you're half an hour late to the same restaurant two weeks in a row.

It's at that point that you remember what they said in training: you can't do this job on your own strength. You would sleep through all 24 of your free hours if you could and that still wouldn't be enough rest. The funny thing is, you know you have to rely on God, but that suddenly looks a lot harder than you'd think. Suppose you pray for energy to interact with the group on day 4 and He doesn't grant it? Suppose you ask for strength to handle that difficult driver graciously and he throws another traffic accident in your path?

For me this is a matter of faith. I pray for a dozen small things every day and God answers in the positive. He's been faithful in the little details--granting a parking space when my driver is getting tense, or bringing Ms. Hawkins to the door the third time we knock--so I don't know why I don't trust him when I'm out of my own strength. Maybe because I don't have my own resourcefulness as a backup plan anymore. I'm fine with trusting Him as long as I have another plan for when He fails me. But that's not really trust, is it?

I was reminded the other day of the familiar story of Jesus calling Peter to walk on the water. That was an action clearly out of Peter's own ability or strength and at first he responded to the call without hesitation. But as he walked, the situation worsened. He felt the gales whipping at his hair and the huge waves surging under his feet and realized his humanity--his inadequacy to finish the task at hand, to walk on water. And he began to sink. But at that point Jesus caught him by the hand--immediately, the text says--and rebuked him: "Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?"

Personally, I don't think it's true that God only gives us what we can handle. The thing is, though, that when we're given more than we can handle, Jesus stretches out his hand to keep us from sinking. That's when we realize it isn't our skill, our talent, our ability that's been keeping us afloat--it was Him the whole time. At times, you're forced to take His hand directly to realize that. But it has been true from the beginning.

So, with the mini-sermon over, a prayer request for all us staff: pray that we would trust God to empower us through this summer, especially when we can no longer handle things. I think some of our best moments are ahead of us, but only if we really let God work through us rather than rely on our own dwindling strength.