[Modified transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], April 2020]
What would you do if you felt anxious and unable to cope with life’s pressures and uncertainties? Do you know that Jesus is offering you a hand up? What will you do about it?
If you go into Spurgeon’s College in south London – the college that I trained at – you can see this beautiful stained glass window which consists of a picture of a hand grasping the cross and under it are the words in Latin ‘Teneo et Teneor’. Now I’m not expecting you to be a Latin scholar (I had to look it up on Google) but it basically means to hold and be held, and these were words that were popularised by Spurgeon in the 19th century and he chose it as the motto for his Bible College.
00:45 When I was reflecting on that particular phrase I was reminded of a story about Jesus; you can find in Matthew’s Gospel chapter 14. Jesus has just fed 5,000 people by performing an amazing miracle and he sends his disciples off to cross the lake in their boats while he dismisses the crowd. He tells the disciples “look just get on with it, get on the boat, go across the Sea of Galilee. I’ll meet with you later and I’ll sort these crowds out”. As they disappear off he then goes up the mountainside to pray and night falls. I don’t know what happened but the disciples are still on the lake in the early hours of the morning, about three o’clock in the morning, before dawn. They’re still in the middle of the lake, there’s a storm that’s been whipped up, the waves are crashing round and the wind is blowing. They’re starting to panic, they’re pretty scared and it’s at that point Jesus appears walking on the water. Now remember, the disciples were scared anyway and they’re even more scared now because what appears to be a ghost is walking across the water towards them.
02:08 He shouts to the disciples “Don’t be afraid, calm down, you’re okay” and you can imagine Peter thinking “wait a minute, I know that voice” and he calls out “Lord Jesus if it’s you, tell me to come”. Then Jesus says “okay, come on over then.” I don’t think I would have done it but Peter steps out of the boat into the stormy sea and starts to walk to Jesus. It’s at that point when he looks around and realises what he has done and that the waters are raging and the wind is blowing and it’s dark and he can’t see properly – he starts to sink.
02:47 We’re in a pretty big storm at the moment. I heard it described as a perfect storm, we’re in the dark and we do not know when the dawn is going to come. We are in a storm where life’s foundations have been knocked out from under us and we don’t know how to respond. You could possibly say in the situation where you are that you are going to sink. Or are you going to swim? We like to say that, don’t we, are you going to sink or are you going to swim? I don’t know how to swim in these waters where the familiar foundations of life are gone. I’m not trained for this and if I rely on my own strength, if I rely on those things which have always been so secure in the past, if I rely on those things the reality is that I am going to sink
03:34 When Peter starts to sink that’s when Jesus reaches down to him and grabs hold of him and pulls him up out of the water. Was Peter right to be scared? Yes, because he’s human, he was in the middle of a storm, it was dark, it was scary. Should you be scared and anxious about what’s going on here at the moment? Yes, of course you should, but don’t stay in the water, don’t find yourself sinking. Grab hold of the hands that Jesus is offering to you. How are you going to respond to that hand? Are you going to ignore it, are you going to just allow yourself to sink further and further into the waters that threatened to consume you? Are you going to try desperately to swim, to do things the way you’ve always done them, to do things in your own strength or are you going to grab that hand and cling onto it for dear life
I hold and am held.
[1] YouTube link: Sink or Swim?
Bible references: Matthew ch14.
~~~~~~~~
.
Return to Mid-week Meditations
Jump to Index of Bible Passages
.
Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
