Steady Course: Part 1

I don't know of a better place to be than on the beach. I just spent one wonderful week there. It is a place of complete relaxation for me. It represents that place of solitude for my spirit. It quiets my soul and allows the beauty and magnificence of God to flow. This is the place where my mind, body, and spirit are in tune with His glorious presence.

The sun shines and burns on my hot skin but the cool water breeze washes over me. The ebb and flow of the tide is hypnotic. All I can hear is the melody of the sea. Everything else seems quiet and far away. I can see God from any viewpoint. His beauty and power are evident. In front of me is the vastness of water. On either side of me is a different view of the surrounding sky: One with hues of pink. The other with yellow and orange rays as the sun goes down. A masterpiece beyond compare!

The roar of the ocean drowns out everything around me. There are people. There are situations. But the sound is so great that it doesn’t matter at all. However, as I lay here with my feet in the hot sand, God is calling me. He is calling you...into a deeper level of faith and trust. Will you answer the call today? Will you venture into a great unknown? You think that you know the path and all that it entails, but this walk of faith is full of waves and wind. It has storms that only God can calm. There is darkness that only He can light. There is loneliness that only He can attend.

You are no good just staying in the harbor. Your life and ministry is called into the great unknown. I was in this place several years ago....wanting all that He had for me. I didn’t care about the cost. When faced with the might and power of WHO God was...what could matter? I stepped out and my adventure began. I decided to let the winds of faith direct me.

Have you ever walked in sand? I am talking about the thick, powdery sand. Every step that you take causes your feet to sink. But as you approach the water, it becomes a firm foundation. The closer you are to God’s path, the more sure you become of each step. He is that firm foundation! It causes you to become confident in Him and in His direction.

Every analogy that God has given me about my disease has been about the ocean. Through His vast magnificence, we see who God is! He has all power and all authority. To follow Him into the deep seems fearless. God calls us to go deeper in Him. There are things that we are going to learn in the deep that we cannot learn in the shallows. There is a difference between watching on the beach and truly experiencing the deep, salty waters. If you have not been in the waters, you cannot tell me...or others about the deep. You cannot explain the waves or tumultuous winds. You cannot describe a walk on the sea or the One who calms the storm…that storm that you think will be your demise. The person who stays on the beach cannot experience the pull of that tide or the amazing sky filled with stars on a pitch black night.

Some of us are called into the water. And we learn so much about ourselves and who God truly is.

My Story Begins

I was having terrible pain. It was unlike any other. Could it be my migraines? It doesn’t feel like migraine pain. But it is on the right side of my head and face. There is a continual stabbing! My family physician thought that my migraines had changed. Oh, I had migraines alright. But I could work a job with them. They had eased up over the years. This felt completely different. Much worse!

The year was ticking by. I noticed that I had pressure across my right cheekbone before the pain would occur. My family physician thought that I might be having sinus headaches. He placed me on an antibiotic in case I had a sinus infection. No. That’s not it. There were no other signs of a sinus infection. At this point, I had been suffering for almost a year. I was starting to miss work and class assignments for my college courses. There must be an answer!

Then came December. As a thin person, I generally avoided the cold. My daughter persuaded me to walk a 5K through our city. This will be fun! We put on our reindeer ears and bundled up. It was raining and very cold! My mom made it halfway and I quickly walked the remainder to retrieve her car.

The day after the run is when the horrific shocks began! I thought that it was my tooth. Off to the dentist! The dentist said that he didn’t see anything…but he would remove the tooth if wanted. What? Um...no. I would like to keep my teeth. The shocks came and went. I attended my husband’s work Christmas party that evening. As I began talking…..oh, the pain! It was as if my face was hooked up to electricity! Sheer panic ran through my body.

"A ship is safe in harbor but that is not what ships are built for."

- Albert Einstein

Who Is God?

He asked me one question as I looked out over the ocean: Are you ready to go deeper? And that one question changed me forever.

To go deeper is to learn who He truly is. It is having an unwavering trust of Him with and in your life. It is forgoing your abilities and resting in His. It is understanding the power and strength that is His alone. It is knowing that He deserves all glory and honor as the creator and giver of life.

My answer was, “Of course I’m ready to go deeper.”

I can trust Him. He created this space. “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:21)

“And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26)

This is who He is: Maker of me. Maker of the sea that He was asking me to step out into.

This Story Continues...

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