The Water Awaits by Sam Berensohn
October 29, 2023
Sermon summary:
- Leave your boats. Peter left behind security, comfort, what is logical, and made a statement of trust. He left behind physical and emotional safety, and security of people. It's easier to do what's not logical/crazy when you have someone with you/safety in numbers. We have to answer the same questions to follow Jesus. You may be physically/socially isolated when you stand up for your faith. Romans 12:2
Have you left your boats/do you know what they are?
What do you protect in your life? What happens when you leave your boat? You walk on water.
Matthew 14:28–34 How does God work through me, no matter who I am? The potential of what God can do when you get out is greater than staying in the boat.
2. The Son in the storm. The storm distorts what we see when we look at Jesus, the scriptures don't sound the same as they used to; the lack if him answering your prayers.
Maybe we don't need five points to know how to change, but only to see when we call out to Jesus, he is there immediately.
Watch the full service
here (the sermon starts at 1:00).
Because Jesus reconciled us to God through the cross, we are called to pursue reconciliation with God, one another, and the world around us.
Jesus reconciles us to the Father and teaches us to extend his grace, helping us forgive one another, heal relationships, and walk together in peace.
The physics of the pendulum Picture an old grandfather clock in a quiet hallway. Its long brass pendulum swings steadily: tick, tock, tick, tock. Now give that pendulum a hard shove to the right. It does not simply glide back to the center and stop. It races right past the middle and sways just as far to the left. Left to its own momentum, a pendulum never rests at either extreme; it finds peace only when it hangs still at the center, held by gravity and its fixed point. The church behaves in much the same way. Push her too far toward one side of a truth and she does not gently settle into balance, she swings. Often for a whole generation toward the opposite error, and then back again, wounding people at both ends of the arc. And here is the crucial thing the clock teaches us: the pendulum comes to rest not by being frozen in place, but by being held. Balance is not the absence of force; it is the fixed point that keeps opposing pulls in tension so that the weight can finally hang still.