A few days ago I took a drive up north. It was a lot of time in the car. And I’m still kind of sore in my heart, so endless hours in the car isn’t necessarily the best for me, especially when the lies of the enemy are buzzing around in my car like a stray bug.

Finally, I’d had enough. I needed to GET OUT OF MY HEAD. I decided to listen to a sermon from New Heights that I hadn’t yet heard. You can listen to the words I heard here; scroll down to All Because of God: You Must Make A Decision. The whole idea of what Pastor Matt shared – the whole point of it is the question that Jesus is constantly asking us, though it’s disguised in various responses. At the heart of it, Jesus is constantly asking us:

It was pretty quick to be like “yeah, duh.” and then I started thinking about this post I’d written the day I moved to California almost 5 years ago, where I realized that trusting kind of requires some kind of action. Like Peter in the boat. He could have trusted WHOLE HEARTEDLY that if Jesus called him onto the water, Jesus would take care of him from there. But there’s something about the whole trusting Jesus thing that required Peter to actually step out of the boat and into the water. There’s trusting and then there’s TRUSTING, all caps.

I am quick to lowercase trust, to be like “yes, Jesusâ€¦ I trust that you love me and care for me and never seek to harm me.”

and then Jesus is like “yeah but do you TRUST me? Step out of the boat.” and usually I’m like “no, I’m good.. you know my heart, you know I trust, so come on in the boat and let’s talk about it.”

and I think Jesus just stands there on the water inviting – urging – me to step out of lowercase trusting and into full-on uppercase TRUSTING. To put my feet outside of the boat and down onto the fluid water and trust that HE is the solid source for my footing.

That’s some scary stuff, to look out of the boat into the water and instead of seeing through the water, to see the hands of Christ right below the surface, holding us up. But you know what? Perfect love – love that Christ offers us – casts out all fear and scary stuff. I don’t have to be held back by it.

I work with kids, and sometimes they do weird things like run and jump on me without me knowing they’re going to do it. and I have a pretty high rate of success in catching them. Mostly because I don’t want them to fall or get hurt. In that moment of wild abandon, those kids TRUST me. They don’t think to say “STEPHANIE!!! I NEED YOU TO CATCH ME!!!” they just run and jump and somewhere in their little hearts they know that I’m going to keep them from falling.

I have a high rate of success.

Jesus has a perfect success rate.

He’s at 100%.

If you run at him..
If you leap towards him..
If you GET OUT OF THE BOAT..
If you uppercase TRUST HIM..