Transcript: Stepping Out in Faith: 2 Inspiring Stories of Following Jesus

A brother in the U.S. who is apparently ready at last to step out and live by faith has sent me a couple of analogies that God gave him to illustrate what he has heard God saying through the teachings of Jesus. It might be a refreshing change of pace for me to just share what this brother has written, especially as it relates to married men, in the hope that it will speak to the hearts of others as well. So, here goes. This is what he wrote. Those of us men who are married are like Adam, working by the sweat of our brow to feed ourselves and our families. This job, mentally, is a punishment for having disobeyed God in the first place. God is calling out from his garden, his kingdom. I'm willing to forgive you, if you are sincerely repentant of what you have done. Come, and leave the fields behind. I will restore you as my groundskeeper, in my garden. But that damned serpent is still hanging about the garden, saying, Where do you think you going Get back to the fields You don want to do this Our king has empowered us to tread on serpents so step on him Go on you can do it Now it still a hike back to the garden and some of us are going to turn back after we counted the cost These are the people who have no roots, as in the parable of the sower. Then there is the garden itself. It hasn't been properly tended by the groundskeeper or gardener for many years. There is so much work to be done. Such a great need for more laborers. All the thorns of this world threaten to keep us from finding the path to the middle of the garden, to the tree of life itself, right up to the flaming sword, still guarding that tree, which is Jesus Christ. And here we discover that Jesus will use that sword on us, even now, killing what still needs to die, like a good surgeon, hacking out cancer each time it appears in our lives, until one day we enter into his eternal life, the reconciliation complete. Now, do you think for one second, if God had called out to Adam, inviting him back into the garden that he would not have instantly dropped everything to go back into the life of paradise with God? Even if Eve had refused to go back with him. Now, that's what he showed me. But another analogy which God has given me examines the gravity of the situation we each find ourselves in Our life is the room aboard the Titanic We know the boat is sinking It going down Heck we even joke about it It's become common knowledge that the whole world is going to hell, but it just never registers that we urgently need to get off before it goes down. There are even disciples, excuse me, rescue workers, running around on the boat saying, Get off the ship! Get off the ship! It's our only hope! Instead, people quietly return to their rooms. So long as they can get the door shut, they'll be able to pretend to create their own little imaginary, unsinkable world, and forget about the reality. For some folks, the room itself is already starting to fill with water through various illnesses. They'll turn to doctors, fighting tooth and nail to stay a bit longer in that room of their life even diving down through the frigid water to get back in. But there are a tiny handful of our brothers and sisters who have left the boat and life rafts waiting for God's rescue vessel. Nevertheless, by and large, most people will ignore the call to abandon ship even as the water rises. The lion share of the tribulation population will be swallowed up when the boat cracks and capsizes Folks who realized too late that what had been said earlier was exactly what they needed to be prepared for the Great Tribulation But by that time even if they wanted to escape it would be too late They would just get sucked in and dragged down with the colossal weight and displacement of the sinking ship. God wants all of us manning the rescue boats, even if we must die to rescue others. It may be possible, even in the tribulation, that we could save some at risk of losing our lives in the process just as Jesus did, as did all of the apostles, and then thousands of other disciples in the early days of the church. The simple and elegant message that Jesus preached became instructive for his boys to yell from the rooftops Repent of your very life itself. Give it away. It's no good for you anymore. And come with me, the foolishness of the cross, as Paul called it, taking up your cross and following Jesus so that others might be brought in and rescued from certain destruction. Well, I get it, and I see it clearly now. And that's the end of the analogies he sent in. I think they're well worth considering and thinking about. Amen.