Rooted · Week 2 · Friday

Eyes on Him, Not the Wind

He was doing just fine, right up until he started staring at everything that could go wrong.

He had stepped out in real faith, the kind that leaves the boat. And for a while he was actually walking on water, doing the very thing he was convinced God had called him to do, steady and eyes forward. Then he started looking around. At the odds stacked against him. At the people who said it would never work. At the shrinking margin and the waves climbing higher on every side. And the instant his focus slid off the One who had called him and onto the wind around him, he began to sink.

A divided gaze is what sinks you.

Standing in Two Places

That is Peter’s story, almost exactly.

He walked. Genuinely walked on the water. Then he saw the wind, fear took over, and down he went. And the word Jesus uses a moment later, when he asks “why did you doubt,” is worth knowing. The Greek is distazo, and it means to stand in two places, to be pulled in two directions at once. Peter’s problem was not that he suddenly stopped believing in Jesus. His problem was that he was trying to watch Jesus and the wind at the same time. He had a divided gaze, and a divided gaze is exactly what pulls a man under.

We have been here before in this series. This is fear showing its root again. Fear is a trust problem, and it always comes down to what we choose to fix our eyes on: the thing we cannot control, or the One who controls it. Peter could not calm that wind. He was never supposed to. He was only ever supposed to keep his eyes on the face in front of him.

Caught Immediately

But do not miss the best word in the whole account. Watch how fast the rescue comes for a sinking man.

Immediately. Not after a lecture. Not after Peter proved he had learned his lesson. The correction about his little faith came second. The hand came first. Sinking faith that cries out “Lord, save me” is still caught, every single time. That is who we are dealing with. So we stop trying to stare down the wind, and we fix our eyes on the only thing in the whole storm that is not moving.

Not glancing at him while we keep one eye on the waves. Looking to him. Keep your eyes on Him, not the wind.

Tomorrow · The Other Side · The Week in Review