Domain names, those URLs that distinguish you from other websites, can cost as little as $2. Usually you can purchase a new domain name for somewhere between $10 and $20 for one year. But if domain names are highly desirable, they can be sold for millions. In the year 2010, Sex.com became the most expensive domain name in the world when it sold for $13 million. The highest selling domain name in 2012 reportedly cost $2.45 million. Last year, Insure.com was bought for $16 million as a fully-operating, profitable company.

How valuable to you is the name Christian? By their actions, non-believers, the population’s large majority, declare that the name of Jesus is utterly worthless to them – a declaration that pronounces them eternally bankrupt.

The scriptures share the following:
“You shall not use the Lord’s name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). “Hallowed be Your name” (Matthew 6:9). “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess” (Philippians 2:10). “There is no other name given to humanity whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4: 12).

There is power in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, sick people have been healed, demons have been cast out and the dead have been raised. Imagine if acquiring a certain domain name gave a worldly commercial business all those extraordinary powers. Their domain name would be worth billions!

Let’s look at the third commandment for a moment – you shall not use the Lord’s name in vain.
For years I simply thought that not using the Lord’s name in vain meant not swearing and cursing. But I was brought to the incredible realization that a more literal translation of the third commandment actually reads: “You shall not use the name of Yahweh for WORTHLESSNESS. You shall not use the name of Yahweh CASUALLY, complacently, without respect, without value.

How much value, how much worth do you place in the name of Jesus?
Jesus had some unfinished business. He knew that Peter had had a bad night. Under the pressure of the moment and fearing for his life, he had forgotten his earlier face-to-face pledge to Jesus: “Lord, I’m ready to go with you to prison and to death.” (Luke 22: 33)

Well we have the record – we know that he wasn’t ready – he was not even close to being ready. Peter was keen to have a place in Jesus’ kingdom, either on Jesus right or left, but it had to be right next to Him. He was quick to engage in discussion as to who would be the greatest in God’s kingdom. And like all the other disciples he wondered why Jesus seemed so hesitant to take power and oust the Romans. And when asked to pray, because Jesus so wanted to have prayer support in His time of greatest duress, Peter, like all the other disciples in the Gethsemane Garden, could only find energy for sleep.

Unfortified and unprepared because he was so self-assured, Peter was primed for failure. When the rooster crowed, it suddenly hit home to Peter that he had failed miserably. He realized that under the pressure of scorn and fearing for his life, he had acted in a way that had dramatically devalued the name of Jesus.

A servant girl had spotted him sitting next to a fire in the outer courtyard and she said, “You were with Jesus; you are one of His disciples aren’t you?”
Shortly afterwards, someone else said to Peter: “I know you. I’ve seen you before. You are one of Jesus’ followers”.
Then a third said, “Certainly this fellow was with Jesus, for he is a Galilean.”
Three times Peter did what he had earlier said that he would never do – he denied, he spurned, he rejected, he devalued the name of Jesus. Then he was absolutely cut to the quick with remorse. The scriptures say that he wept bitterly.
After His resurrection, for a month, Jesus came and went. He appeared here; He appeared there. He spent a little time with one and then another and would then disappear again – like the time he spent with the travellers on the road to Emmaus.
It is early morning. A number of fishermen are close to shore bringing in empty boats. Sometimes you caught lots of fish. Some nights you caught nothing. This night was a ‘nothing’ night.
The Gentleman tending the roaring fire on the beach called out, “Got any fish”?
The fishermen shook their heads in response.
“Throw your nets over on the other side”. Somewhat sceptically and reluctantly, they obeyed, and they instantly experienced the phenomenon of God’s abundance.

Together, these fishermen and Jesus enjoyed a hearty fish breakfast.
Then Jesus initiated the conversation that Peter was dreading, but needing.
John 21: 15 – 17: (let us read it together) “when they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep”.

Jesus was not like the bosses of this world. If an apprentice, today, spoke harsh, non-supportive words against his boss or against his boss’s firm he would almost certainly be shown the door for his disloyalty.

But Jesus is about rehabilitation not retaliation. Jesus is about reformation and reassurance.

Peter’s crass denial of his Lord had lost him status and standing among the other disciples, never mind that all those other disciples had chosen to flee the scene when Jesus had been arrested. They had conveniently taken themselves away so that, unlike Peter, they avoided the heat of scornful accusation. But they had heard about Peter’s denials and they were much less forgiving. They viewed Peter with distrust.

Three times Peter had openly denied his Lord and three times Jesus drew from him the assurance of his love and loyalty. Before the other disciples, Jesus purposely revealed the depth of Peter’s remorse and repentance and showed them how thoroughly humbled Peter was.

Before, Peter would speak unadvisedly, mostly from impulse. He was always ready to correct others and to express his own opinions.
But the converted Peter was very different. He retained his former fervour, but the grace of God regulated his zeal. He was no longer impetuous, self-confident and self-exalted, but calm, self-possessed and teachable.

There is an important lesson here. Jesus cannot condone error. He does not compromise with sin. But He meets the transgressor, the sinner, with patience, sympathy and forgiving love. Despite Peter’s denials, Jesus’ love for Peter was unfaltering. Romans chapter 8 reminds us that “nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God”.

Peter failed the ‘court room precincts’ test. But thanks to Jesus’ amazing love and grace, he would not fail any other tests. On the beach and with them all having the contentment of a full stomach that morning, Jesus gave a little private prediction regarding Peter (John 21: 18): “when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Peter’s life was to end in upside down crucifixion. He would indeed follow his Master. He would never again deny his Lord. And his story would offer hope to sinners in every generation.

Matthew 16: 18 – “I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock (on you), I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it”. Peter learned the true value of the name of Jesus and that knowledge, in the Lord’s strength, made him invincible.

I ask again: How much value, how much worth do you place in the name of Jesus?

I am reminded of a story I read about a girl called Susan who lived in Uganda.

My sister and her husband were missionaries in Uganda in the 1970s at the time Idi Amin was doing his worst. In fact they were told by the authorities that they were the last European family to escape Uganda. They moved on to Kenya and worked as missionaries there for a time.

But I still remember waking early one morning to a phone call from a member of the print media who suggested that my sister and brother-in-law had been arrested and were being held captive in Uganda and what did I think of that? We immediately contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs who expressed surprise at this news – they had received no such information – and fortunately they were able to confirm a few hours later that the report was one hundred percent in error. Apparently someone had picked up a brief Reuters communique and decided to run a story on it without checking all the facts. We were not sorry they were wrong.

But back to Susan in Uganda:
She was fourteen years old and from a strictly Islamic family. One day a visiting speaker came to her school. He spoke about this guy called Jesus who claimed He was the Son of God and had come to save the world. And right then and there, Susan decided to give her life to Jesus. When she got home her father found out and he was furious. In broad daylight, he grabbed Susan and her younger brother and he dragged them outside. He held a knife to Susan’s throat and said, “Susan, if you do not stop going to church and worshiping God, I will kill you and your brother”. But Susan didn’t stop. Her father grabbed her and took her to a room in the house and placed a mat on the floor. He told Susan to (quote) “sit on that mat and do not move until you are willing to deny Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour”.

The father turned around, walked out of the room and locked the door. Susan’s father didn’t return to that room for three months. The only way that Susan survived was that while her father was out her brother would dig a hole under the door. He would pour water into it for Susan to lap up. On occasions, he would fry up some banana and slide that under the door to his sister.

After many weeks the neighbours began to wonder where Susan was and they asked her brother. He told them and they immediately called the police. When the police came and broke open the door they found Susan. She was sitting on the mat. She was alive – but only just. The bones in her legs had begun to grow and conform to the way she had been sitting and she weighed just twenty kilograms.

They grabbed Susan and rushed her to hospital where they began to rehabilitate her. When Susan was asked why she had not tried to escape, why she had not even left the mat, without missing a beat she replied, “Because my father said if I was to leave that mat I’d be denying Jesus, and I couldn’t do that”.

This is exactly what the third commandment is about – a faith driven by a passion for God that realizes that not only to be in relationship with Him but also to be able to call on His name is among the most sacred privileges we have as Christians – a privilege the world cannot conceive and a privilege that I fear I so often take for granted.

You shall not use the name of Yahweh for worthlessness. Susan wouldn’t. Peter learned not to. How much value do we place on the wonderful name of Jesus?

Well there is an answer and the answer is not ‘try harder’. There is something we can do to cooperate with God’s spirit so that He will grow in us love for Him and love for others and so that we will have that deep sense of joy no matter what is happening to us.
That was the case with Ann. Ann had a really sad life. Her first memory, at age 4, was seeing her eighteen month old sister hit and killed right in front of her by a delivery truck to her parents’ farm. That’s how life started for her. And then her mother, who from a short distance had helplessly witnessed the tragedy, her grief-stricken mother was taken away to a psychiatric hospital and spent a long time away from Ann during Ann’s growing years. And as Ann grew up, her family having firmly shut the door on God’s grace, life became so scary, it seemed to close in around her and she was eventually a prisoner in her own home. She suffered from panic attacks, she was diagnosed with agoraphobia and the emotional pain in her heart was just so bad that she tried to relieve it by using shards of glass to slash her flesh – to try to make the physical pain absorb and take away the emotional pain.

Ann, in her own words, says, “My life was a mess”.

Grown-up Ann spurned a university scholarship and potential degree, married a farmer instead and she is the mother of six children. One day she was sitting at her computer when she received an email from a friend of hers who said, “Ann, here’s a dare, here’s a challenge: Can you name a thousand things that you love”? It was Christmas time and Ann thought “Look the last thing I need at the moment is another list. I’ve got this long list of things I need to do in preparation for Christmas. I don’t want and I don’t have time to list a thousand things that I love.”

But the challenge preyed on Ann’s mind and she found herself looking for things that she loved and she started to compose a list. Number One was morning shadows on old timber floors; Number two – jam piled high on toast; Number Three – the cry of a blue jay high in the spruce, a tree that grows in Canada where Ann lives. And gradually, as Ann composed her gratitude list, she found that her theoretical belief in God’s love matured to an increased trust in God as her list was growing.

She realized that by naming and counting life’s grace moments, the small microscopic wonders in every day, like jam on toast, by counting them it helped her to see how much God loved her. She said that thinking on God’s goodness and thanking God for her grace moments, helped her to keep her eyes on the Lord, and then, do you know what happened? As time went by God truly saved her, God dramatically healed her wounds and hurts. Ann became a very different person. She went from being a prisoner in her own home to being an international advocate with ‘Compassion’, a world-wide ministry that looks after the poor children of the world. She started travelling around the world, as an ambassador for children; she started public speaking and she wrote a book entitled “One Thousand Gifts: Dare to live fully right where you are”. And that little book became a New York Times best seller.
You can find out more about Ann by googling “One Thousand Gifts”. Her name is Ann Voskamp. She has an awesome blog called “A Holy Experience”. In my view she is an absolute inspiration. During this coming week I will email you a link so you can check her out some more – if you want to!
Ann concluded that ‘as long as ‘thanks’ is possible, ‘joy’ is possible’. Isn’t that profound – don’t we all want joy in our lives? We can have joy whenever we can have thanks. And we can have thanks all day and all night long.

Ann said that her discovery about the effect of thanks on her life came about because of a greater realization of what Jesus did. Just twelve hours before Jesus was going to be tortured on the cross, He took the bread, He gave thanks for it, He broke it and He gave it to His disciples. Ann said that by taking the bread He actually gave thanks for a gift; He recognized the bread as a gift; He recognized the bread as grace. And the original Greek word for “he gave thanks for the bread” is ‘eucharisteo’. You’ve heard about the eucharist – it’s what is celebrated when we have the bread and the wine. It comes from the word ‘grace’. Embedded in the word grace is the word ‘joy’.

So despite what was about to happen to Him, Jesus was still able to give thanks for the grace. He was able to give thanks for the gift – the bread – even though HE was the gift, HE was the bread that was to be broken.

This is Ann’s conclusion: She said that deep joy is found only at the table of thanksgiving. She said: ‘the height of our joy is dependent upon the depth of our thankfulness’. Isn’t that interesting? ‘The height of our joy is dependent upon the depth of our thankfulness’. Ann said that this grace, this thanksgiving, this joy, these three words that are bundled into that old Greek word ‘eucharisteo’ – it’s really like a three-fold cord, a strong rope that gives meaning to everything in life.

We need to live a lifestyle of thanksgiving, but I fear I can go days without thanking God for the things that are happening in my life. Albert Schweitzer said, “The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything”. He said the person who learns to give thanks for everything really knows what it means to live. He has penetrated the whole mystery of life”.

The mystery of life is being able to give thanks for everything. Isn’t that exactly what we’ve been told to do in 1 Thessalonians 5: 18: “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”.

And isn’t that what James talks about in James 1: 2 – “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds”. James is saying ‘No matter what trouble comes your way find in it an opportunity for joy’. Trouble – an opportunity for joy?? You would think that they were polar opposites, wouldn’t you? But Ann said we can find something to be thankful for in everything that is filtered through the loving hands of God. Whatever lands on our lap we can be thankful for, and by being thankful for it, it transforms our experience of life.

C.S. Lewis says that the most fundamental thing is not what we think of God but rather what God thinks of us. He says how God thinks of us is not only more important, but is infinitely more important. That’s because love is a response. When we feel that God loves us we can’t help but respond in love to God and to others. And the more we know we are loved, the more loving our response will become.

Ann says that by giving thanks for all things we are actually naming the ways that God loves us. We are bringing them into our consciousness. She says something that I love, because I need to hear this – she says, “Life is not an emergency (but sometimes you’d think that it was by the way I go about things). And instead of missing all the grace moments, she urges, “No. Hang on. Stop. Name the grace moments. Name the jam piled high on the toast. Name the morning shadows on old timber floors. Don’t miss the grace moments because by focusing on them, they bring into your consciousness how much God loves you”.

Thanksgiving grows our love – our love for God and our love for one another. When we focus on God’s grace, He takes away our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36: 26 – “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”).

So can I ask you an all-important question: Can we, as individuals and a congregation grow together in our love for God and our love for one another, because by this, all who live around us will know that we are followers of Jesus?

At this point, I’d like you to sit back and be blessed by the vision and Ann’s narration in a short, two minute trailer that was put together to promote Ann’s book – “One Thousand Gifts: Dare to live fully right where you are”. Then after the trailer I want to conclude with a challenge. Here’s the TRAILER: http://www.aholyexperience.com/one-thousand-gifts-book/

Habits can imprison you (just ask Susie and Ann) and habits can also free you. When ‘giving thanks to God’ becomes a habit, so ‘joy in God’ becomes your life. And with the habit of keeping a gratitude list, comes the following reported benefits. You:

1. Have a relative absence of stress and depression.
2. Make progress towards important personal goals
3. Report higher levels of determination and energy
4. Feel closer in your relationships and your desire to build stronger relationships
5. Increase your level of happiness — now who couldn’t use more happiness!?

Would you consider taking on your own ‘Dare Challenge’? You don’t have to compile a list of 1000 gratitude items all in one day. Three every day or 20 each week – after a year you will have over 1000 items in your gratitude journal.

What if your fear is that you couldn’t begin to compile that large a list? You have the option of free access to Ann Voskamp’s website and blog and for each day of each month of the year she provides prompts – like:
3 graces from people you love
3 gifts found in Jesus
3 gifts only seen up close
3 gifts only seen in the shadows
3 gifts found in silence etc. (Look under FREEBIES – Take the JOY DARE).

Even if you committed to listing only 3 gratitude items a week – that would be 156 praise and grace points to uplift you by the end of twelve months.
May I share the three items in my gratitude journal for today? They are:

1. The pleasure of worshiping with God’s people in Nyora
2. The delights of the scenic countryside I drove through to get here
3. The anticipation and certainty of God’s blessing as I participate in my own ‘Dare Challenge’.

As we near the end, the words of that wonderful old hymn come to mind:
When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost
Count your many blessings name them one by one
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done!

Remember Ann’s words: ‘the height of our joy is dependent upon the depth of our thankfulness’.
Remember God’s words: 1 Thessalonians 5: 18: “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”.

I might carry a bit of excess weight but I can lean on a mountain all day, with intent, and I’ll never shift it.

When I was 18 I could have trained 22 hours a day and I would never have become an Olympic sprinter.

But the first part of the statement is close – “I can do anything, or ALL things, through God who gives me strength” (Philippians 4: 13). But do we really believe that?

The human race is obsessed with ‘speed’. Sometimes we walk – probably not often enough. But we are quick to use our cars or get on a plane. With a click of the computer mouse we can send instant messages around the world. Recently, Austrian, Felix Baumgartner, ventured 40 kilometres towards space and when he free-fell under the earth’s gravitational pull he became the first unaided human missile to break the sound barrier.

We generally like to be active but often we get very weary achieving very little – we are so busy that we ignore the wisdom of travelling at the speed of faith.

“Come apart and rest awhile”, says Jesus. But to our cluttered thinking, when we’ve got many kilometres to travel, resting is about as useless as sitting in our vehicle in a parking bay with the engine turned off when we’ve still got 500 kilometres to travel.
We have all experienced physical weariness. But it’s the weariness of the soul that troubles us the most. For the soul can only take so much of guilt, of tragedy and pain. One of the most beautiful promises in the book of Hebrews is the promise of soul rest in chapter 4 and verse 3: “we who have believed enter that rest”.

The first century AD was an age of unrest, terrible calamities, earthquakes and volcanoes were shaking the Roman world. But deeper than that was the dissatisfaction with the gods and the mystery religions of the day. The Romans craved rest and the Jews even more so. The Roman yoke rested upon them and AD 70 saw the destruction of their capital and the death of a million people. The Jewish Christians had a double bondage. They were hated by Romans and fellow Jews alike. For the Jewish Christian there was both confusion and unrest of spirit. What was God doing? He had established this blessed race of Jews, the edifice of Judaism, and now he was permitting it to be torn apart. It was to the Jewish Christian that the apostle wrote, “We who have believed do enter into rest”.

But soul rest is so often elusive. Remember the dove that Noah released from the ark? Day after day it flew and found no place to rest its foot – that’s like the soul of man. Or to paraphrase the words of Jesus, “The foxes have holes and the birds have nests but the soul of man has no place to lay His head”. And yet the Jewish scriptures were full of the thought of rest and the promise of rest. After creation there was a rest with the Almighty spreading His arms and saying “Come unto Me and I will give you a ‘Sabbath’ rest”.

Canaan was meant to be a land of rest. After centuries of bondage and oppression Moses came, promising rest – rest from slavery, rest in the promised land of Canaan. Please note what it says in Hebrews 3 regarding Israel’s reactions to the promises. You’ll notice verse 8 of chapter 3 speaks about the day of rebellion. Verse 10 says God was angry with that generation. Verse 11 says they will never enter my rest and then verse18 – they were unable to enter Canaan because of unbelief.

Why didn’t Israel experience the soul rest that God had promised? It was because of unbelief. While wandering in the wilderness, even though they followed a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, they still struggled to travel at the speed of faith.

There is really only one problem and if that problem is solved all the others will be solved. It is not the calamities that come our way. It’s our spirit of rebellion. You know a bird in a cage can injure itself beating against the wires. It might as well just sit back and sing. It is our selfishness that leads to our discontent. Martin Luther said, ‘It is our self-love that is the root of all our disquietude and pain’.

Genuine faith in the gospel purges us, refines us, takes away the rebellion and thus we enter into rest. No longer are we an autonomous pilot peering from the bow of our ship into the murky darkness looking to thread a pathway through the rocks and the quicksand. When we travel by faith we have taken a Pilot on board and He knows where He is going. He knows what He is doing. “I am with you always, Jesus said, even unto the end”. “All things work together for good for those who love God”. “God has a thousand ways about which we know nothing”. And even at death when we go over the edge and drop, we drop into the arms of the Saviour. We have a greater rest beyond. We who believe enter that rest.
The problem for Israel was that while Moses and Aaron showed signs, Israel did not believe that God had sent them, despite the promise in Genesis that God would visit them and rescue them from slavery; despite Moses saying, “The hour of your deliverance is here”.
They had to see the signs of the leprosy and the water turned to blood – when they saw the signs they believed – but only for a short time. God gave them a raft of signs (Exodus chapters 7 – 11) – signs in the heaven, signs in the earth, death in the herd, death in the home and death on the Egyptian throne. Signs among the living and among the dead, among the darkness and in the dirt – an abundance of signs – and Israel believed.
But it wasn’t genuine belief. God led them out of Egypt and suddenly they saw a great river between them and the ‘promised land’. They lapsed back into unbelief. “Are you about to bury us here? Were there no graves in Egypt? What’s God up to? Moses, you ought to be stoned!

God was longing for some Israelite mother to say to her children, “We have never seen God smash a tunnel through the mountains or plough a path through the sea – but our God can do it! But Israel couldn’t see, so they disbelieved. And then when God did plough a path through the seas and the water drowned the pursuing Egyptians, it says “The Israelites believed when they saw the Egyptians dead”.

‘Seeing is believing’, is a worldly philosophy. The Christian philosophy is ‘believing is seeing’. Jesus said to Nathaniel, “Believest Thou? – you’ll see greater things than these”. To Thomas Jesus said, “Because you have seen, you have believed, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”. True faith accepts the Word of God before it sees anything.

God brings the Israelites to Marah and the waters are bitter. Will they trust him now? Do they believe God can create something that can change the bitter waters to sweet? They murmur against God. But God gave Moses a tree branch – symbolic of the tree of the cross. Friends, only the cross can sweeten the bitter waters of sorrow, sickness, tragedy, loss and guilt. So God changes the water and it becomes sweet. They travel on further and there is no food and because they can’t see a supermarket they murmur. Then God sends manna and when they taste and feel and touch, they believe.

Then they come to Rephidim. Again, there is no water. Again they murmur and grumble and complain. They had to see before they believed. That’s why God told those Israelites that did make Canaan that they had to march around Jericho and give a shout of faith, before the walls fell down. God wanted a people who would trust Him without seeing. Those who wait to see and hear and touch before they can rejoice may never be happy or if they are, their joy will be short-lived.

Twenty centuries ago Jesus gave His all for us. In the sign of the cross we see that Christ is one hundred percent for us. We need no other sign. If we don’t accept the sign of the cross nothing else will move us to faith. God has spoken His last word at the cross. For the past twenty centuries there has been no Mt. Sinai – only Mt. Golgotha. If seeing an agonized Jesus lifted up on the cross doesn’t bring us to faith, then nothing will.

For Israel, until Sinai, there were signs aplenty. There was Jehovah with millions of His angels. There was the sound of the trumpet exceeding loud. There was smoke and the mountain trembled. But then God tested them with 6 weeks without signs. No Jehovah. No Moses – he had gone up into the mountain to be with God. The mountain had stopped trembling. There was no trumpet sound. Where are our signs? What’s happened to our signs? Let’s make us gods so we can see – so they made and danced around a golden calf. They had to have something to see!

And then came the greatest sign of all – God forgave them.

Was it any better in New Testament times? Had Israel improved? No, the Jews come to Jesus and ask, “What sign do you show?” They are still looking for signs. Still lusting to see and feel and hear. “What works shall we work so that we may work the works of God”, they ask? The work of God is that you believe.

Was it any better with His disciples? In John chapter 6, the thousands flock to Jesus and Jesus heals them and teaches them – and now they are pale, wan and weary. Jesus turns to Philip and asks, “Well, how are we going to provide lunch for this lot?” Philip looks at the problem and says, “Even if we had a fortune we couldn’t pay for food for everyone”. He looked at the problem – he didn’t look to Jesus. Jesus turned to Thomas and Thomas looked at the available resources and said, “The best we can do is a little boy here with his lunch. But what can that do”? He looked at the resources. Looking, looking, ever-looking – but not trusting. The little boy gave what he had to Jesus and looked up into His face. Thousands were fed because of his faith. It was the prophet Isaiah who had predicted “A little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11: 6)”.

And then when they want to make Him a king so they can see the Romans dead and they can see Jerusalem as the capital of the world, Jesus had to send His disciples away because they were involved in the scheming too. They go away in a boat and because there are mutinous storm clouds in their hearts, God sends them another storm. It’s an interesting thing. Troubles are like cannibals. Big troubles come along and eat up the little ones. Here the disciples were grumbling because Jesus wouldn’t let Himself be made king, so Jesus sends them another storm. In John 6 you see a wonderful illustration of what it is like to travel at the speed of faith. Verse18 -The sea rose because a strong wind was blowing. Then they see Jesus walking on the sea and they are frightened. We are often frightened when God comes near to us? He means us well but we are so suspicious of God. Why are we suspicious of Him who gave up everything for us?

The disciples failed to note that the very billows that were threatening to come down on their heads were actually under Jesus’ feet. What a revelation of the reality of life that is to the Christian. Suddenly we see that those very tempests that threaten to inundate us are in fact under the feet of Jesus. Jesus walks on stormy seas – they are a footpath to Him. Life’s tempests won’t drown us while Jesus is walking the sea of life with us. Then it says they took Him on board – and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

They’d been frantically rowing and getting nowhere relying on their own resources. But immediately they took Jesus on board, they reached their destination.
So, what it’s mean to travel at the speed of faith? Take Jesus on board, take Jesus into your life by faith, give everything over to Him, and you will joyfully and rewardingly find out!