Time to Walk on the Glass Floor // Discover Your Destiny, Part 14

Believing in Jesus is a step of faith.  Plain and simple.  Believing that He can and will make a difference to our lives – well that’s a step of faith too.  And sometimes – it can be a huge step.

Over these last few weeks we've been talking about being the “me” we were each meant to be, and do you know, we all want that. We all want to somehow grow into who we are meant to be and to realise our destiny. And maybe over these last few weeks you've been tuning in and out and something inside you is just shouting, “YES! YES! That's what I want.”

But … There's always a but. “But surely God would never do this for me. Nothing's ever going to change in my life. Okay He raised Lazarus from the dead. Okay He raised Jesus from the dead. That was a couple of thousand years ago. Okay God can do anything He wants but you know something, I just don't think He'd do it for me.” That's the crutch, isn't it?

It's amazing. People can believe in a whole bunch of things. We can believe that God could forgive us. We can believe that Jesus rose from the dead. We can believe that we have eternal life. In a sense they're all easy because they can seem a long way off. But when we look at the very real issues and problems of life sometimes they're really big and ugly.

Believing that God can intervene and make things better well, because these problems and issues are so close and sometimes when they're so close they look so big and God feels so far away, believing that God can make a difference. That can be a lot harder. Believing that he can deal with those yucky bits inside us, that can be even harder.

I was an incredibly tough, self-centred businessman. I used to eat wimps for breakfast, you know. So when it came to believing all those other things about God and Jesus and stuff I knew straight away there was some tough things for me to deal with. And on top of it all I was going through a marriage breakdown and divorce. You think, 'surely not Berni'. Absolutely, that's when I came to faith in Jesus twelve years ago. That's life, That's my reality.

I was listening the other day just to a high-profile businessman who I know really well and he was talking about his life. He took a company from nine million to over half a billion in turn over a few years ago. Everyone looked at him and thought, 'what a super star, what a corporate hero this man is'. But in secret he had his head down over a toilet bowl and he was coughing up blood because that's what the pressure was doing to him on the inside and he almost lost his marriage.

The crazy thing you and I do, we all are prone to it. We look at outward signs of success. God, God looks at our hearts. He looks at the stuff that's going on on the inside and I love that about Him. You know something, if he isn't in the business of fixing those things, whatever they are (and yours and mine are bound to be different mind you,) then what’s the point? I mean if God isn't going to make a difference, if it doesn't work, what's the point? You know something, when we're in the middle of those things it's so hard, it's so incredibly hard to believe that he could ever come along and make a difference. You know what I mean or is it just me?

The apostle Paul was writing to the Ephesian Church and he was busting to help them with exactly that, this is what he wrote almost two thousand years ago. He writes:

I pray also that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened so that you would know the hope to which God's called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Jesus when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms far above any rule on earth.

You see, Paul's saying here as you get to know God better, my prayer for you is that you would know that the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, that very same power is the power that's at work in you and that's a promise of God. Paul said, “I want you to know the hope, the riches and the power that you have, the incomparably great power, that power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that's at work in you and me”.

A few years back I went to Toronto, Canada and I visited the CN tower which is the tallest, man-made, free standing structure in the world and part way up at 342 metres there's an observation deck. Now the trick with this observation deck, it's enclosed but it has a glass floor. Now they tell you that the glass floor is five times stronger than a concrete floor. Ha ha! Well that's great but it still doesn't help. I mean I looked down at this glass floor and I was petrified and it took me such a long time to go out there.

It's an awful feeling when you look down between your feet and you see the ground way below and these little specks flying around, they're birds but they feel like they're miles away. And I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of people who were really scared to walk out on that glass floor even though the engineers will tell you the glass floor was five times stronger than the concrete floor.

But here it is. If you or I want to be the “me” we were meant to be we have to walk out onto God's promises and put our faith in Him. Just like that glass floor. And okay, it's unknown and it maybe an uncomfortable feeling, it maybe unnatural to trust God with our lives.

You see, people want to believe in Jesus from a distance and that's not what He wants us to do. He wants us to put our faith in Him. To put our trust in Him. To trust Him with our lives because His plan is to give us life in all it's abundance, hope and riches and power. The apostle Paul again in Galatians, chapter 2, verse 20 writes this, he says:

I have been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me.

Now then, a lot of Christians know that passage particularly well but this next bit is the one that I want to point to.

The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Let me say that again, "The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me."

Pretty safe to believe in Jesus from a distance and then we grumble and say, “How come I'm not living the life he meant me to have? How come I'm not being the “me” I was meant to be? How come I have a sense that I'm missing out on my destiny?” The answer is because you don't become the “me” you were meant to be until you have that relationship with Jesus and you trust him with your life and when you live the life in the body by faith in the Son of God.

When we take a hold of that life, the life that He promises us, we discover what it is to be the ‘me’ we were meant to be. And it's a step of faith. We have to step out and believe it before we can see it. That’s His plan and, I know, sometimes it's hard to do and sometimes we're afraid and sometimes we feel like we don't have enough faith but just take the step, just take the step and say, "Jesus, I'm going to trust you with my life, with every little bit. With that difficult teenage kid, with the relationship I'm having with my wife or my husband, with the problem I'm having at work. I want you in that space because I want to trust that part of my life with you."

He wants you and me to be the person He made us to be; to live life with an active faith in Jesus Christ. When we take that step out, He steps in and He does things we could never do. He deals with things we can never deal with and the reason He does it that way is so that you and I can never boast, “It was me. Haw, haw look what I did, I did it." I didn't. He did.