Floating Down the Nile Without A Boat Part 2
to the roaring sounds of the rapids I realize this is probably not the best
idea I’ve ever had. I could just see the
look on my mother’s face if I had to call home and tell her I had broken a
bunch of bones because I jumped into the Nile
without a helmet on and then decided to not get back in the boat. So I turn around and start swimming as hard
as I possibly could, not really knowing where this strength was coming from at
this point because I had been struggling for a good 15-20 minutes at this
point. All of a sudden I look up and see
that my boat is coming towards me and that the guide is close enough now to
reach out with his paddle and I can grab hold and be pulled into the boat and
to safety. I get in the boat and we are
all laughing at the situation as I put my helmet back on and we start paddling
into the now upon us rapids. I soon
forget about the panic that I felt in those few moments and go on about my day
and enjoy the beauty of God’s creation and the adventure of rafting the class 5
rapids in the Nile.
A few nights later I had a dream about that day and God
revealed an interesting analogy for my life and the rafting. He told me that in life we learn all about
being with God and how to go through our struggles safely when we rely on
God. Our raft was like God. When we were in the boat we were safe, we
sometimes would fall out during a rapid but would quickly be pulled back
in. Just like our rafting guide taught
us how best to climb back in the boat and how to survive if we got stuck under
the boat if it flipped, God teaches us how to survive the hard times in our life
by relying on Him. By reading His word
and asking Him for guidance He will always be there to guide you and pull you
back up out of the water when you fall out if you ask Him to.
But just like on the Nile,
when you are in safe waters, or you feel like you can handle life on your own
for a while and you jump ship without your helmet on then sometimes you can
stray farther away from God then you realize. When I jumped out of the boat it was because the water was calm and I
didn’t need the safety of the boat or my helmet anymore but pretty soon I was
very far from my boat and my team. In my
dream God told me that it’s the same thing in life; that in the past when I have tried to do
things on my own and in my own strength I often drift farther away from Him
that I need to.
But when the waters get loud and the rapids get rough you
quickly realize that you need to get back in the boat. You need to get back to God. Because without him you won’t survive the
rapid in one piece. God told me that as
I was swimming upstream to the boat, I was struggling because I wasn’t asking
for his help; I was still trying to do it on my own. In life sometimes it feels like we have no
choice but to give up and go through the hard times alone but that’s not what
God wants for us. He desires for us to
be in the boat with him, he desires for us to rely on His strength to get us
through our sickness and struggles.
When my river guide reached out with his paddle to pull me
in the boat, it was like God sending Jesus to us to pull us back to Him. After all, that is why Jesus died on the
cross, isn’t it? To forgive us of our sins/past and to bring us closer to
God. All we have to do is look up and
see that God is extending Jesus to us, he is extending to us the paddle to pull
us back into the boat.
Why aren’t we taking
it?? Why do we insist on trying to do it
alone??
God is waiting in the
boat for us, He is just asking us not to give up!!
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