When you are out in the ocean farther than your feet can stand on the sand, you are treading water. It’s the same process you learned when you first started learning how to swim. The smallest depth of water in comparison to your body size is a struggle to keep from drowning. The longer you can tread the water, the longer you survive the water. Everytime you were swimming in the pool, you got stronger and stronger. The muscles you used got bigger and your endurance improved over time. There are different muscles involved in swimming than some other activities. The more you are able to tolerate the resistance of the water against your body. The stronger you get and the easier it becomes for you to swim. Moving through the water is more force against your body then air is. You will have to exercise more against the push of the water in order to tread it. Lifes trials we go through are treading water. The small ones get us started in the process. As we get older we out grow the kiddy pool and the depths of the water we can endure increases. What we learned from the kiddy pool isn’t irrelevant. We can implement the same process to get through the larger trials we face. If you made it out of the first pool, the next pool should be no problem. Until, we get to the ocean. A vast seemingly infinite body of water. One that is just as mysterious, as it is fearful. One factor such as a rip current, doesn’t apply to swimming pools. A current so strong it can pull your feet out from under you and trap you in a cycle of water moving on top and underneath you. Keeping you trapped in the water till you drown. The very view of this vast body of water makes you feel small and insignificant in comparison, it’s intimidating. We don’t need to do anything for the ocean to exist or operate. It has a so called “mind of its own”. It was here before you were born and more than likely will still be here long after us and our children are gone. The thought of the unknown quickly turns to fear of the unknown. What is lurking out in that water? Even the most sophisticated scientists still have yet to travel to the deepest parts of the oceans. No one really knows everything that is out there. With that being said, what if you were out in the middle of the ocean with nothing but you. No boat, no life raft, no oxygen tank, no food or fresh water. What would be your first thought? What would you be feeling at that moment? Looking around and all you see is ocean. How long could you tread the water before the water, consumed you? How long before someone came to rescue you? How long til you wanted to give up? What thought would keep you holding on, when you were wanting to surrender to the ocean? If God told you he would never leave you or forsake you, why would you be worried? If God told you if He is for you than who could be against you, what would you fear? If God told you a thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand but it will not come near you, than what could come near you? If God told you that you can not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, then why would you starve? God doesn’t get any glory out of your unbelief. In fact, God doesn’t like luke warm people that only partially believe in Him. God said because you are luke warm, not hot or cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. God doesn’t want You to worry about anything. God tells us to cast our cares on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never let the righteous slip and fall. The righteous are the believers in Jesus Christ. The fact that you believe in Him is what makes you righteous, not your works. God also tells us that we are in His hands and nothing can snatch us out of our Father’s hands. God wants all of you!!! He wants you to believe in Him as a little child believes in his father to be a super hero. A father that is going to protect, provide, and save them from nightmares and anything that posses a threat. God is our Super Hero!!! Jesus Christ took your place for things you couldn’t do for yourself. You are not strong enough to right your wrongs. You are not clever enough to find a way out. You are already born into this world of sin. Now you have to be born into Christ for only His grace can save you from this world that is waiting to swallow you up in darkness and death. God wants more of you than what is easy for you to give Him. It wasn’t easy for Him to give up His only Son that we might have life and life more generously. His love for you is what made it happen!!! He loved you so much that He, your Super Hero Father that created you before your mother and father even knew you, sacrificed His most precious Son of God in order for you to be rescued from drowning, rescued from eternal death. He is faithful to those who believe and trust in Him. Do you believe in God? Or do you believe in yourself more? Do you believe in you own ability to use the same techniques in the pool and think it’s going to get you out of this world’s snare? Or do you think that somehow you are strong enough to make it on your own? If a parent dropped a child in the middle of the ocean, how long could that child survive? You are God’s children!!! He isn’t expecting you to have what it takes without Him. Your battle belongs to the Lord, not to you. It is written God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. If you were strong enough to make it on your own, then why is it when you are born you need to be taken care of? Because you are not born with everything you need to sustain yourself. You are dependant on another for help. We may grow up and forget that we had parents or forget we ever were small enough we needed help doing anything. God wants you dependant on Him for everything!!! What if you are still a child, a spiritual child? A child of the most High God of heaven and Earth and that you are not your body. Your body is merely a vessel in which houses your spirit. You are your spirit that is inside your body. A spirit that is dead in the world without God inside of you. Even if you feel like you are treading the water pretty well. It’s inevitable your flesh will fail you and you will succumb to death in sin. Fortunately enough, today is a perfect day to change that death sentence, into a life sentence. The ocean is just an analogy to represent the world we live in. If we started out talking about the world instead of the ocean. How would your answers to the questions change? Would you suddenly see a solution you didn’t see in the ocean? Our bodies of flesh are weak and frail in either scenario. From the very moment we come into this world, our flesh is already preparing to leave it. The ocean can kill you in a moments time and with no remorse. The world is one in the same. It will kill things inside of you that you could never get back. It will push you to grow into it or be over taken by it. It will tire you out until you just give up and surrender to it. It will attack you in other forms that are residing within it. It will pull you underneath and keep you trapped in a cycle of suffocation. Where is that thought of hope you are holding onto? Is that thought on something or someone that will fail you? Shouldn’t that hope be in something that will never fail you? God will never fail you!!! He gets glory from your belief in His abilities to do the impossible, to work in miracles. God told us lean on His understanding and not our own. All you have to do is pray to God asking for His spirit to be one with You. That Jesus Christ did die for you to be able to know what life is truly about. The belief in a God that saves!!! The belief that Jesus Christ died for your sins to be forgiven!!! You are a new creation in Christ!!! The story of Jonah is a perfect example. Jonah was a prophet of God that God called to preach His word to Nineveh. Jonah didn’t want to go and hid on a ship to get away from God. The crew of ship feared God and felt He was upset with them. Because a storm rolled in and was going to take down their ship. They questioned everyone on board and Jonah confessed he disobeyed God. Jonah told them to throw him over board to save their lives. Here is Jonah in the middle of the ocean with nothing but himself. Did God forsake him? No. God sent a big fish to swallow up Jonah and saved him from the ocean. Jonah had to think about what he did for three days inside this fish. How was Jonah going to get out the belly of the fish? He prayed to God. He prayed for God to forgive his disobedience and that he would do what God had called him to do. God heard him and Jonah was spit onto the shore of Nineveh and he preached God’s word. He saved thousands upon thousands of people from enternal death. What is God calling you to do? What situation can you not get out of? God is ready to hear your prayer today. Trust only in Him. The way, the Truth, and the Life. Those that believe in Him shall not die, but have everlasting life.