This week at The Gathering I continued our series “The 4 Laws of Waterskiing” with the second law, which is the “Law of Leaning.” The Law of Leaning states, “Hold onto the rope, lean back, and let the boat do the lifting.”
We desperately need to understand that Christianity is not a man-centered, works-oriented way to do life and prepare for eternity. It is at its heart, a love relationship with God. It is God’s willingness to take the first move to enter into a relationship with us and make promises. For example, the promise in Psalm 37 is “Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will act.”
That’s what the second law of waterskiing is all a bout, isn’t it? Hold onto the rope – that’s commitment. Lean back – that’s trust. Let God do the heavy lifting – that’s allowing God to act.
The challenge to that is God doesn’t always act when and in the ways I expect or even demand. Committing your way to God and trusting Him is not for the faint of heart.
How futile it is to join the millions of other weary souls on the “try harder treadmill.” This kind of try harder mentality is at odds with commit and trust. Try harder is a self-centered, self-help way of living; so ingrained in our culture that we’ve come up with cliché’s to back it up. I’ll talk more about those in the Dave Rave this week.
In this talk I spoke about the importance of rest; that to commit your way to God and trust Him is to rest. I used “REST” as an acronym. “R” stands for Relax, “E” stands for Enjoy, “S” stands for Savor, and “T” stands for Trust. I relax knowing everything is covered by the power of God. I enjoy the journey in this give-and-take of try and trust. I savor the seasons rather than wanting life to be something other than it is, embracing it knowing God is at work. And I trust God’s motives and methods.
This is a great talk. Make sure you listen to Law #1 so that Law #2 will make sense