Thin Ice

Matthew 14:31

Watch on YouTube

Here’s another quick lesson illustration about how we think about faith. Remember when Jesus was walking on the water and Peter actually went out to Jesus on the water until he saw the wind and the waves, and then he stopped walking on the water and started to sink. And Jesus said, You of little faith. Why did you doubt?

Well, remember, little faith is still faith. Faith doesn’t depend on us, but it depends on the one we have faith in. Let me give you just one more illustration about that. I heard this from a pastor that I was working with years ago, and he described a man who had to cross a frozen river. So kind of a walking on the water story, but this one is frozen. And he has to get to the other side of it. But he’s really concerned about whether it’s going to be safe for him to get across.

So he starts to walk across the river. But after a little while, he just gets so nervous that he goes down to his hands and knees and starts to slowly crawl across the river. By that time, he’s just really anxious. He drops down, spread eagle and just shimmies his way across the river. He’s in about the middle of this frozen river when all of a sudden he starts to hear something. Is it, is it the ice cracking? Is this it? Is he doomed?

And then the sound gets a little bit closer, the clomping, and he realizes that there’s a little bit of a jingling too. And around the corner comes a sleigh pulled by two huge horses and children on the back of the sleigh, just laughing and singing. And it’s going down the middle of the river.

Was the ice strong enough to be able to hold him as he went across this river? Absolutely. It was strong enough for the sleigh and the horses and the children. Was he nervous about it? Yeah. Was his faith weak? Yeah, sure. But. The ice that he was on was completely solid. It had nothing to do with really how he felt about the ice. It was just is this ice solid enough for me to get across? And it was.

In the same way we can worry and worry and worry about the size of our faith, but recognize that it’s not about the size of your faith, your emotional reactions to how strong your faith is, but it’s about the strength of your Savior. Is he solid? Did he really take all your sins to the cross? Did he really forgive you? Does he did he really open up heaven for your home? Did he really call you into faith and call you his child? He did. All those promises are rock solid and sure.

And as we trust in those, more and more, life gets a lot more fun, too. It’s like the children just going down the middle of the river. Not worried or concerned at all because the ice, the ice is solid. So are they both going to make it to the other side? Yeah, they will, because it’s about the strength of the ice. Not not about their own personal faith in the ice. So let that encourage you as you think about the size of faith and about the size of your Savior.