"Out of the Boat"

I have just started reading a book with the title, "If You Want To Walk On Water, You've Got To Get Out of the Boat" by John Ortberg. I believe this will also be one of my favorites, but I won't know that, until I have finished. It is an instruction on how to walk through this life faithfully and a very in depth study of the story about Peters experience of getting out of the boat to walk upon the water with Jesus.
It is not about being a thrill seeker or walking blindly through the world jumping into every situation that seems to put you in a situation that is more than you can bear, expecting God to bail you out. It is about stillness throughout the storm. It is about being able to use your gifts to their full potential. It is about being able to hear and discern the true voice of our Lord and your own selfish desires. To first ask for Him to command you and then in Trusting, while stepping out from your boat onto the wind swept waters.
To hear such a calling and to know it will be done no matter how impossible your human mind tells you it is. For I know and I tell you that there is not a single action or process that takes place in which God is not fully in control. There is no such thing as luck for, if luck had any Truth then we would also have to accept that nothing at all was ever MEANT to be. If even one process is simply a random act that relies on luck then there would be a variable of chaos, which would set into motion such an effect that nothing would be able to be hold even a single Law of Nature. Since there is no such thing as luck I tell you that God controls every circumstance. As eyes are opened you begin to see how God controls the flow of every life by causing doors to open and to shut.
That is what this book is about, so far. To see such doors that are opened knowing they have been opened by God and to faithfully step through them without allowing fear to control the decision to do so. To take the battles and trials knowing they have been given to make you stronger in the end. Not stronger in a physical sense, but in a spiritual sense, so when such adversity comes again you are able to focus into the eyes of God and walk upon the water with Love, Grace, Hope, Gentleness, Honesty, and Peacefulness. The days will pass, time will flow, and the moment will come when every moment will be looked back upon with a smile. For each choice, each decision, each step that you have taken has brought you closer to obtaining Christ-like character.
That is what this life is all about. To become as Christ through allowing the Holy Spirit within to lead and ourselves to follow. To truly be a Living Sacrifice by throwing all self aside and embracing all that is Godly, so His Light may shine through to all the world.

And I leave you with a quote from the book I'm reading, which I love,

" It's not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who
is actually in the arena...who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of great achievement,
and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place will
never be with those cold timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt