Monday Sep 09, 2019
TRANSFORMED | An Invitation to Transformation | Romans 12 | Week 1
I went to Florida last week. I used to live in Florida and one of my favorite beaches is called Clearwater Beach. It's consistently rated in the top beaches in the country. I parked my car and immediately went to the beach, dropped my towel, and got into the water. It felt so amazing! I bobbed and floated a bit, and then I saw these two guys on a sandbar. A sandbar is sand you can stand on out in the water; it's almost like walking on water. It was about 100 yards out there and I've swum that a bazillion times. I'm a pretty good swimmer so I took off. I'm working and working to get out to the sandbar. Normally it takes three or four minutes to get out there, but I don't think I noticed how hard the waves were coming in that day. The waves were relentless and pounding on me as I was going out. I didn't notice how hard I was working until I started feeling pretty tired; like my whole body tired, like my arms tired, and I've never really felt that way before. It's a little bit scary to be out in the ocean and feel that. It had been about fifteen minutes. The guys had swum off the sandbar, so I had lost my frame of reference of where I was going. I was so tired but I thought I'd better check and see how close I was to the sandbar. I popped my head above the waves and it was still a little ways out; I was discouraged because I wasn't really getting anywhere. I got nervous because my arms were tired and my heart was really pounding. I was gasping for air and I was breathing in salt water. My lungs were burning. So I had to make a decision, do I continue working and trying to get to the sandbar or do I turn around and head for the shore? I decided that I was trying so hard to get to the sandbar, but I just wasn't making it, so I decided to go back. I turned around and the shore was SO FAR AWAY. My lungs were burning, my heart was pounding, my arms were exhausted. I started to get a little bit scared because I realized I'm just a few moments away from running out of gas and I don't know what to do. The thought occurred to me, "It's very possible I'm going to drown, because I don't think I have what it takes to get back to shore." There's no lifeguard; there's nobody close to me. I had to fight for every breath. I kept swimming but I was slowing down rapidly. Just when I thought I couldn't go any farther, I decided to check and see if I could touch the bottom. And thank God, I could stand on my tiptoes, so I used my last bit of energy to get out of the water, and I was completely and totally exhausted. The funny thing is, at the same time I thought I might drown, I thought to myself, “If I don’t die from this, I could use this as a sermon illustration.” I swear I thought that! So here it is...
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