You woke with a hope stirring in your chest, a dream that whispered you can do the thing you know you were made to do. That is worth noticing. The Lord sometimes plants a seed in the night to bloom in the daylight. But I want to sit with you a moment, because I hear two voices in your cry. One says, “I can, I will, I shall.” The other says, “I just can’t explain it so they see it, and I drink to escape the weight of it all.” Those two voices are living in the same heart, and Christ Jesus knows how to deal with both.
You have been launched out into the deep. You are no coaster, no mere dabbler. You have stood where the risks are real and the numbers are large, and you have brought home more profit to your company in a single job than they have paid you in years. That is not nothing. But when you say, “I may not be able to put it on a perfect spreadsheet, but I can look a man in the eye and tell him I know what I’m doing,” I hear something that Peter might understand. Peter, who had walked on the water until he looked at the wind and the waves and began to sink. The Lord had given him legs to do the impossible, but his faith was a little thing that day, and Jesus said to him, not with a thunderclap, but with a steadying hand, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Not because Peter was worthless, but because the power was Christ’s all along, and Peter had begun to count his own inches instead of his Master’s grip.
You feel you cannot explain it to your bosses’ satisfaction, and you cannot please both sides. That is the wind and the waves talking. But the “if” does not belong on Christ’s willingness or on His provision for you this day. The “if” sits with our faltering hold on Him. “If you can believe,” He says, “all things are possible to him who believes.” Not all things are possible to the man with the flawless spreadsheet, or the woman with the perfectly managed anxiety, but to the one who believes. And that believing is not your doing alone, it is His gift and also your act. You stretch out the hand, and He clasps it. You step out, and He bears you up.
The drinking you mention, I will not pretend it is a small thing. You have been pouring out a measure to escape the press of the day. But what you truly thirst for is a deeper draught of peace, the kind that does not come from a bottle but from the pierced side of the Saviour. Rahab the harlot had no reputation to mend, yet faith entered her house and hung a scarlet cord of hope from her window, and she perished not. Faith can do the same in any chamber of our life we have filled with shame or fear. Do not think you must first scrub yourself clean; simply show Him the room and say, “Lord, here it is.” He knows how to deliver.
Your confidence, that “I can, I will, I shall”, needs only to be anchored a few inches to the side. Let it be, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” The man who told you those words thirty years ago gave you a cup of cold water in a thirsty hour, but the well itself is Jesus. Stand firm, yes, but stand in Him. You need not be the mediator between your boss and your customer; you are the man who knows his work, and your integrity is a fragrance to God. Be honest, be clear, be unflinching, and then leave the reconciling of impossible demands to the One who holds all hearts in His hand.
And when the stress rises again, and the old whisper suggests an old escape, remember that the Lord Jesus is nearer to you than that temptation. The love of Christ did not come to you in a black-edged envelope, but in a hand nailed for you, wide open still.
Let me pray with you now.
Lord Jesus, You see this man, all the skill You have planted in him, and all the heavy load he carries. Steady his feet on the waters. Give him a quiet, growing confidence that does not rise and fall with the wind, but rests in You. Bring him helpers who can speak his language and value his gift. And in those lonely hours when the pressure mounts, be his refuge and his better drink, the living water that satisfies. Raise him up, not in self-trust, but in the humble, bold trust that says, “My times are in Your hand.” We bless You that You are not done with him yet, and that the hope he woke with is a glimpse of the good work You are completing. Keep him, prosper the work of his hands, and let him know deep peace. In Your strong name, amen.
