By Melody Vanosdol
God is always faithful. I’m still working on it.
Four years ago, one of my best friends asked me if I would get my SCUBA diving certification with her. I laughed a little and said, “yes.” I’m from Indiana. The largest thing I’d ever swam in was a farm pond. That’s a far cry from SCUBA diving, but I’m usually up for about anything. It was hard. I mean it was HARD to get through all of that training in four days. We had a great trainer/dive instructor, and the dives went fairly well.
The following summer we went SCUBA diving in the Florida Keys. The first three of four dives went well. The fourth dive was horrible. The equipment was sub par, and the dive “master” abandoned me. My friends had no clue where I was. I had to abandon the dive and resurface. I had filled up with salt water on entry and didn’t know how to cough it up while at the bottom completely dependent on the regulator through which I was breathing. Once I was finally back on the boat (no small task since the dive “master” didn’t inform the captain I was coming aboard), I spent a half hour trying to expel all the salt water from my body.
To say the least, it left me with some serious anxiety about diving again, especially the water entry portion since that’s when I lost my regulator and face mask while plunging into the water.
Fast forward three years and I’m in Belize with the same best friend and another friend getting ready to dive in some of the most amazing reef environment in the world. The friend who booked the dives had already told the dive master about my anxiety. I didn’t know this. I spoke to the dive master about it before we ever left his shop. He said all the right things and was comforting to some extent. But if you have ever been anxious about something, you know words are not always helpful.
The first day of diving was very easy, in shallow, calm water, but I still had some panic when I first entered the water. The second day was outside the reef. The reef is what breaks the waves and makes the water inside the reef nice and calm. As the crew helped me into my diving gear, my stomach churned. The waves seemed huge. The panic started to rise. I heard my Lord remind me from scripture, “This is exactly why Peter started sinking. Your focus is in the wrong place” (reference Matthew 14:30).
I closed my eyes, put my focus on Jesus, put my left hand on my face to hold my regulator and face mask on, and rolled backwards into the water. It was perfect! It couldn’t have been more perfect if I’d had decades of experience.
The Lord tends to reward us for our faith in Him. We went down 84 feet. I swam through a coral canyon, through a coral arch, and a coral tunnel. I saw things most people only get to see in photographs. The fish were amazing. The plant life and coral were mind blowing. To say it’s beautiful is a massive understatement. To top it all off, one of the nurse sharks that had been swimming around us, came up to me very slowly and lingered in front of me to let me pet it, from the top of its head all the way back to the tip of its tail fin. Did you know that you can squeal underwater with a regulator in your mouth?
Faith is trust. If you want to have faith in the Lord, if you want to trust Him, you have to get to know him. Much like I was submerged in water, you have to submerge yourself in His Word. If you don’t, it’s like going diving with no training. His Word is your training camp. Every lesson you ever need is in His Word. With nearly everything in life, if you want to be good at something, you have to keep your training fresh and up-to-date. Spending daily time in His Word is key to building strong faith, building real trust. There is no shortcut, no replacement for spending time submerged in His Word.
I promise, you will never regret one minute you spend in His Word. If reading is not your thing, download an audio app onto your phone. My favorite is YouVersion. Because I can listen while I drive, I get through the entire Bible two or three times each year in addition to other devotion plans.
God is always faithful. I’m still working on it.
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt” (Matthew 14:28-31)?
“Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful” (Joshua 1:8).
“For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).
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