I've heard quite a few sermons on this passage that can basically be summed up by the title of a book by John Ortberg: If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. According to these sermons, Peter had the right idea getting out of the boat, literally “stepping out on faith.” The problem is Peter took his eyes off Jesus, and his faith faltered, but Jesus was there to save him. We are told, we need to be like Peter and summon up the courage to swing our leg

Jesus tells his disciples, “You feed them.” The disciples look confused. “Us? We don’t have anything to give them. We’re all out. Nothing left.” The disciples get together and come up with five small loaves and two fishes. It’s nothing much. Jesus says, “Bring your nothing to me.” He then blesses the food, breaks the loaves, and hands the bread pieces and fish to the disciples to distribute, to all 5,000 men and their families.

In the book called How to Do Things With Words , the author claims words don't simply describe things, they make things happen. When it comes to words that create worlds, there is no better example than Jesus’ parables. In these brief, simple stories, Jesus doesn’t just relate information to us about God or about heaven. He’s calling a new reality into being. These stories don’t just describe the new order God is bringing to earth, as much as they cause it to come to lif

Whenever I see a weed, it just seems to scream, “Pull me!” When Jesus tells stories about farming, his stories simply don’t make any agricultural sense. Listen to the story again - A farmer plows his field, sows it with wheat of the highest quality, and goes to bed that night. While he was sleeping an enemy comes and lays some weed seed in the same furrows. So as the wheat starts to grow, the farmer's hired hands notice the weed growing with the wheat and ask the farmer

Rarely did Jesus say things bluntly or straightforwardly. More often than not, he came at a truth indirectly, sideways-like, in order to come in under our defenses and around our prejudices. His best tools in this were his “parables.” In them, Jesus takes images drawn from familiar things and uses them a new way, to explain God’s Kingdom. It’s to our benefit then that Jesus’ first parable is such an easy one to understand. The story begins with a man who goes forth to s