I always believed that Jesus’ miracles had purpose: sick people needed healing, dead people needed raising, a wedding host had run out of wine, hungry people needed feeding… When the disciples needed help in the middle of a lake, Jesus walked on water to get to them. But what’s the purpose of this miracle?

“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. (Matthew 14.28, 29, NIV, emphasis mine)

I’ve written about this before, but I’m still puzzling over it, so it’s worth looking at again. Again, there seems to be no purpose in the miracle. Peter isn’t trying to go anywhere. He’s just seeing if he can walk on water. And he can! Somehow Peter seems to realize something that Jesus hasn’t said yet. Namely, “I am a Jesus-follower. If Jesus can do something, I should be able to do the same thing.” Later, Jesus affirmed:

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. (John 14.12, NIV)

Peter, in Jesus’ power, could walk on water. Later, in Jesus’ name (power) he heals a lame man in Acts 3 and raises a dead woman (Acts 9).

So the question is, do we have and use such power? One answer is that any time we take a step of faith, we’re walking on water. I wrote earlier that miracles happen in motion. A friend told me about a fractured relationship he had with someone. He said, “Finally, I ‘walked on water.’ I humbled myself, apologized to him, and the relationship is now whole.”

I think this is the same message as in the John Ortberg title: If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat!

So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing... So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. (Joshua 3.14 – 16, NIV, emphasis mine)