“They willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going” (John 6:21)
We know the story: the disciples were battling the storm, Jesus came walking over the water towards them, then as soon as He was in the boat with them they had reached their destination. I’ve always seen this as a wonderful demonstration of Jesus’s divinity, but I believe there is a further application for us, because what was true for the disciples on Lake Galilee can be true for us as well. When Jesus is in the boat with us, we are immediately at the land where we are going. We know where we are going: heaven. I can see two ways of looking at this. The first one is the “now and not yet” aspect of the Kingdom of God: the fullness of the Kingdom will be seen on earth when Jesus returns in His glory, yet the Kingdom of God is among us now (Luke 17:21), wherever the rule and reign of the King is manifested today. The second perspective is this: when we are in the presence of Jesus, we are there; we have reached our heavenly destination. It’s easy to bandy around phrases like “in the spirit,“ and “by faith,” but the inescapable reality is that when we are in the presence of Jesus we really are “at the land where we are going,” the promised land of the Kingdom of God, and all the provision and power of that Kingdom are there for us. In a message he preached nearly 100 years ago (in 1927) Smith Wigglesworth said this:
“I must recognise the difference between my own spirit and the Holy Spirit. My own spirit can do certain things on natural lines, can even weep and pray and worship, but it is all on a human plane, and we must not depend on our human thoughts and activities or on our own personality. If the baptism means anything to you, it should bring you to the death of the ordinary, where you are no longer putting faith in your own understanding; but, conscious of your own poverty, you are ever yielded to the spirit. Then it is that your body becomes filled with heaven on earth.“ (From “Smith Wigglesworth: the Complete Collection of His Life and Teachings” compiled by Roberts Liardon)
Jesus in the boat
I think the big question for Bible-believing Christians who are rowing through a storm is often this: “Lord, why aren’t I seeing your promises (for healing, provision, the miraculous, for ourselves or for others) fulfilled? Maybe the answer is that he’s not really in the boat. We know the promises of the land; we look to them and declare them, but we ignore the fact that the best way to receive their fulfillment is to have Jesus in the boat with us. Yes, He is with us all the time, just as we are seated in heavenly places all the time, but I don’t mean those statements of faith; I mean the experienced reality of His presence, when we know our body has become “filled with heaven on earth,” that only comes with a commitment to Psalm 27:8:
When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.”
Unlike anything the world has known
I believe that we are on the brink of the move of God prophesied by Smith Wigglesworth in 1947: “A revival that will eclipse anything that has been witnessed within these shores, even the Wesleyan and Welsh revivals of former years.” When this wave hits, it will be a tsunami, unlike anything the world has known, and it will be characterised by the word and the spirit coming together. “When the new church phase is on the wane, there will be evidence in the churches of something that has not been seen before: a coming together of those with an emphasis on the word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit. When the word and the Spirit come together, there will be the biggest move of the Holy Spirit that the nation, and indeed, the world has ever seen.”.
The word brings His promises; the spirit brings His presence. I think “the word and the spirit coming together” that Wigglesworth prophesies refers to more than churches who accept the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit and who preach, and teach, the word of God – although this is an important and essential part of the picture. I think this might also apply to us as individual believers. If we prioritize seeking His presence and willingly receiving him into the boat (spirit) when we pray His promises (word), I think we might find ourselves at the land where we are going.