If you've ever tried to water-ski, you know how the water seems to resist you before you get up on the surface. The boat's engine roars, your muscles strain, and the water does everything it can to keep you down. But if you know how to take advantage of the boat's power, you are lifted up and within a few seconds you are skimming over the surface of the same water that held you back at first.

Water-skiing provides an analogy to our Christian experience as we go through the deep waters of trial. We must learn to take advantage of God's power. At first there is great struggle and effort as we hang on with all our might to some promise of God. The weight of our own weakness seems almost unbearable. But like the water that lifts the skis, our difficulties challenge us to draw on God's supernatural power. The apostle Paul put it like this: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us" (2 Cor. 4:7).

Have we been willing to learn this spiritual truth? Have we viewed the deep waters of trial as an opportunity to realize the supernatural power that first lifts us up and then carries us over those same waters?  — Mart De Haan