This week, I heard a phrase I haven’t been able to shake:
Lay down your oars and raise your sail.
It found me at the right time.
I had been working on Already Loved—trying to figure out how to market it, explain it and make people care.
What should I say?
What is my personal brand?
How do I make this interesting?
Should I be funnier?
How do I do YouTube?
How do I do all the other things everyone says I need to do?
My mind was moving in a hundred directions, but somehow I wasn’t getting anywhere.
I was rowing furiously in one place.
And I sensed the Lord saying:
Lay down your oars.
The oars were my self-effort. The sweat, strain and need to manufacture an outcome. The belief that if I could just work harder, think faster or find the perfect strategy, I could force the boat forward.
But a sailboat doesn’t move because the sailor tries harder.
No amount of huffing and puffing can make the wind blow.
The sailor raises the sail.
Then waits.
That feels vulnerable.
Because raising the sail means admitting:
Lord, this depends on You.
This company. This project. This dream I care so much about.
I can build the boat. I can prepare the sail. I can listen and respond when You speak.
But I cannot create the wind.
That kind of dependence is uncomfortable in a culture that tells us to hustle, grind and make our own way.
We like oars because they give us the illusion of control.
Even if we are exhausted, at least we can say we are doing something.
The disciples had been fishing all night. Working, sweating and throwing their nets into the water again and again.
Nothing.
Then Jesus told them to put the net on the other side of the boat.
A boat isn’t that wide.
How could there be no fish on one side and more than they could carry on the other?
It didn’t make much sense.
But they listened.
And the fish came.
I don’t know what “the other side of the boat” looks like for me yet.
I don’t know how God will bring the right people to Already Loved or how He will make the fish jump into the net.
But I’m beginning to see that the fish may not even be the point.
The point is doing this with Him.
Moses understood that.
When God promised to lead Israel towards a land flowing with milk and honey, Moses essentially said, “We’re not going anywhere unless You come with us.”
He didn’t just want the destination.
He wanted God.
Because what is the Promised Land without His presence?
What is success if I arrive there alone, exhausted from rowing?
I have a phrase that may sound almost heretical:
Heaven would be hell without Him.
Because heaven is heaven wherever He is.
You could argue that while Israel was still walking through the wilderness—following the cloud by day and the fire by night—they had already found the promise.
God was with them.
Emmanuel.
What more could they want?
A few weeks ago, Pastor Paul spoke at our church about Sabbath.
He said Sabbath is a day when we trust that, even while we stop working, God continues holding everything together.
The train will not fall off the tracks because I took my hands off it.
That is rest.
Not inactivity. Trust.
Raising the sail doesn’t mean I do nothing.
The disciples still had to move the net.
The sailor still watches the wind, adjusts the ropes and steers the boat.
But the power moving everything forward comes from somewhere else.
So I’m learning to pray:
Lord, I have the boat.
I have the sail.
I will do what You ask me to do.
But You provide the wind.
Take me wherever You want to go.
And if the destination does not include You, I don’t want it.
So when they tell you that everything depends on you…
When they tell you to work harder, hustle more and force your own way forward…
Pause and ask:
Who told you that?
It wasn’t your Dad.
See you next Friday
