There is a moment in Matthew 14 that has always fascinated me.

 

The disciples are trapped in a storm. The wind is howling. Waves are crashing against the boat. Then, in the middle of the darkness, they see Jesus walking across the water.

 

Peter does something remarkable. He asks Jesus to call him out onto the sea, and for a moment, the impossible happens. Peter steps out of the boat and begins walking on water, but then something changes.

 

He notices the wind.
He notices the waves.
He notices the storm.

 

And the moment his focus shifts from Jesus to his circumstances, he begins to sink.

 

Eyes Off the Water was inspired by that story, but it is not meant to be a literal retelling of it. In fact, Peter did not take his eyes off the water.

 

He took his eyes off Jesus.

 

The title is a play on that idea, because most of us know exactly what it feels like to stand in the middle of a storm and become consumed by everything happening around us.

 

Fear gets louder than faith.

The problem becomes bigger than the promise.

The waves become easier to see than the One who walks on them.

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That is where this song was born. For much of my life, I lived without a real relationship with God. Like many people, I chased the things I thought would finally satisfy me.

 

Success.
Achievement.
Recognition.
Identity.
Security.

 

I kept believing the next accomplishment would fill the emptiness, but the farther I chased those things, the more I realized they could never provide what I was actually looking for.

The emptiness remained.

 

Looking back, I can see that much of my life was spent focusing on the storm instead of the Savior.

 

Trying to control everything myself.

Trying to carry burdens I was never designed to carry.

Trying to find peace in places that could never truly provide it.

 

That is what Peter's story reveals. The danger is not the storm. The danger is believing we can survive it without God.

 

The song says:

 

                              "Fear got louder than the promise,
                               And the dark outran the light."

 

I think most people have experienced that feeling.

 

The diagnosis arrives.
The marriage struggles.
The addiction resurfaces.
The anxiety returns.
The relationship falls apart.

The future becomes uncertain.

 

And suddenly the waves seem much bigger than they did yesterday. What I love about Peter's story is that Jesus does not wait for Peter to swim back on his own. The moment Peter begins to sink, Jesus reaches for him.

 

That may be the most encouraging part of the entire account.

 

Peter's faith was imperfect.

His courage failed.

His focus drifted.

 

Yet Jesus still reached for him.

 

The same is true for us.

 

The older I get, the more I realize that faith is not the absence of fear. Faith is choosing who we focus on when fear arrives.

 

Storms will come.

Questions will come.

Doubts will come.

 

There will be seasons when the wind feels stronger than our confidence and the waves feel bigger than our faith, but the answer has never been to become strong enough on our own. The answer has always been to keep our eyes on Jesus, because even when we lose our footing, His hand is never far away.

 

That is why the song ends with the line:

 

                                     "Still You reached for me."

 

Not because I stayed above the waves.

Not because I never struggled.

 

But because His mercy reached deeper than I could sink, and maybe that is the lesson Peter learned that night.

 

The storm may be real, and the fear may be real, but Christ was already standing in the middle of it... unshaken, undefeated, and calling me forward.