You know, there's so many things about a Catalina 25 sailboat that I love, and I want to use
some of them today to share a word with you.
My name is Leanne Friesman.
This is Restoring Word, and we are restoring a Catalina 25.
My husband and I are believers, and we love the Lord, and we know just through life and
experience and years of ministry that life can be rough.
And there are some things that you can do, though, to calm yourself, strengthen yourself.
Maybe make some of the storms in life easier if you can learn to depend on Him.
The Catalina 25 that Grant and I are restoring and learning to sail is a winged keel.
Now this winged keel is a flared keel.
It's under the waterline.
No one, of course, knows that it's there.
It looks like a normal sailboat, like thousands of other sailboats that are out there.
This Catalina design, I think there's over 6,000 boats that have been produced.
It is a production boat.
But the thing about this boat is this design actually came from the Australia's Cup in
1983.
There was a designer who copied the idea of the wings of a bird, and these wings would
flare at the base of this keel.
Now a keel is basically a big chunk of lead underneath the sailboat, and what it does
is it uses the force of the wind that comes down through the boat, and then that actually
pushes the boat forward with this big 4,000 pound chunk of lead that no one can see.
But this chunk of lead is a little bit different because it's a little shorter and at the bottom
it flares.
That flare, it gives it enormous strength, speed, and stability.
In our day and hour, I'm telling you, we need all the strength and the stability and the
speed that we can get.
Strength.
Well, I want to use a scripture from Romans 8 this morning, Likewise, the Spirit helps
us in our weaknesses.
We don't know how to pray for what we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with
groanings that are too deep to be in words.
Thank God for the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit enables us to pray forth mysteries
that we don't understand.
So many times in life we come up against a wall or we hit a storm, and I've just come
out of a pretty rough storm.
And I can tell you that one of the things that brought enormous strength in my life
was being able to pray in the Spirit, praying the perfect will of God, praying the will
of God in a situation that I, frankly, just don't understand.
And honestly, we all have them.
That's life, right?
It can be tough.
Psalms 143 verse 8, Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I put
my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.
So many things that we do in secret are where our strength comes from.
And one of those secrets, really, that was taught to me by my pastor, Billy Joe Daugherty,
was the concept of early morning prayer.
Early morning prayer is where you get the mind of Christ before you ever walk out the
front door.
And we all have busy lives, trust me, I know.
We all have complicated things we have to do, I know.
But I know that when I acknowledge that I desperately need God in my life, and I take
that time to pray before I walk out the door, I pray in the car, I put praise and worship
on in the car, I get my mind wrapped around Him, and I invite Him into the day.
And you know, when I do that, it just seems like everything is much easier.
It isn't as crazy as it could have been.
Why?
Because he's just faithful.
He comes in and he intervenes and he steps in certain situations.
He gives you wisdom, knowledge, and revelation to say or what not to say, and he's for you.
He is a blessing.
Psalms 5 verses 2 and 3, hear my cry for help, my King and my God, for you, to you I pray
in the morning.
Lord, you hear my voice.
In the morning I lay my request before you and I wait expectantly.
You can't expect God to intervene and bring strength into your life.
He will give you the ability to walk through things you can't even imagine.
He's faithful.
Lamentations 3, 22-23, the Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease, for his compassions
they never fail, for they are new every morning.
Great is thy faithfulness.
You know, this is a scripture here that really depicts the stability that God can bring in
your life.
One of the things I love about this winged keel is that the weight is spread out.
It is in the shape of the wing, right, so that it can actually float across the water.
But because that weight is lower and heavier, it brings great stability to that boat.
And honestly, when you have Jesus in your life, that strength and that stability enables
you to go through some things that maybe you wouldn't be able to do so easily.
You know, when you love your family and a family member passes away or there's sickness
or there's a job issue or maybe you're starting a new year, a new school year, a new season,
when you give it all to him and you trust him, then he can give you that stability.
You know, there's no promises that the storms are going to cease.
We're going to have storms in our country.
We're going to have storms in our state.
We're going to have storms at our job.
But he's the stability.
That's who we look to.
We don't sit and, you know, step back in fear because there's a storm.
We all have them.
We look to him who brings us strength and stability in the storm.
And he provides that for us.
The other thing I want to talk about you a little bit is the speed element.
This boat, because of this flare at the bottom of the keel, it has an aerodynamic element
that the other keels don't have.
This keel is broad, but what it does is it actually enables the boat to be lifted.
In an earlier message, I talked about how the wind comes and blows against the sails.
It actually has what's called the Bernoulli effect.
It's just like an airplane.
I mean, if you think about airplane wings, right, that are turned now instead of sideways,
now they're on a mast and they're straight up and down.
What happens is when that wind comes across that sail, there's a lifting element.
And when you have this keel that's below the water, it helps lift the boat as well.
And what's the result of that?
Great speed.
You know, when you do life with the Holy Spirit, when you serve God, there are times where
you definitely need the anointing to be successful.
You're not going to be able to do it by yourself.
You're going to have to have His grace.
You're going to have to have His favor.
You're going to have to have His wisdom.
You're going to have to be able to learn things quickly, especially on my job.
It seems like I'm learning new things every year.
But when His grace and His strength is on you to do it, you can.
I like to think of it as the anointing for life, not just the anointing for ministry.
His tangible presence for ministry is powerful.
It's everything.
It changes everything because He anoints His word.
But if He's calling you to do something in this hour, maybe it seems too hard, too big,
too difficult, over your head, like you can't do it.
Trust me when you invite Him into that process and you're honest and humble.
before him, and you invite him into it, I can guarantee you there's going to be
strength to do it. There's going to be stability, even though it might seem
stressful and over your head, and there will be the stability to do it. That boat
isn't going to rock. You know, a sailboat, if it takes too much wind, it can begin
to heel, which means it's leaning, which means there's there's too much sail, and
the wind is pushing that boat over. At that point, you want to let a
little bit of the sail out. You want to make the sail smaller or shorter, so
there's less area for that wind to catch on that boat. So what happens? The boat
goes back upright. You know, it looks pretty cool in pictures when that boat
heels, but it can actually slow you down. It can affect your crew. It
can affect what's inside the boat. You have less of that keel to work
with that's under the water, where your strength is, where your stability is. You
want to stay upright in the storm. You want to have wisdom in the storm. God
wants to give you that today. Thank you for listening. Please like and subscribe
the channel. Share this message with someone who needs some encouragement
today. It's a joy to speak to you, and have a wonderful day.