A Biblical Call to Deeper Waters

The calendar has turned. The celebrations are over. The confetti has been swept away. Christmas decorations are back in storage. Ordinary mornings have returned—muted light, familiar routines, the quiet resumption of responsibility and routine. And somewhere beneath all that normalcy, many of us find ourselves revisiting what we hoped would change.

Some wrote resolutions. Others simply carried intentions—deeper prayer, better boundaries, clearer focus, less noise, more family, more God. Yet almost immediately, a subtle tension sets in. The year is new, but the soul is still catching up.

It is in moments like this that I’m reminded of a small modern-day parable I recently published called JoJo the Shark—a simple story about what happens when we outgrow the familiar and find ourselves summoned into deeper waters. Not because old was wrong, but because growth has quietly made it too tight.

That realization may be one of the most important spiritual signals we encounter as a new year unfolds.

When Discomfort Is a Signal

The Bible says, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Yet when seasons shift, our instinct is often to question ourselves.

In the parable, when JoJo begins to sense that the pond he has known as his short life no longer fits, his first response isn’t curiosity—it’s doubt. Is something wrong with me? That question echoes throughout the Church today. Pastors feel strain in once-effective models. Institutions sense pressure from a rapidly changing world. You and I grow restless in practices that once sustained us.

Paul offers a reframing. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child… but when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” (1 Corinthians 13:11).

Maturity does not discredit the past; it completes it. And sometimes the mercy of God shows up as discomfort—refusing to let us remain in spaces that no longer fit what He is forming. What feels like agitation may not be rebellion at all. It may be an invitation, perhaps even a revelation.

The Narrow Passage We Would Rather Avoid

In JoJo the Shark, growth does not lead immediately to freedom. It leads to a tunnel—dark, constricting, disorienting. A passage between what was and what will be. At first, JoJo turns back.

So do we.

Change rarely announces itself as wholesome. More often, it feels like instability. Scripture does not sanitize this reality. Israel’s journey to promise ran through the wilderness. Jesus Himself was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Matthew 4:1) before he launched his transformative ministry. 

For us, the tunnel may look like vocational uncertainty, theological re-examination, or the unraveling of once-clear identities. For churches, it may look like institutional pruning, diminished influence, or the loss of familiar metrics.

But our tunnels should not be perceived as diversions. But transitions. The Lord declares, “See, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19).

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