Several years ago a police officer received a call to respond to a drowning in a small lake. Eugene was surprised since the lake at the deepest point was only about five feet deep. He assumed that the victim was a child or maybe a teenager. When he arrived he was shocked to find that a person over six feet tall had fallen out of a boat and drowned in five feet of water. He imagined him thrashing and fighting the water until he was completely exhausted and "all hope of being saved was at last abandoned." What makes this such a tragedy is that if only the man had been able to stand up, he would not have drowned.

Often when the storms of life assail us, we look for answers all around us but ignore our own God-given resources and strengths, like the six-foot individual who drowns in five f…