Peter is like the one person in a horror movie that goes towards the killer and we’re all sitting there thinking “what are you doing, you had to have known not to go there”. You think it would be fairly obvious not to go in the room with a killer, but time and time again there’s always that one person that proves us wrong. In a way, Peter was that person, the one we all look at and think, “what on earth are you doing?” Being 1 of the 12, Peter got to spend a lot of time with Jesus and witness his teachings first hand, and I often wonder how cool that must’ve been. I often wonder if the disciples truly understood how cool it was that they were literally walking along with Jesus and how important he truly was. We read in scripture that the disciples certainly didn’t have it easy, in fact they were the most tested, but they stayed faithful to Jesus. It’s crazy to picture having Jesus test you while you’re in his presence, it can be challenging enough having him test us from heaven, but face to face must have been a whole new experience. Through it all, the disciples remained faithful, well except for one. There’s always one.
Luke 22-54-62 54 Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house, and Peter was following at a distance. 55 And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them.56 Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” 57 But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” 58 And a little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” 59 And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” 60 But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. 61 And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.”62 And he went out and wept bitterly. Peter was a fishermen before he became a disciple, until Jesus would make him fisher of men. He was an average guy who dropped everything to follow this other guy that claimed was Jesus. We know that Jesus experienced what many of us go through today, and that’s what makes him your average joe, but you have to stop and think that for 12 men to drop everything and follow him, he had to look or speak or do something out of the ordinary. Peter saw this is in Jesus and was a trustworthy and faithful follower of Jesus Christ along with the other disciples. Peter loved Jesus wholeheartedly. So why did he go into the house that we all scream in the movie theatre not to go in? Why did peter deny Jesus? It’s much easier to shake our fists at peter for doing this when we read it from passage that’s thousands of years old. Silly peter, I would never deny Jesus like this. That’s partially true, this was the way peter denied Christ, thousands of years ago, so it looks a little differently today than it did then. We may not hear a chicken crow and have people straight up ask us if we love Jesus and then deny that 3 times( come on peter, 3 times, seriously?), but we do this in other ways without realizing it. By not sharing our faith in opportunities of righteousness or cussing someone out at the grocery store or by watching a video or listening to music that we know is inappropriate. We can deny Jesus in many different ways and we become the stupid actor that goes in the haunted house. We stand back and read about Peter and shake our heads at him just to turn around and do it ourselves. We also deny Jesus in other ways all the time. We doubt him by saying Jesus I trust you, but I'm still going to worry about x, y and z. We doubt his greatness and love for us by failing to love ourselves and others. Peter wasn't perfect and neither are we, but we can learn from him. Jesus knows us so much better than we know us. He knows how many hairs are on our head (Luke 12:7) and he knows that no matter how hard we try, we're going to sin again. That's the neat thing about following him, he knows this all ready and he died for us because of it. We all have a part of Peter within in and God loves us just the same. Amen for that. Happy Tuesday and happy early Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for all of you and your love for christ. This blog brings me so much joy and I hope it brings you a little too! God bless, Sydney
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It is all about me.
I put myself in this mindset way too often and it ruins my day, my week, or even my life. I think that people are worried about me and what I'm doing, when in reality there's so much going on that people don't even have time to worry about themselves. I get so caught up in myself that I forget about others; how they're feeling and I begin to judge them. How ignorant of me, right? I'm more concerned with my own thoughts and feelings that I get angry when other people try and express their own because "it's not fair to me". I actually get angry, can you believe that? It's a miracle that anyone can stand to be around me as often as they do, but then I wonder, do they do this too? Is this a feeling that everyone experiences? Do we all get so self-absorbed that we fail to realize how other people are feeling and how our actions affect them? Do we fail to realize what God is calling us to be? 14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.”[c] Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky 16 as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. 17 But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. 18 So you too should be glad and rejoice with me. If you take a look in the book of Philippians, you'll find some truly inspiring words and some words that may make you angry. In chapter 2, Paul touches on complaining and how we shouldn't do that. How dare he tell us not to complain, I have the right to do so. I have so much going on and I'm tired and I have all these exams and I'm broke and God's just not providing for me and blah, blah, blah. Seriously? What makes us think we have the right and upmost privilege to complain? For starters, we're so absorbed in ourselves that we can't see otherwise. We think that this is what we're supposed to do; we feel bad for ourselves. This leads us to be angry with ourselves because we feel pity, it leads us to be angry with God because he's not fixing it, and it leads us to be angry with others because they don't care enough. We have our blinders up and we only have 20/20 vision for ourselves and we place everything else so far out of reach that it's out of focus. It's kind of like selective hearing, but I like to call it selective caring. When it comes to getting angry with others, we often times become upset when they begin to complain to us about things we can relate to. It is so much easier to point out the flaws in others than it is in our selves because more so than not, we can relate to those flaws. We need to become a society absorbed in Christ. We need to become people absorbed in Christ. Absorbed is to be intensely engaged or engrossed in something or someone. To be truthful, I couldn't tell you the last time I was engaged fully with Jesus, let alone intensely engaged with Him. When we live out lives that are fully absorbed in Jesus Christ, we become someone whom begins to show compassion towards things other than ourselves. Absorbed can also mean to engross the attention of someone. If we become intensely engaged in Jesus, so much so, we are absorbed in his love and word like a sponge filled with water, we will begin to captivate the attention of others. When a sponge becomes so filled or absorbed with water, it becomes overfilled and whatever touches the sponge gets wet. To engross the attention of others to be so absorbed in Jesus that we leave his mark on others just like the sponge leaves its contents. When we become absorbed, we can fill others. Living lives fully focused on Christ isn't easy, in fact, looking at the disciples we see that it can be extremely challenging, but they chose this life. The disciples dropped everything and followed Jesus. They didn't tweet out and ask friends what to do, they didn't consult their jobs, they didn't ask anyones permission, they simply dropped it all and followed Him. They chose to be fully absorbed in Jesus without truly even knowing him. When we take a step back, our lives don't matter. We are each made with a part of heaven and our job on this earth is to share that with others. God didn't create us to only focus on ourselves, he created us from his own image and stitched us with a piece of heaven. We have a choice; to either drop what we think of ourselves or to focus on the God whom we resemble and share that with others. The chose is yours. Happy Monday and God bless, Sydney |
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