Month: May 2023

Peter wasn’t just one of the crowd that flocked around Jesus, he was one of the Twelve that had been with Him from the start. Peter had even boasted that whatever happened to Jesus, he’d be right by His side to the end. But little did Peter realize how his own spiritual weakness & fear would cause him to deny the Lord. And as that third denial tumbled out of Peter’s mouth, the rooster began to crow, and Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken…and it says that, “He went outside and wept bitterly…” (Matthew 26:75) But as a great testimony to both human weakness and the greatness of God’s mercy, Peter wasn’t left in that pitiful state. For early on Easter morning we see the women at the empty tomb and an angel tells them to, “Go and tell His disciples and Peter, He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him, just as He told you.” (Mark 16:7) Those two words, “and Peter” not only showed the graciousness of God but the forgiveness & restoration afforded to all of us when we fail. We see this in John 21:15 when Jesus restores & commissions Peter to play an enormous role in the early Church… despite all his shameful past failures.

Jesus made it crystal clear throughout the Gospels…”All men will hate you because of Me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 10:22, Mark 13:13, John 15:21) When you give your life to Jesus you suddenly have a target on your back & are open to the world’s ridicule, mockery, insults, & contempt. Sure, you can remain quiet & secretive, hiding your confession of faith under a barrel so to speak…but you become utterly useless in Kingdom work. Or you can stand strong in your belief, persevering patiently & suffering well…never surrendering or succumbing under the trials you face. Jesus never promised we’d have a smooth, trouble-free life as a Believer…quite the opposite! But He did promise He’d be right beside us to the end.

We need to realize that our sufferings aren’t some unexpected novelty. We need also to realize that they will never be some grand, highly welcomed events. Trouble comes at the most inopportune time & when we least expect it….causing worry, stress, and discouragement. But God promises in this verse that He will be with us…seeing us through to the end. Sure, our sufferings can be exhausting and irritating, but they will never separate us from the love of Christ. And His powerful love will continue to hold fast even when ours wanes… and everyone & everything around us seems to be saying that His love is a lie. One way to look at it is this…our sufferings become stepping stones on the path to glory…each one bringing us a little closer to Jesus.

If I asked you, you’d probably say you know the difference between right & wrong. For even if you were raised by a pack of wolves, your conscious is pricked at the sight of something wrong or a flagrant lie spoken. But what about telling the difference between what’s right & what’s almost right? We tend to spin lies to our own benefit…with the biggest lies being the ones we tell ourselves. We say to ourselves, “It’s not hurting anyone else.” “I’m only going to try it once.” “It’s just a little white lie I’m telling them.” And in doing so, we rationalize, and justify the untruth…searching for a plausible, (but still untrue) reason for our conduct. So in the end, we find ourselves not only deceiving others, but ourselves as well.

In Jeremiah 22:24-30, we see God rejecting Zerubbabel’s Grandfather, Jehoiachin, right before the Babylonian evasion. But God never negated the covenant He had made with king David back in II Samuel 7:11-13, establishing David’s kingdom & throne forever. So we see here in Haggai God using the same language to promise a renewal of the Davidic kingdom through His chosen person, Zerubbabel. The importance of the signet ring here was hugely important, for it was an official insignia used for contracts & other important documents. And later, we find this distinguishing mark used in II Corinthians 1:22, where God’s authority, ownership, and guaranteed protection seals us, not with a wax seal, but with the Holy Spirit in our heart as we read, “He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” So just like Zerubbabel, we’ve have been chosen of God & given an eternal promise never to be broken.

Bottom line is, you’ve done nothing to achieve your Salvation, but you must do something in order to exhibit it. It says we must “work out” our own Salvation in which God has already “worked in” us…but what does that really mean? The gracious gift of Salvation was accomplished ( worked in) us by way of the blood of Jesus & His sacrifice on the Cross in our place. But Salvation is just the starting line of our Christian journey and Spiritual growth (working out) is measured by how we speak, think, and react to others. For in the very arenas of our will & actions are where God’s power is working to bring about Christ-likeness. Our job then is bringing about what’s already been accomplished in us.

Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus battled with self…asking His Heavenly Father if there was any other way Salvation could happen other than what He would soon be going through. Here’s something Charles Spurgeon once wrote that even the most holiest of Christians would have to heartly agree with…”Self is the worst enemy a Christian has.” Sure, we won’t admit it, but our concern for self is paramount…desiring that all things be easy, comfortable, and pleasant for self. And to achieve this we coddle, pamper, & spoil self. We will enable & protect self over others and occasionally even flaunt self like a proud peacock. But what happens when we love self more than God? Paul warned Timothy in II Timothy 3:2 that in the last days people would be lovers of themselves…more concerned about their welfare than the good of others or even God. The opposite of selfish is selfless…so the best way to combat self is to serve others out of love.

A phrase I heard this morning had me thinking. It was, “You become what you behold.” Now for me, the simple answer to this was, “I want to become more like Jesus…so to do this I need to behold Him more.” If I want to change my attitude, I need to observe how Jesus treated people. If I want to grow spiritually, I need to be in the Bible daily, seeing how Jesus ministered to the unlovely, the orphan,& the widow. And if I want to be transformed, I need to regard Jesus as my Lord & Savior. Finally, if I truly want to turn my life around, I need to pray as Jesus prayed for Believers who would be born & come to faith in future ages. In John 17: 20-26, Jesus prays for whose who’ll believe in Him through the sharing of the Good News of the Gospel Message. Which means, if I’m not already sharing the Gospel with others, I need to be. Jesus prayed that the world would come to believe that God sent Him to earth to save mankind…again, I need to be telling people about Jesus. He also prayed that we may be one with Him, as He is one with the Father, and by this brought to complete unity as Believers in order to show the world His love…in other words, I need to show a unity & love in me that’s so visible to the world that it’s automatically drawn to Jesus.

Jesus is our model when it comes to prayer. He displayed the importance in Luke 6:12-16 when He spent the entire night praying to God before choosing the Twelve disciples…showing that prolonged prayer should precede any important decision. In Matthew 6:5-13 we read His discourse on the topic of prayer do’s & don’ts including the demonstration of the most perfect prayer…The Lord’s Prayer. It being a model of brevity, simplicity, and child-like dependence and confidence in our Heavenly Father. Finally, in John 11:41-42 we see Jesus praying out loud for the benefit of the people, carefully linking the impending miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead to His Mission as Messiah. Charles Spurgeon once called prayer the grandest power in the entire universe – with more force than electricity or gravity or any other power known to man. Praying should be as natural as breathing, as open & honest as the conversations we have with ourselves, and as candid as speaking the words out loud for what the Holy Spirit has already prompted us to do.

These qualities that Peter is talking about here are the fruits of the Spirit – goodness, self control, perseverance, godliness, kindness, & love for each other. And these qualities are gained by holy habits such as praying and reading our Bible daily. For as we practice these holy habits, we grow spiritually. But if we’re not careful, we can find ourselves soon worshipping the habit rather than what the habit symbolizes. We’ll see God intentionally upset our well laid schedule with something He has more important for us to do, and then wait to see our response. If we exclaim, “I can’t do that right now – this is my quiet time with the Lord!” We’re worshipping our habit & not Him. If we make excuses & try to justify it, our habit has become more important to us than being obedient.