The second, among other lessons we learn from Simon’s experience, is: always seek until found the Positive in most Negative experiences. Since God can bring GOOD from every BAD, it remains for us to be the kind of believer he can use to Prove It! Included here only two of multiple Bible examples.
Abraham, not only the first Patriarch, the spiritual head of God’s family under Christ, became the first mortal to believe in the bodily resurrection from the dead. Read the Genesis account for the history, Chapter 22. Then read Hebrews 11:17-19 for its spiritual counterpart. We know God provided a ram in the thicket Genesis 22:11-14. However: Abraham:
Hebrews 11 explains; though Abraham:
John, perhaps the youngest of the apostles, in old age suffered in Patmos for the Lord he loved from youth. A life sentence; in reality, death sentence. But what ineffable Glory John saw as Jesus opened Heaven to show him, “what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later” Revelation 1:19. In summary, we NEED, and God seeks from us, not an occasional faith in crisis, but constant faith:
In finality, to TRUST our way through life each day; not to face by fate what baffles us. For every believer says,
And if that sounds too romantic for our life, let us remember: Jesus Christ came as GOD’s LOVE as the New Testament reveals his love letter to all humanity. Fini
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Simon Peter fell asleep in two crises:
Christians need to understand that:
God’s reality can’t be true when:
As true in:
We must not, as committed believers in Christ:
Consider one of the lessons we can learn from Simon Peter’s experience.
Whatever happens in life, God can be trusted to care and provide. In Simon’s situation:
For us it means:
In his book Two Years Before the Mast, Charles Henry Dana told of his ship being hit by a night-time storm with him on watch. He described:
Then…suddenly:
He later wrote:
Nevertheless, to be a sailor meant, with his watch over, and the storm continuing to rage, he had to go below and sleep. He went below. He slept! If that’s true for a sailor in distress, it’s true for a Christian when life rages with meanness, imposing terrible trauma. We must in those times be at peace with God’s love. When we can say; when seeing trouble coming, “I trust in God, I will not be afraid” Psalm 56:4. We can also say; “When I am afraid, I will trust in you” Psalm 56:3, when adversity ambushes us. End Part III Under the angel’s tutelage, and sure he had been granted a Vision, Peter glanced at the two guards still in slumber on their mats. Then approached the two men at the door:
Exiting the door that opened noiselessly by itself, they entered a hallway:
Until, making several turns they could see ahead four more Romans:
The huge iron gate before them mysteriously and silently opened as they approached. Out of the jail they walked:
Walking one block in that order, when:
It hadn’t been a Vision, a Trance, a Dream at all. It had been God sending an angel to free him from certain death. As God had done in the past, did then and would continue to do throughout history:
Peter’s immediate awareness brought an immediate decision: he had to alert the brethren at Mary’s, the mother of John Mark. End Part II Based on Mark 14:37-38 and Acts 12:5-10.
On two separate occasions Simon Peter slept through crises: once with the Lord’s life in danger, once with his own. While failure characterized the first, success marked the second. For in the 11 years separating the two:
The Greek leaves no doubt that Simon slept so deeply that it took a:
His belief in a Vision/Trance included:
All this in a man who customarily questioned authority, even from Jesus:
Maybe more tractable when sleepy, Simon more quickly obeyed when ordered, more willingly came when summoned. Instead, however, let’s admit his 11 years in the apostolate had changed him. End Part I On two separate occasions Simon Peter went to sleep in crises‑‑once with the Lord's life at stake, once with his own. Two crises: twice asleep.
But while failure characterized the first occasion, success characterized the second. For in the eleven years between the two, an immeasurable amount of experience and maturity empowered Peter to fall asleep in Herod's prison at peace with God as he had once fallen asleep in Gethsemane from exhaustion caused by sorrow. In the intervening years he had learned to trust God, whatever the circumstances, even when it seemed his life would end prematurely. He had learned that, whatever happened, God could be trusted to provide and to care. And he had learned that, while hard times came as surely to Christians as to unbelievers, while unbelievers surrendered to their fears, Christians used them to bear witness to God's abiding presence. The basic optimism of American culture has somewhat deluded us. In the best Horatio Alger tradition, we think everything always works out for the best. Which happens enough to make us optimistic. A plane crash in Colorado left eight people stranded in the Rockies. Since they had four strong Christians aboard, they had faith in being rescued. And, just as one of them read aloud from the book of Job about human suffering, the first rescuer reached the plane. "It was remarkable," a survivor said. Yes...remarkable. But sometimes rescuers don't come; sometimes prayers aren't answered; loved ones die anyway; sorrows afflict us. Sometimes we have no say over what we experience. But we still have everything to say about how we respond to the experiences. In them we can either sink to fear, questions and self‑pity or rise to a witness in God's eternal goodness and concern! We can either see good in the worst circumstance or problems in the most glowing possibilities. God's reality, presence, concern, etc. must be true at all times, under all circumstances, for all people or they're not true at all. God's reality can't be true just when all is well with us and false when we experience pain. It must be as true in sorrow as in joy, as true in death as in life. And if for a moment it isn't true for us, it isn't that its promises have suddenly failed, but that we've failed to understand the nature of life in a fallen world. Andy Williams and an art-afficionado acquaintance Peter Tillow attended an art exhibit, featuring a set of paintings of pin-tail ducks by the Ward Brothers. On Peter’s advice, Andy agreed to go as high as $6,000 for the set.
However, the bidding continued beyond $6,000 to $8,000, then $10,000, Peter involved and an increasingly frantic Williams fruitlessly trying to stop him. The bidding finally stopped at $29,000, with Andy in shock. With a well-chosen profanity he exploded: why did Peter so casually ignore his appeals and why did he crash through the ceiling that both agreed to honor? He had no response to the reply: sometimes you have to take a chance. Moon River, 222-223. Sometimes you do have to take a chance. Nothing is certain in life, but doing nothing will usually achieve an equivalent result. Doing something may very well have the same result, but it also may bring success. Non-Christians face the challenge: should they take a chance and surrender to Jesus? Can they survive the loss of habits to which they have become habituated, even addicted? Or long-established companionship with like-minded friends? And on and on. Christians don’t escape the challenge. Do they dare take a chance in discipleship: accepting a role they fear but find necessary; serving in an area they have previously avoided; risking failure or rejection by witnessing to a friend or acquaintance. And on and on. Sometimes you have to take your life in your hands and TAKE A CHANCE! Christians have this assurance: if God wants it done, and us to do it, he’ll empower skills we haven’t used, and maybe didn’t know we had. And this assurance: if we try and fail, the very effort increases our confidence to keep trying. For in Christian service, the “behinder we get the greater our forward motion becomes.” |
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