Pulling a "Peter"
Pulling a "Peter"
Posted by Robin Schmidt on February 23rd, 2010
I’ve been doing my imitation of the apostle Peter, and not his good side. When Jesus told Peter to come to him on the water, Peter did. But that's not the Peter I've been imitating lately. I’d like to get to the part where I climb out of the boat toward Jesus, He’s certainly waiting for my response.
My response to what? To The Question. THE Question. The one I keep trying to answer verbally, but it just doesn’t work that way.
You see I’ve been a bit melancholy lately, and I’m not real comfortable with melancholy. Imagine if you will that you fell off a cliff once or twice in your life. How comfortable would you be standing at the edge of a cliff, or even jumping from great heights? Well, that is my uneasy relationship with melancholy.
So I will do just about anything to shake it. I will stand outside in the cold with my face to the sun hoping that the right sunlight waves will kick in my Vitamin D. I will ride my exercise bike for 30 minutes chasing after some exercise endorphins. I am less inclined to try chocolate these days; it seems to hang around longer and longer.
If the melancholy persists I begin looking around at other people, and here’s where my imitation of Peter kicks in: What about him Lord? What about her? Why are they (fill in the blank) and I’m not?
That’s what Peter did on the beach after Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus was giving a peek into what Peter’s future held- ironic isn’t it? We always clamor for knowledge of our future from God. What’s ahead? we demand. Well, Jesus was telling Peter what was ahead and Peter wasn’t all that thrilled so he looked around, spotted John and asked Jesus, “What about him?”
Not his finest moment. Not mine either.
And that’s when The Question comes in. God asks us all The Question. The Question that will not accept a verbal response.
Do you trust me?
“Yes” will not suffice. If I trust God I must get out of the boat. If I trust God I must take His hand and walk with Him.
If I trust God, I must do it.
God is holding out His hand, asking, Do you trust me?
Well?
Comments
Trusting God
Yeah, I'm there - failing to trust in God. This theme has been very convicting for me lately - how bad I am at that. The hardest times are when adversity is rising up or cresting over my head. Instead of turning TO God (Dah!), I cower and moan and groan and not only pull myself into a pit but everyone else who happens to be near me as well. I"m like a moving sink hole! Of course, I later emerge when God invades my dreams or when I turn to the Word or prayer and rebuke those nasty principalities or cry out to God or all of the above.
I love John Eldredge's counsel on this...(pause to flip back into my journal but couldn't come up with it)... something like God acknowledging, "Yeah, I know you sinned but now you've repented and you know you're covered by my Son's blood so brush yourself off and let's get moving. We've got work to do."
You know that God never beats us up about sin. Satan does that and we often seem to help him. Heck, it almost seems that we Jesus followers help Satan out more often than we partner with our Lord! I would hope that's not the case but looking at the state of the world and our supposedly Christian country, we are clearly missing the mark at multiple levels. Lots of us "pulling Peters."