One of the reasons why I love my pastor's sermons is that they inevitably get me thinking. Ok, so not always is it something that has directly to do with the topic, but it's always related. Anyways, lately we've been in the Upper Room Discourse, and the apostle Peter's been coming up. It hit me that I've always looked at him sort of as two different people.
First, there's the Foot-in-Mouth Peter who unfailingly comes up with brilliant statements like this one during the Transfiguration:
"Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
Then there's the Peter of Acts 2 who gives a stunning sermon ex tempore at Pentecost and goes on to write a couple books in the New Testament.
But what I find rather fascinating is the amount of time that elapses between these two different personalities: 50 days. There are only 7 weeks between Peter's denial of Christ to his sermon about Him in Acts 2. That's quite a transformation in such a short amount of time.
So of course it set me thinking, how could that happen? And then I arrived at the obvious conclusion - it was the Holy Spirit. I find that encouraging, because even though you don't see that kind of dramatic change happen too often anymore, it shows that if God can do that kind of a work in someone, He can help me in the tiniest problems I have. Which now brings me back to what the sermon today was really about - if we want to progress in sanctification, we need to rely on Christ.
Yeah, that is interesting! Mara said that she heard it said that Peter had "constipation in the brain and diarrhea in the mouth." LOL But isn't that so true of all of us? I'm sure most of us have denied and betrayed Christ many more times than Peter did, just maybe not as blatantly. That's why it's so incredible that He still, despite all our filthy-ness, pulls us out of the dark and closer to him. <3
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