\u201cAnd you Peter. Who do you say that I am?\u201d<\/p>\n
Master, you are the Christ, the promised son of David, the King; you are the Messiah that we have awaited since the Prophets have foretold your coming!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWow Peter! Well done! God has revealed this to you! And you are right!\u201d<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean Jesus!!!\u201d Cried Peter. \u201cThey will kill you!?! Oh no! What will we do!?! Lord, while I have breath they will not take you! We will fight for you; we will hide you until this all blows over! They won\u2019t kill you!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh Peter,\u201d Jesus said. \u201cGet behind me Satan! You just don\u2019t get it. Don\u2019t you know this is my cup to drink? Do you not know this is the will of my Father. Do you not know this is \u2018good\u2019?<\/p>\n
Dear Peter,<\/p>\n
I feel like I know you so well. Big heart that trumps the brain more often than not. How you loved Jesus! What an amazing experience to have God reveal to you the Messiah. How hurt and silly you must have felt moments later when your beloved says \u2018Get behind me Satan\u2019. You have to know He was not speaking to you as such. He was not saying you were Satan. Must have been confusing and pretty hurtful at the time. After all, you meant well. You loved Jesus so much; you just received revelation of who He really was, who sent Him, and you stood to lose Him. You know, I probably would have done the same thing. Oh in hindsight it\u2019s so easy to see but I understand in the moment it\u2019s not so clear. One of those times where good isn\u2019t God. One of those times where good is the enemy of God. Sounds like a strange statement re-reading it. Isn\u2019t God good? Absolutely! Then what happened? Peter, I am only beginning to get this and I expect you and Jesus probably had a heart to heart about it later. But I am learning that my ways aren\u2019t His ways. Funny though\u2019 because my ways seem so right. So practical, logical, do-able.<\/p>\n
I am learning that my ways; my judgements are just that \u2013 mine. They are rooted in my experience, my opinion, my outward analysis of the situation and often what will make me feel good in the moment. The root of this my friend, is my own pride. It\u2019s so true! I am learning that when I judge on my own, I am exerting my lordship over the situation. I understand that as eating from the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil. I am morally independent of God \u2013 the root of all sin is this pride. When Adam & Eve ate of this fruit they saw their nakedness and deemed it as bad, shameful when if it truly were, God wouldn\u2019t have called it good, and He would have provided clothing. I see the law so differently now and can agree that it was good as it was a righteous basis for His people who were cursed by being morally independent of Him to walk uprightly. A foundation for judging good and evil.<\/p>\n
Peter, I so often flew over Jesus when He said, that He does not judge on His own but based upon what the Father says. He explained it so clearly. He said we judge by outward appearance but God knew the heart of every situation and really the only one who could make a righteous judgement. Funny thing Peter, I said, \u201camen\u201d each time I read this. The filthy rotten Pharisees anyways! I now realize the leaven of the Pharisees is very easily a part of my life too! All this to say, that I am incapable of making a righteous judgements apart from the Father. I still do it. I still judge situations, people and I am wrong. Don\u2019t get me wrong Peter, I am pious about it! My judgements, good or evil, all have \u2018WWJD\u2019 stickers on them. Just like you Peter, often my best, my opinion, my good can be just as opposed to God as the evil that I do. Just wanted to write you this note. I so appreciate you and your life. Thanks for living it for Jesus. Thanks for not quitting.<\/p>\n
Love,<\/span><\/p>\n Michael<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAnd you Peter. Who do you say that I am?\u201d Master, you are the Christ, the promised son of David, the King; you are the Messiah that we have awaited since the Prophets have foretold your coming!\u201d \u201cWow Peter! Well done! God has revealed this to you! And you are right!\u201d *** \u201cWhat do you…","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[219,288,453,521,533],"class_list":["post-3585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-significant-sustenance","tag-good-and-god","tag-inspirational-stories","tag-right-from-wrong","tag-tree-of-the-knowledge-of-good-and-evil","tag-uplifting-christian-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16460,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585\/revisions\/16460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}