Which Peter Will You Be?

One of my biggest mistakes as a Christian is forgetting that there is no lukewarm with God.  If I’m not crying out, ‘Hosanna!’, I’m basically shouting, ‘crucify Him!’

And how quickly we can forget.  One moment Peter was cutting off ears in defense of His beloved Savior, and moments later he exclaimed, ‘I do not know the man’.

Peter may have rubbed elbows with Jesus himself, but we live in a much greater time.  We live in full view of the cross and its completed story.  We have experienced the empty tomb in full 20/20 hindsight.  Peter didn’t have that luxury when the frenzied crowd turned to him.  The curtain hadn’t torn yet.  The ground was yet to shake.  The tomb was fully prepared.  The Roman Centurion still believed a crazy man was on His way to the cross.

Somewhere in between the two events Jesus became just a man to Peter.  When Jesus stood free, Peter was willing to fight in front of the great healer, prophet, and soon to be king.  He feared nothing with Jesus in sight.  When He looked at Jesus he could walk on water.  When he looked at the waves, he sank.  With Jesus on the cross, surrounded by an angry mob, all Peter saw was waves.

What will you do with the story of the cross?  What news of the tomb will you carry with you?  Will you share the power of healing, resurrection, and salvation?  Or will you let that fear sink in… the tiniest doubt that transformed Peter from crusader into coward.  Will you exclaim, ‘That’s MY King!’.  Or is it easier to just go unnoticed?

When the waves crash around you, can you focus on the Savior?  There is no lukewarm.  We either draw our sword (perhaps Bibles for today’s climate) and claim souls in the name of Jesus the Messiah, or we make sure everyone around knows we have nothing to do with Him.  Which Peter will you be?  Hot or Cold?  It’s like a True/False test… you simply can’t write in a third option.  I pray we all make the right choice.

It’s a New Day!

Something happened last night.  You were sleeping.  Perhaps you were awake and pondering life’s uncertainties?  Maybe you were in the ER waiting for news?  Could you have been driving down the road of despair?  We all were in different places, experiencing a moment of life completely separate and apart from each other.  But it happened all the same.

The sun rose.  Dawn happened.  The light came up and forced back the darkness.  And now each of us… all of us… every last one of us, faces a new day.  Whether you roll out of bed and curl your toes on fresh, clean carpet… or if you stand drenched in rain as an outcast in the world’s gutter… we all get a new day.

What is a new day?  Hope.  Opportunity.  Wounds will scab over.  Spoken words will sting less.  Perspective will settle in.  Deep breaths will draw attention to purpose.  Heads may dare to look up.  It’s a chance to roll up yesterday and mark it forever where it belongs to live… the past.

When your fingers clinch the dirt you can push yourself up knowing that today isn’t a mock-up of anything you have experienced before.  The fresh smell of this new day confirms one thing to each one of us.  Days aren’t templates spit out by machines forcing us to jump from day to day, learning patterns of life and accepting the mold dealt out to us.

No, we know better.  Days are born.  We get to mold them.  And a new day… a fresh day… a morning untainted by yesterday’s mistakes is the best time to realize that we get another chance.  A fresh start.  A new beginning.  We are not bound to yesterday’s mistakes.  We are not condemned to the folly of our youth.

Today, on this new day, we can explode into a life that we cherish.  We can create moments that we love.  We can push forward out of trials and into tried.  Learned from our experiences and ready to conquer.  Today… we can.  We get to.  We have.

Pity is weak.  Regret is banging on the locked door of the past.  Lets take this new day and write out new legacy’s for ourselves.  We can charter in a new era of positive thinking, success, and good memories.

The biggest mistake you could make is to assume this day isn’t yours.  That it isn’t for you.  That you can’t participate, NAY!  Commandeer the day and make it perfect.  Or… you can roll over, close your eyes, and see if maybe another one comes along tomorrow.  It might.  It might not.  Today is at hand.  Grasp it with yours and own it.

Go Long, or You’ll Miss it

Consider these stats about an average NFL game.  It takes over 3 hours to watch the game.  The game clock, and any true game play will last for only 1 hour (4, 15 minute quarters).  The actual time where real football is being played (this is the time between the snap and the whistle at the end of the play is 11 minutes.  That is 11 minutes total for the entire game.  Each play lasts an average of 4 seconds.  This means, on average, there are 165 plays in the game.  But this counts punts, kick offs, field goals, extra points, offense and defense.

We sit for over 3 hours to see 11 minutes of payoff.  The rest is commercials (roughly 100 of those), instant replays, huddling, snap counts (thank Peyton Manning for that… OMAHA!), injuries, and penalty discussions/instant replays.

So the question is… who would do this?  Who would trade 3 hours of their lives for 11 minutes?  Well, anyone who thought the payoff was worth it, of course.  Consider God’s plan for the salvation of humanity.  Who would give their Son to be tortured and killed to save the souls of a bunch of sinners?  I think it stands to reason the answer is the same… because He thought the payoff was worth it.

Consider how much you matter to God.  You were worth it.

That said, perhaps when we catch the next game, we spend some of that spare time giving back to Him.  Pray.  Reflect.  Share.  History is made in 4 seconds.  It’s why we watch.  The first play gets stuffed.  The next play goes out of bounds.  And then… amazing happens.  So goes our walk with God.  4 seconds.  A kind word.  A gentle gesture.  Giving God credit.  Invitations to church, or maybe just lunch.  You will be told no.  You may be laughed at.  You will be told no again.  But then… a miracle happens.  We only have so many opportunities to share how much we matter to God.  How much He loves us.  How much He has done.

When the game is over and the sponsors are counting their piles of ad revenue, nothing we do matters after that.  11 minutes, 4 seconds at a time.  How can we not give it our best shot?

 

 

 

Average NFL Game stats