Just Like Peter? – A Person God Can Use – Purity 1595
Purity 1595 03/01/2025 Purity 1595 Audio Podcast
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Good morning,
Today’s photo of the sun rising over the horizon and pouring over black top expanse and farmlands of Waite Road comes to us from yours truly as I captured this moment during a morning walk back on November 16, 2024.
Well, It’s Saturday and even though I will be working at my secular day job today, I am looking forward to rolling down that old country road later today to be reunited with my wife, TammyLyn, at our countryside home in Easton. If you had told me a few years ago that I would be married to someone in Washington County, I may have doubted that and might even have had to ask for clarification of where Washington County was exactly. In the natural, I would have had no reason to set my sights on the North Country and in terms of looking for love, I wasn’t exactly cruising the Christian dating sights. With my broken sexual history and my desire to maintain my purity, I was looking at all really and was trusting the Lord to give me a Christian wife, some how or some way, or I would remain celibate. I originally thought of my place down by the River as “monk house” because I really didn’t expect to find a faithful Christian woman, who would be willing to marry me, (2 conditions) in the secular wastelands of Upstate NY.
But God had different plans and through my ministry at my local church and my wish to share the gospel message of Jesus with more people, I started this podcast. TammyLyn heard it. Came down to join the discipleship classes I was leading and the rest is Christian love story history. When we decide to surrender ourselves to the Lord’s will for our lives, amazing things can and do happen.
In scripture one example of the way the Lord can change someone’s life is the Apostle Peter. The In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley devotion for today talks about Peter, and I am sharing it on the blog today to encourage us that we too can be a person God can use.
“A Person God Can Use
When we choose to trust the Lord, He will use not only our strengths but also our weaknesses to accomplish His purposes.
After being called by Jesus, Peter immediately left his fishing career to lead a life of discipleship and service. The man was far from perfect, but we can learn much from his transformation.
When Jesus asked the disciples who they believed He was, Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Similarly, our words and actions should proclaim to those around us that we trust in Jesus as the Messiah, and we belong to Him. The basis for our identity—in public and in private—ought to be that we are His followers.
After Christ’s arrest, Peter’s faith faltered. Just as the Lord had predicted, the apostle refused three times to acknowledge their relationship. The disciple wept bitterly about what he’d done (Matthew 26:69-75). But following the resurrection, Jesus forgave Peter and then called him to love the “sheep” (John 21:15-17). After being filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Peter began his ministry by sharing the gospel with thousands of people. (See Acts 2:6-11; Acts 2:41.) Through God’s power, many were saved.
Peter is an example of the type of person our Father can use—someone with strengths and weaknesses, who learns from mistakes and is surrendered to the Lord for His purposes. Have you committed yourself to following God’s plan for your life?” – Charles Stanley
Amen. Since my born-again existence began in 2010, I could always relate to Peter. When he began following Jesus, Peter seemed simultaneously to have great faith and yet didn’t fully understand what he was doing. In some ways Peter was weak and failed in big ways. He was a self-proclaimed sinful man in Luke 5, was bold enough to walk on water in Mathew 14, sliced off someone’s ear to defend Christ in John 18, and denied knowing Jesus at all in Mark 14! Talk about a rocky road on the path of Christian discipleship!
But things changed after John 21, where the resurrected Christ restores Peter and He is filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts 3.
After the resurrection, being forgiven, and filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter (although he still wasn’t perfect Gal 2) was a changed man who led the church and went to his death proclaiming the gospel.
I think for many of us who have been “raised in the church” but who either didn’t fully believe or who went the way of the world, we have an opportunity to follow Peter’s example.
Our faith, knowledge, understanding, or commitment to following the Lord wasn’t full in our youth. We saw faith as religion and very small part of life.
But when receive God’s call and we come to fully understand the gospel of grace, and are filled with the Holy Spirit, our relationship with God and our faith in Jesus become real.
Through forgiveness and our baptism in the Holy Spirit, our believing in Christ as Lord, we become spiritually alive or “born again” and our identity becomes founded and grounded in Christ.
To have an authentic life as a disciple of Jesus Christ, we like Peter, have to “step out of the boat” of our weak faith, publicly proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, and surrender our lives to following where the Lord calls us.
We won’t be perfect but the love, peace, joy, and purpose we receive from God will be. With our surrender and new life in the Spirit, we too, can be a person God can use.
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For those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple encouragements provide, I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s website, https://crossexamined.org/.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By John G. Kruis.
(While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick Google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late author’s work. (The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling By John G. Kruis on Amazon )
This morning’s meditation verse comes from the section on Loving and Serving Others.
Romans 12:9–10 (NIV) Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Today’s verses fall under the sixth point of our counseling reference guide resource’s section on Loving and Serving Others.
6. To love is to be devoted to one another.
Today’s Bible verses stress that we be since and devoted to one another through the love we have in Christ. We love because Christ first loved us and when we seek to follow the Lord, His love will drive us to embrace what He says is good, refrain and denounce what is evil, and yet – this is important – act in love to those around us.
Christianity gets a bad wrap because many supposed followers of Jesus have forgotten this last part – that we are to be devoted to others and to honor them above ourselves and instead sound more self-righteous than loving.
Jesus gives us the paradox – to simultaneously hate evil and be loving – to even love our enemies!
While I would not shy away from quoting the Bible to list what God calls evil, I have learned that the role of convicting people of their sins is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility, not mine, and I have tried to encourage people to seek the Lord, investigate the claims of the Bible regarding Jesus, and to honestly answer the question: who is Jesus Christ.
Verses like today’s tell me that I am not necessarily to hate the people who do evil and encourage me to ask the Lord how I can love them instead.
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As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.com where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from “Day by Day Along the Way” By Jay E. Adams.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage you all to purchase Adams’ books for your own private study and to support the late author’s work. This resource is available online for less than $20 at many sites.
Day 94
The wicked will be caught in his own iniquities: he will be held fast by the ropes of his sin. He will die without discipline … – Proverbs 5:22–23
This is the person who, because of his wicked ways, is “caught in his own iniquities,” is “held fast by the ropes of his sins.” As righteousness frees, sin entraps. And, as we have seen, sin boomerangs; it returns to bite the sinner. Departing from God’s commandments does not bring freedom but captivity. It chains one to his past which, in time, comes back to haunt and destroy him. The point is that he cannot get away with his sin forever. Without the discipline (structure) of the Scriptures to curb His path, he will go astray. The warning in this proverb indicates how vital discipline is. The ways that you follow, apart from God’s Ways, are the paths of death—physical and spiritual, as we saw previously. Discipline is structured living. Those without curbs for their living bounce over the field rather than remaining on the path. Live within the parameters that God has set forth in His Word and don’t take the risk of living without the structures of God’s discipline. Death lies close at hand for those who fail to heed this word.[1]
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[1] Jay E. Adams, Day by Day along the Way (Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020), 102.
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