Friday,
January 20, 2023
Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too. I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. While I was there I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing. And they supported me and did not even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a Gentile. Even that question came up only because of some so-called believers there—false ones, really—who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations. But we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you.
It is said that opposites
attract. My bride and I would tend to
validate that thought. Invariably we
have different tastes, opinions, and ways of completing tasks. That was certainly true of Peter and
Paul. Peter was driven by his heart, and
working with his hands, rough-cut, decisive, and bold. Paul was (excuse the irreverance) an egghead,
the Harvard scholar-type, more prone to be the president of the chess club,
more a quarterback than lineman. Both
apostles were more suited to what God had called and gifted them to be and
do. One trait they held in common was
their hardliner devotion to Christ’s Kingdom. Neither of them would back-off an inch on the
issue of Jesus being Lord. Of that,
there could be zero-capitulation…end of story.
Among the few similarities of
these Christ-servants was their willingness to accept God’s way of doing new
things. Peter, the Jewish believer
understood God’s way would include the Gentiles, but it took an extraordinary
vision to convince the fisherman. Paul
was also Jewish, and had to be knocked to his knees and blinded – then healed,
to be convinced of God’s seriousness about God’s mercy being extended to every
human being on earth.[1] Both Peter and Paul tended towards
inflexibility, but once that wall crumbled, they were not likely to rebuild
it. The egghead and the warrior had both
been released from their sins and prejudicial ways, and they would not rest
until that message was the theme of their lives.
John Wesley was a hybrid Peter
and Paul. He was more than educated, and
a superb thinking-leader, committed to the faith, and leading the interested to
become faithful. But Wesley could also
see the middle-way, not compromise, but meeting of minds. He knew there could not be any progress, on
any front, when a collision-course is chosen.
But, when hearts are willing to be open there can be cooperation. Peter, Paul, and John…they all knew Jesus was
Lord…they all became excellent models of what it means to serve Christ, and
they all had their flaws. And God used
them in magnificent ways they never dreamed to bring about God’s purposes in
their days, and God’s ways.
For You Today
You and I are not Peter, Paul, nor John. But this is our time, our days, and the Lord
God is the same God of the Jews, Gentiles, and whomever else, to the uttermost
ends of the universe. Despite all our
differences, God is looking for the high, low, and middle-ways kinds of people,
with whom He will bless and proclaim his Good News. Some ways will be the old ways; some
new. To be God’s servant means learning to
cooperate with what He’s doing, not colliding with each other.
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
The God of ALL Favorites
and Hand-Wringing Methodists
Images: Title Pixabay.com Images without citation are either personal
property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted
from The New Living Translation©
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