Choice: Judas or Peter?

These two apostles play critical roles in the life story of Jesus Christ. Both Judas and Peter walked with Jesus during His ministry days, they both followed Jesus and experienced His teachings and acts. However they also have their own share of betraying Jesus during the time when He most needed support and it is easy for us to judge their betrayals toward Jesus because we think just like Peter, that we are above rejecting God, that it could not happen to any of us. Well that is untrue and we see it especially in the case of Peter, with Judas we can justify it and say perhaps his greed got the better of him or that satan entered him etc etc, but one thing is certain we need God in order to remain faithful to God period!

So pride lets us believe we are above certain things or mistakes that people in the Bible did because we “know” better, well scripture proves that often sin is committed by people who know better take for instance Eve we think we would not have accepted the fruit but we continue right now to sin against God with the very thing we repented from last night! Hence God warns us to not judge others lest He judges us well, and we all know that there is always something that we can get judged for hence that woman found in adultery was not stoned by even single person.

Now back to Judas and Peter we see especially in John’s gospel how they betrayed Jesus, John 18 specifies how Judas betrayed Jesus and was called the traitor and in the very act of this betrayal we see how Peter heroically cut an the ear of one of the persons brought by Judas to arrest Jesus. Pretty expected since we are of the view that Peter loved Jesus and would do anything for Him right? But why do we think that for some reason Judas did not love Jesus?

Peter also betrayed Jesus but this is unexpected because we see how he cuts someone’s ear off for Jesus’ sake and is seemingly the number one disciple of Jesus Christ however in the very same chapter 18 but down to verse 15 and 25 we see how Peter denies Jesus when He most needed a friend in fact Peter saw the hurt in Jesus’ eye when the rooster crowed the third time because Jesus did predict this beforehand and Peter denied it.

But what choices did these two men who betrayed Jesus do? One made a choice to give up while the other chose to not give up and in fact repent as a result of the love that Jesus Christ showed him scripture says Peter swam toward Jesus I guess he felt he could not get to Jesus fast enough, if you remember when Mary and them found that the tomb was empty they were told to tell the disciples and a special mention of Peter was made in Mark 16v7. Peter experienced the forgiveness and true love of God by means of His Grace when Peter least deserved it and that could raise a question that could maybe Judas have experienced the same forgiveness if he chose to stay alive? this proves that separation from God really results in death because Judas still loved Jesus but he did not believe that Jesus could love him past his mistakes hence the choice he made.

God is Good, Peter experienced His goodness while Judas chose to not believe in that goodness. Our choice should be to always believe and know that God is good despite how bad things seem.

Perfomance.

So it has been a month since I have been this side and honestly so much has changed including my view of God. This is partially because when going through the journey with God you get to learn so much about Him and experience His realness for yourself and it is amazing because this builds up faith. In any case the Holy Spirit has been leading me recently to study the book of Romans and it makes me drool because of how good and delicious the Word is.

Apostle Paul teaches and reminds us that there is only one way to be saved and that is through Jesus Christ. He shows us that even from the beginning with Abraham being called righteous it was because of his faith in God, however our nature as humans finds it difficult to accept Grace because we believe that we always have to work in order to earn something. Fortunately for us Grace is not earned it is received, being called a child of God is based on His Grace because He chose us to be His, He chose to love us unconditionally and it was not based on anything we did, do, will do or never did.

He said His Grace is sufficient and I realized that in my flawed nature He responds with Grace, My performance for God will not make Him love me any more or any less He loves me because He is Love it is in Him it is Who He is we just have to receive it without thinking that there is a hidden motive behind His Grace.

God, I stand in awe of how amazing You are, You bring me fulfillment, acceptance, justification, identity and freedom. Most of all You chose to sacrifice Jesus Christ Your only Son, Father so that I a flawed human being who could never measure up, can dwell with You eternally and experience Your Glory. I love you and please help me to continue falling in love with You my Maker.

God am I doing enough?

Let me tell you this draft is going to be a short one but powerful nevertheless. Recently I have been asking myself and God if I am doing enough. A part of me knows I am not for instance instead of doing something I know is important I would just choose to lay around and chill but often than not I know God knows my character. I have felt like I have not been doing enough you know that part of there is a me part and a God part yes well I have felt like man God wants to do His part but I am delaying Him because I have not been doing my part like I should.

Well last night the Holy Spirit answered me with Exodus 14 v13-14 and man did I need that. I have not been able to write my proposal in fact my Word has been down now It is clear that this delay that I am experiencing God allowed it. I am so used to doing things and putting in self effort that when God asks me to be still I feel like I am not doing enough. Right at Exodus 13 God decided to take the Israelites out of Egypt using a long route and even though I believe that this year is my year of Supernatural Acceleration as my Pastor declared, I believe God is taking me through the long route because of the extent of the promise He made me.

So God thank you for helping me to be still and know that You will fight for me, You will let me know when you need me to pitch up but I will be still and continue to seek You and obey You by the Power of the Holy Spirit. Help me to remain patient and to endure in this season of waiting because I know Great things are ahead of me.

He Works All things together for our good!

This is by far one of the most significant promises from God that He works all things together for our good, it is significant because we are human beings and at the end of the day we tend to mess up because it is in our human nature; which pretty much means we will mess up over and over again hence we need and have a Saviour. We mess up so much that at times we are unable to clean up our own mess and that is where God comes in, in All His Sovereignty He is the only One able to clean us up and the mess we find ourselves in, regardless of whether we are the cause of the mess or not.

Many instances in the Bible shows great men and women of God mess up or find themselves in sticky situations and have God work all things together for their good. I am currently busy studying the life of the father of faith also known as Abraham. Early in scripture we see Abraham get chosen by God, receive God’s promise over His life, believe God, mess up and have God clean the mess he caused. Abraham is called the father of faith yet we recognize that he also resorted to self effort when he felt like God was not speeding up His promises. But the life of Ishmael and Isaac and the contrast between their mothers one of whom represents slavery and another freedom resembles how God worked all things together for everyone’s good. Check Genesis chapter 12- 16.

I am quite appalled on how we as human beings are so intolerant of mess ups, mistakes and imperfection. We do not give much room to mess ups and things not working out perfectly but God allows for mistakes in fact God had a plan before the beginning of time to clean up our mess ups through the blood of Jesus Christ. God embraces our humanness and imperfection and still looks at us and remains pleased with His work creating us.

These chapters remind me of my own life, how I receive God’s promise, believe, resort to self effort and have God back me up and I believe this is why it is called a walk and journey with God because we do not always get it right, yet God always gets it right. God is not surprised by our mess ups, He is not panicking over my mess wondering “How could Palesa mess up so badly?” instead He already has a plan in motion which will work all things together for my good.

Honestly, God is so incredible and I thank Him that He is God and that He alone IS and will always be God there is no other. This is the God that catches us even before we fall.

God does need our help (or does He?)

It has been quite a while but Happy New Year to all, I often come here to reflect and write about how awesome God is and how He is constantly faithful even when I am not faithful which really demonstrates His Love for us who fail Him. Nevertheless, today I was inspired to write about whether God needs our help or not, now before we get into the main scripture for the current draft let us first remind ourselves of God’s initial and current order. Genesis 1 vs 26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground”.

This scripture is important because it indicates that God created mankind so that they will have dominion over the earth, a teaching by Dr Myles Munroe opened my eyes so much when he taught about the kingdoms. This means that God rules the Kingdom of Heaven, yet when it comes to earth He made humans to be rulers, before and after the fall we still remain the rulers over this earth. In other words, God as Sovereign as He is cannot take back His Word and suddenly rule over the earth as well, that would make Him a liar and we all know God is incapable of lying otherwise He is not God. We know who the liar is but anyway, God or any other spirit cannot intervene on earth without a body, so the body is important because without a body then you are just a spirit and as Dr Myles put it then it means you are illegal. Spirits are illegal unless they are in a body, hence Jesus had to come and die for our sins as a human, hence demons have to enter a body in order to operate.

See why we need to pray? God can only intervene here on earth with our permission as the rulers. When we pray we invite God to have His way over the earth or in our situations. Here is the scripture that got to me, Isaiah 44 vs 24 “I am the Lord, your Saviour I am the one who created you. I am the Lord, the Creator of all things. I alone stretched out the heavens: when I made the earth, no one helped me “. It blew my mind because recently, or maybe it had been occurring for a while but I can have this sense of having to do something in my own strength and without realising it, the flesh hates having to depend on the spirit which is in tune with the Holy Spirit for help. It is easier to do things using self effort, but this is not how it should be, we need to rely on the Holy Spirit to take a bath. So God was using this scripture to convict me and remind me that I do not need to “help” Him. He is completely God and will continue to be God regardless of what I face. I truly repent for this because it has left me burnt out, tired and demotivated because what you start with the flesh you have to sustain using the flesh. God understands our nature though but it is an important lesson.