Before the Cock Crows...

The Choices We Make.....

I have been studying the denial of Christ.  I won't try to kid you into believing that I decided to study this just because of my love of the story, because I wanted to be a better Christian, or because it was next on my bible study list.  Actually I started to study this passage in practice.  Before I even related it to the scriptures, over the last month the Holy Spirit has quickened my heart to think upon the number of places in my life where I have denied Christ.  Maybe it was the moment in College when I laughed with my friends after someone said something snide and used the Lord's name in vain, or maybe it was the time when I choose not to reach out to the down-trodden man who just needed a quarter to buy his next meal in the McDonald's line,  (You know the one, he looks tired, beat down, hungry, dirty, and somewhere underneath all of that grime you know exists a person).  The bible says, "when you cared for the least of these, you cared for me!"  so do we realized that in failing to care we are also denying Christ...... We are turning aside from the one who died so that we might live.

I wonder in all of our preconceived ideas if we realize the magnitude of the judgement we place on others.   It is easy to decide what someone should have done in a given situation, but I wonder if the roles were reversed if we might have made the same mistake.  I am not talking about willful sin, but the slither of the lie that traps us into believing that we are caught in a snare, of which we cannot be free and therefore must do whatever it takes to get out even if it means folding when the Devil presents himself.  

This last month as I have worked on some key relationships in my life I realized there were several places where I missed the opportunity to stop and say, Yes.... The man you speak of is my Lord and I will follow him all of the days of my life!"  It isn't enough to say we are Christians, it is the call to be worthy of being called after his own name that matters, the application of the practice of seeking him out, of carrying out his good works, of being fishers of men, of being in submission to the point that it is painful as self-will dies and Christ within us lives, .  This is what it means to serve a Most High God!  I have spent a number of days asking God to show me how to be better equipped, asking him to show me how to fish for the big Bass, or Crop-pie, or Salmon so to speak.  But maybe more than that;  I have asked him for the fortitude to stick with it and to deny my Savior no more.  With great responsibility comes great humility. 
"God come make us humble..
Give us clean hands oh God,
Give us pure hearts...
Help us not lift our voice to another
God let us be a generation that seeks,
Seeks your face, oh God of Jacob...

Chris Tomlin

Mark 14

"When Christ was admired and flocked after, Peter readily owned him; but will own no relation to him now he
is deserted and despised. Yet observe, Peter's repentance was very speedy. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall; and let him that has fallen think of these things, and of his own offences, and return to the Lord with weeping and supplication, seeking forgiveness, and to be raised up by the Holy Spirit."

Mark 14 - Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Bible

Peter was called to make a choice, and he made the wrong one Three different times.  Yet if you look through scripture he did not let that become his demise.  He accomplished what he had set-forth to do.  He did not let satan's schemes rule his fate.  He asked Christ for forgiveness and went on to share the Good Message!

Likewise we too should return to the Lord with weeping and supplication, seeking forgiveness and asking for God to send the Holy Spirit to raise us up.