April 14, 2021: To Walk in the Power of The Holy Spirit We Must Set Our Eyes on the Things Above.

This past week has been a reminder of how easy it for us to fall back into our "old selfish nature" and make choices that are not "Christ centered". I think about the Apostle Peter who did this while walking with Jesus.

When Christ asked His disciples: "Whom do ye say that I am?" Peter was able to answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Christ said: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven". And Christ spoke of him as the rock man, a devoted disciple of Jesus, and if he were living nowadays, everyone would say that he was an advanced Christian.

Jesus then began to speak about His suffering, and Peter dared to say: “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” Then Jesus said to Peter: “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” (Matt. 16-23 NKJV)

There was Peter in his self-will, trusting his own wisdom, and forbidding Christ to go and die. Where did that come from? Peter trusted in himself and his own thoughts about divine things, not praying and asking God if this was His will.

You see many of us struggle as Peter did. We believe we are doing the work of the Lord but were doing it in "our own wisdom" and on "our own self-will" and not going in prayer to God first and ask for His Holy Spirit to lead us, not us leading ourselves.

PERSONNAL COMMENT:

So how do we keep from putting our foot in our mouth as Peter did quite often? How do we know what is God's will for our life and know what direction God wants to take us? These are two hard questions to answer, but all I can say is that we need to be "absolutely surrendered" to the Holy Spirit leading us in our lives and that we stay in God's word daily.

It is through being in God's word daily that we begin to learn what God's will is and by praying continually, He will lead us in the direction He wants us to go. Let us set our minds and hearts on the things above and not on the things of this world.