Crash!

We distributed the New Testament on CD Sunday morning to everyone who would take a copy. The idea behind it is to spend the next 40 days going through the NT. If a person devotes just 28 minutes a day, the goal can be reached. So I started the Mp3 in iTunes yesterday as I studied for tonight's teaching.

Listening to the way Matthew paints his picture of Jesus and His ministry was really interesting. Not pouring over the text in a Bible like I usually do, I was forced to slow down and listen. It played all afternoon.

I love hearing about Jesus - what He did, and especially who He is. And listening as the disciples tried to figure Him out and understand His Kingdom mission was cool too.

So I'm rolling along, enjoying the scenery, and I get to this:

21 From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that he had to go to Jerusalem, and he told them what would happen to him there. He would suffer at the hands of the leaders and the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, and he would be raised on the third day.

22 But Peter took him aside and corrected him. "Heaven forbid, Lord," he said. "This will never happen to you!"

23 Jesus turned to Peter and said, "Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, and not from God's." Matt 16:21-23 (NLT)

Crash!

Ah, Peter. As we say in the South, "God bless him." He wanted to do right, but it just wasn't in his nature to do right for too long. He just couldn't grasp the concept of living life with God at the core.

I was reading about computer hard drives yesterday, comparing features, speed, etc., then I came across a pretty important measurement that I had forgotten about.

Mean Time Between Failures

Yep, every hard drive is going to fail. Not a question of if, but when. So the manufacturers rate the average time each hard drive goes between a catastrophic failure and let you know up front. Obviously you want to choose one that's expected to go a long time before it crashes.

Peter's mean time between failures was pretty short back then. But turn over to the book of Acts and you'll see a different person emerge - a man of boldness and purpose, who is firmly in the center of God's will. Sure he still has "glitches", but he's God's man, looking at life through the eyes of the heart of God.

The difference? The Holy Spirit.

Friends, a life totally surrendered to God - living in the wisdom and the power of the Holy Spirit - will reduce your "mean time between failures" just as it did for Peter. Won't you decide right now to stop living for yourself and turn everything in and about your life to Jesus?

I can't wait to see what great things God is going to do. (And hear about what He did!)

Grace!

David