OnFire Encouragement
Letter
Hi Folks:
First up - I have a new larger print
version of the letter with heavier, larger text. Email me if you want to
switch.
I had a fun canoe trip this past weekend.
Dan and I paddled about 15km down the local
Ian gets to go to a clergy teen
retreat this weekend. This is going to be good for him to be around other
clergy kids. Mark and I will batch it on Friday night since Jan will be away
overnight to take him to the camp.
Jan has been busy painting the
living room (taupe) and kitchen (burnt orange). Nice colours. She worked hard
and it looks great.
Happy birthday to
my mother on the 27th.
Blessings for your
week.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- -
There is nothing like carrying
something heavy to remind us about how important good footing is. During one of
my canoe trips this summer, I was carrying the canoe, three paddles, and a
barrel pack - about 115 pounds - when I lost my footing. I stopped to try to
pick up my bow line, but lost my balance and went down the hill backwards.
Something caught my foot and I landed on the ground with everything on top of
me. I wish someone had caught it on video - it would have been riot! Live and
learn.
Then there was the time I almost
upset the contents of the diaper pail as I carried down the stairs. As I slid
down three or four steps, I had visions of the pails contents splattering the
walls and running down the carpet-covered steps. There was no way I was going
to let that happen so I held on. Believe it or not, I didn’t spill a drop. I
cannot tell you how relieved I was!!
It is hard enough to carry a heavy
load on level ground. It is harder still when there are obstacles to catch our
feet. “Stumbling blocks,” the Bible calls them.
As we talked about last week, Peter
had a different Messiah in his mind than the one Jesus proclaimed himself to
be. Peter knew he was the Christ (Matt. 16:16), but he was unwilling to accept
a dead Messiah. This was not the way it was supposed to work out. The commonly
accepted idea about the Messiah was of someone who would establish a new
kingdom like the one David and Solomon had. So, when Jesus declared that he
would go to
Jesus had harsh words for Peter
after he rebuked Jesus. “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me;
you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” (Matthew
16:23*)
Translation - “I have a heavy load
to bear as it is, and you are tripping me with your ideas of how I’m supposed
to do my work.”
Peter shows us that we have to be
careful not to trust in our theology more than we trust in God. As long as Peter
set his mind against anything which was different from what he thought, he
stood in the way of what God wanted to do. He was a stumbling block.
Over the years I have thought I had
God all figured out. I knew how He was supposed to do
things and I knew what He didn’t do. So many times I found out that I was
wrong. And what’s more, I was actually standing in the way of how He might have
worked in my life at the time.
As a student, I sometimes flipped
through my Bible during sermons because the pastor couldn’t possibly have
anything to say to me - he didn’t believe the same things about some particular
doctrine.
I’ve come back from retreats
disappointed about how God did not work the same way he did in the past. I
thought, “God always does this...” but something else happened and instead of
seeing the blessing, I was disappointed because I didn’t feel the same way as
in the past.
I’ve been surprised by things that
God was not “supposed” to do anymore. There is nothing like an experience with
the Holy Spirit to show that God still does do things like we see in the book
of Acts.
I would hate to think that I was
tripping Jesus because I was too stubborn to consider that I might be wrong.
Sometimes I’ve done this in the past and I’ve missed out, but that doesn’t mean
it has to be that way in the future.
I hope this helps. Be onfire.
ON FIRE is a
weekly letter of encouragement by