Surely Not, Lord!

 ¹⁴"Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." ¹⁵The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." – Acts 10:14-15

²²Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!"  ²³Jesus turned and said to Peter, "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 16:22-23

You gotta love Peter!  He always speaks his mind even if he ends up with his foot in his mouth.  Can you even imagine saying “no” to God?? No?  Think again.  We do it everyday.  Sometimes we say “no” to God when we have the opportunity to share God’s love with someone and choose not to.  Sometimes we say “no” by ignoring his prompting in our hearts to serve.  Sometimes we say “no” by refusing to accept his will once we have discerned it.  

What I love about Peter is he was always honest with Jesus.  He didn’t act like he knew what answer Jesus was looking for, he just said what was on his heart.  This gave Jesus the opportunity to teach him.  In the verse from Acts, Peter must have been mystified.  He had been a Jew all his life… he knew all the dietary restrictions.  He knew God’s law.  He knew those foods were unclean.  It was a sin to eat them… the scriptures themselves said so.  He wasn’t about to go against everything he had learned and practiced since boyhood.

God took Peter’s “no” as an opportunity to teach him.  I’m so glad Peter had a teachable… and changeable… heart!  I do enjoy an occasional BBQ King sandwich, or a little bacon with my eggs!

When we are confronted with something new that we have always been taught is wrong, before we speak our “no’s” to everyone else, perhaps we should voice that “no” to God.  Maybe God is doing a new thing.   Then we need to allow God the opportunity to teach our hearts.  Maybe he will say, “You are right” this is not a good thing.  But maybe he will begin by saying… “consider this…” But we won’t know unless we allow our hearts to be teachable.  We have to approach God with a willingness to learn new things and that means having no preconception of his answers. 

Be honest with God.  We can’t hide our feelings from him anyway.  Being honest with him is more accurately being honest with ourselves.  Once we are honest with ourselves, we are then ready to hear God speak.

Lord,

Help us to discern your voice through all the distractions of this world.  Give us pliant, teachable hearts even when we are so sure we should be saying, “Surely not, Lord!”  Amen.

Joys:  Cecelia's dress-up birthday party this afternoon; fun evening out with Richard last night;  wonderful weather