Can you imagine the feeling of walking between two walls of
water on, not muddy river bottom, but dry ground when you saw with your own
eyes that there was water there only a few hours before? They knew that what they saw was a miracle
and the water stood up in those heaps while the entire nation passed
through. They saw the Egyptians dead on
the seashore after having drowned when the sea returned to its normal course
when Moses stretched out his staff over it.
They saw, they believed and they feared the Lord and they believed in
Moses as the servant of the Lord. None
of that would really last very long would it?
We are a people of short memories when it comes to faith.
Jesus tells the disciples, "Believe in God; believe
also in me." Would the disciples,
having seen all the miracles Jesus had performed, believe when belief was
really necessary? We know the answer to
that one don't we? They were willing to
believe when it was easy to believe, when the crowds came, when Jesus raised
Lazarus, healed the blind, made the lame to walk and cleansed lepers, but when
He was on trial they were fearful not of God but of the Jews. Belief can falter when we need it most and
when it does we tend to reach for something else to solve the problem rather
than resting in that belief. Fear should
be reserved only for God. Theological
principles and dogma aren't enough of themselves, we need true faith,
dependable faith. That faith is possible
only for those who have been tested and tried, there is no way to have that
faith if everything goes according to plan. Believing is the key to everything.
Peter knows that he too was born again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit on
Pentecost. He also knows that those
things were required for him to be the man he believed himself to be, the man
he truly wanted to be. Fear of death,
suffering, and man had to be conquered by resurrection. He knew death wasn’t the final word, eternal
life was real and God was more to be feared than anything else. Peter knows also that genuineness of faith is
revealed only in testing. Do you?
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