It’s wonderful to be positive-minded and appreciate that God is good all the time because he is! It’s common to seek the Lord for his protection and blessings as this usually takes up a majority of our prayer time, and it’s perfectly fine to do so. However, it’s also important to remember we are not just a spectator within the Christian life waiting for manna from heaven.
Being a participator is a very real aspect of our personal relationship with Jesus Christ that involves our responsibility to trust and obey him. Our vow to follow God is the seldom-mentioned covenant promise we make when we call on him to save us. If we are not passionate about becoming one with him, it’s likely we do not understand what it means.
Peter is one of the most significant characters in the New Testament. We can learn valuable wisdom from him and the other followers of Jesus. Yes, they were flawed and had their times of weakness (like us), but we notice that Peter did not give up.
I’ve always appreciated his boldness. He reminds me of the guy who is an alpha male who wants to be the leader of the pack. We’ve all known people like that, and it reminds us that when we are weak God is strong. This was also the case with Peter, as he was the first one to declare that nothing or no one in this world could stop him from standing with Jesus and his kingdom. And yet, we see that when Christ was arrested and the heat was turned up and Peter was facing a situation of life and death, he denied Christ three times.
Now, I’m not on the bandwagon to criticize him for being afraid. In fact, I probably would have done the same thing at that stage in my Christian life. It’s easy to brag about how spiritual we are until a sword is placed at our neck. As Jesus was eventually crucified by the Romans, who thought they were extinguishing a rebellion, Peter, as one of his disciples, was very familiar with this brutal torture. The thought of being nailed to a cross paralyzed him with fear.