Imagine you have a huge debt. I’m talking six figures. Whatever it is– medical, educational, a mortgage– it is crushing and the interest rate on it means that you will be paying it off for the rest of your life. The payments on that debt are so high that you will have to work and work and work around the clock to try and make it. Forget about vacations, luxury items, and eating meals out. You’re just lucky to have food on your table. Everything you think about, do, and work towards seems to have that debt looming over it, shadowing everything. No hope, no relief, no peace.

Peter denied Jesus just before His death. If Jesus were anyone else and not the Son of God, I’m sure it would have been the end of a relationship, a revocation of his calling, and two hurt people. That’s what Peter deserved: to lose Jesus’ love, lose the purpose Jesus instilled in him, and to live with his failure. It’s what you and I deserve for sure. Because we’ve all done what Peter did. Maybe not under the same circumstances, but we’ve all fallen short. We’ve all messed up. We’ve all had moments of weak faith that caused us to be less confident in our belief.

Well, friends, we’ve been in this place for five weeks now, and I think I’ve just about covered all the amazing little reminders this funny passage of scripture has revealed to me as of late. But I don’t think I could move on and call this series closed without covering the last two verses in this section of Mark 11,which is one last little point Jesus teaches us about prayer.

No matter how long you’ve been a Christian– whether you’re on day one or decades from the starting line– everyone that has ever followed Jesus is unified by at least this fact: none of us have ever graduated from the point of salvation. Because no matter how long your spiritual resume is, it is unavoidable that you will struggle with your own tendency towards sin until the day you die. Maybe that’s blunt or depressing, but it’s true. There will never be a point in this life where you will be able to think, “Well, that’s it. I’ve done it. I’ve obtained a wholly righteous and upright lifestyle. I will no longer struggle with sin.”