In Numbers 21, we find the nation of Israel wandering the wilderness and waiting to get into the land God promised them. While traveling a road called Hor that ran along the Red Sea, the people began to do what people do best: complain. The Bible says they spoke against God and Moses, saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” (Numbers 21: 5, NIV)

If you think about it, 1 Peter had to be a very revolutionary letter to the church. Peter, a jew and disciple of Jesus, repeatedly asserts how Christ’s work on the cross put Jews and Gentiles on the same playing field. Until the cross, there was a clear line between the two groups because the Jews were God’s chosen people under His covenant with Abraham. But Jesus’ spilt blood on the cross meant that not only Jews but Gentiles as well could be brought into the family of God and enjoy the same inheritance, grace, and spirituality that was reserved for Jews only up to that point.

Dear God,

Thank you for being everything I’ve ever needed. Thank you for being my friend when I am lonely, my heavenly father when I need guidance and direction, the lover of my soul when I need to be held and seen, my shield when I need to be protected, and my defender in times of fear and uncertainty. You have never let me down or given me a reason to not trust you.

Christians get a bad wrap. Why? Because most of the time, we preach a message that comes off “holier than thou” to a world that is comfortable in their sin. I can’t count how many times unsaved people have said something along the lines of, “It’s okay, I’m gonna live it up with my friends at the big party going on in hell when I get there.” And I know it’s meant to be a joke, albeit not a very funny one, but it just goes to show how tightly people will cling to their sin and their comfortable pleasures, despite the fact that those things will never add up to eternal salvation.

Let’s be real: How many of us really read those introductions to the various letters in the Bible? Do we read them with the intent to get something out of it, or do we gloss over them and jump right into the thick of it? I always try, and I mean really try, to break those opening sentences down. I admit, it can be really hard to do, mostly because they can be long, run-on sentences, and truthfully, most of them say the same thing: Grace and peace be with you. It’s always something along those lines.

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.

Imagine: You’re a little kid and you’re tossing a baseball in the house– something you’ve been told many times not to do. The more you toss the ball, the more you get lost in your make-believe game. Suddenly, you’re not in the living room anymore. In your mind, you’re under the lights of a stadium, pitching in the World Series. You wind up for the pitch at the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and everyone’s eyes are on you. You throw and– Crash.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He gives a lesson on a mountainside. There is a great crowd of people around Him, and they are all attentive to what this Messiah has to say. For the Jews, they believed that Jesus was here to free them from Roman occupation and rule, restoring them to political power and peace, and reigning over them victoriously whilst pouring out spiritual and material blessings over His chosen people the Jews. But in Matthew 5, the beginning of what has more popularly become known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets a very different tone than what the Jewish people assumed of a Messiah for generations. Instead, Jesus lays out more of a foundation to discipleship; what daily life looks like for someone who belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven, and how His followers should ethically live.

I am not one of those people that titles their year with a word every January. Don’t get that confused with being a words girl, which I am to the core. I’m just not that type of person who announces to the world every year that I am going to study, meditate on, and learn to embody one word throughout the year. Lots of people do this, and I always find it really interesting to see where people are in their own personal walks every year; choosing words like “vision,” “courage,” “steadfastness,” the list goes on.

I wanted to return to John, chapter 1 this week to finish up the little section that we’d been reading through together. I know, these opening verses seem so simple in nature, but they were really radical at the time they were written, and they really peel back parts of the gospel that might seem overplayed to us at times today.

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.”

Jesus, I pray that we would come to you this morning with open hearts and minds to what you want to sprout in us today. I pray that we would work fully as your vessels on this earth in everything we do. Jesus, I pray for the one reading my words this morning that finds themselves so discouraged and tired, I pray that they would just come to you in all their weakness and let you give them strength, Lord God. I pray that every person reading this morning would be renewed in spirit and feel encouraged to follow you all the days of their lives. Jesus, help us understand what it is to follow you, and how that is the best choice we could ever make. In Jesus Name I Pray, Amen.

Lately, I’ve been reading through Romans and truly loving every minute of it. Each chapter and verse has so much depth and meaning and has encouraged me to draw nearer to God in all I do, and this morning want to share what I’ve been finding with you. I want you to take a moment to let yourself think of the worst thing you’ve done– the biggest amount of shame you’ve ever felt. Remember those feelings you may have felt of regret, unworthiness, or embarrassment. Try to feel the weight it put upon your shoulders; the burden it may of caused you.

Life can be super discouraging; we all know that first-hand. There are things that we hope for, places we dream of going and things we long to do, and sometimes, things just don’t turn out the way we expect. Hope isn’t something that comes naturally to us. It’s like trust, it needs to be built and exercised. Trying to build trust in a rocky relationship that isn’t necessarily good for you is challenging and usually doesn't work. But when you build trust with someone that genuinely cares about you and your feelings, it becomes a firm relationship that you can rely on.

All of us have this urge and desire to get things right. We convince ourselves that perfection is achievable in one form or another, but in all truth, perfection is not a reality. In the story from our key verse, we learn through the Lord’s servant, Peter, that we’re not going to get it perfect every time in life and our relationship with God. We see failure as a devastating pitfall, but it is something we can grow through and from.

It’s such a simple thought, but just ponder it: faith is the heart and soul of our relationship with God. It is the igniter that brought us to the cross and moved us to commit to Him. It is the lens through which we see the world and the litmus test we use to turn conviction into life-change. It is a tool we use to search our hearts and the baton we must be desperate to pass on to as many people as we can possibly manage.