Peter Encounter--again

4/17/09 Another Peter encounter

If you ever have a chance to go on a mission trip for which you feel totally inadequate and unqualified and certainly don’t know the language, GO! I did just that along with 7 “qualified women in March 2008.Three spoke Spanish—it was the native tongue of one, all were very spiritually mature, one had a seminary degree, one had a medical background with midwifery credentials, one was a prayer warrior extraordinaire, one had more compassion in her little finger than I did in my whole body, one kept us all organized and then there was me---though I did tend to “pack” a lot of items which later became useful.

One of my assignments was to teach a Peter passage to the women at the Tlapaneco Easter conference in El Llano, Mexico. I prepared volumes---and just a few days before leaving found out that we would not be teaching just the missionary girls but all the women—most of whom were not literate. Very little translation has been done in their language that deals mainly with ideas. Separate and simplify became the key idea. My passage in Mark dealt with the Lord asking Peter who people thought He was and concluded with Him asking Peter, who spoke for the disciples, who he thought He was? Peter answered, “Thou art the Christ.” (Mark 8:29) That was the question I had for the ladies. Who was Jesus? What did it mean for Him to be Lord in their lives?

As the passage continued, the Lord explained all the suffering and rebukes, which he would endure, followed by His death and resurrection. Peter didn’t want to hear it, so he rebuked the Lord. But the Lord rebuked Peter saying, " Get behind Me, Satan for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” (Mark 8: 33) Have you ever wanted to tell the Lord the way you think things should be? We all have our own agendas, don’t we? We are more interested in my way rather than Thy way.

In his satire, Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes of a conversation between the senior devil, Screwtape and his nephew, Wormwood, a tempter in training, on ways of securing damnation for earthly man, “the Patient.” Saying the “safest path to hell is a gradual one,” Screwtape wonders why his nephew wasn’t able to seduce the Patient who was hanging between belief and unbelief. The jr. devil tried to defend his actions, saying, that every morning the Patient took a walk just to be quiet and reflective and every night he would read a good book. His conclusion was that somehow between those walks and those books their Enemy (God) was able to get His voice though to him.
Sr. devil understood the mistake and admonished jr. identifying the costly mistake saying he should have only allowed him to walk for physical exercise and to read that book only so he could quote it to others. Allowing him to enjoy pure pleasures you put him within the Enemy’s (God) reach.
That sounds like man’s agenda versus God’s agenda to me---and when we’re seeking pleasure and recognition for self and not God, we put ourselves in a dangerous place. Our actions/agendas still have all the semblance of God’s plan. Often we put His name on our plans and decisions whether we’ve consulted Him or not. Bottom line---we are focused more on our plan than seeking His plan for us. It’s easy to do--just a gradual falling away. Not overt---just subtle----just the way Screwtape would have liked it.

As I said, our agendas are often forefront in our thinking. This lesson which I thought was for the ladies of El Llano continues to teach me---not the deep theological truths or verb tenses or comparisons with Matthew’s account, just truth to reckon with in my own spiritual life. Who do I say that He is? Am I focused on my agenda or His? Simple questions but my response can have a profound impact on my life. So can yours.