{"id":707,"date":"2010-02-23T16:08:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T16:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/graceepc.org\/?p=707"},"modified":"2010-02-23T16:08:52","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T16:08:52","slug":"pulling-a-peter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/?p=707","title":{"rendered":"Pulling a Peter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve been doing my imitation of the apostle Peter, and not his good side. When Jesus told Peter to come to him on the water, Peter did. But that’s not the Peter I’ve been imitating lately. I\u2019d like to get to the part where I climb out of the boat toward Jesus, He\u2019s certainly waiting for my response.<\/p>\n

My response to what? To The Question. THE Question. The one I keep trying to answer verbally, but it just doesn\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n

You see I\u2019ve been a bit melancholy lately, and I\u2019m not real comfortable with melancholy. Imagine if you will that you fell off a cliff once or twice in your life. How comfortable would you be standing at the edge of a cliff, or even jumping from great heights? Well, that is my uneasy relationship with melancholy.<\/p>\n

So I will do just about anything to shake it. I will stand outside in the cold with my face to the sun hoping that the right sunlight waves will kick in my Vitamin D. I will ride my exercise bike for 30 minutes chasing after some exercise endorphins. I am less inclined to try chocolate these days; it seems to hang around longer and longer.<\/p>\n

If the melancholy persists I begin looking around at other people, and here\u2019s where my imitation of Peter kicks in: What about him Lord? What about her? Why are they (fill in the blank) and I\u2019m not?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Peter did on the beach after Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus was giving a peek into what Peter\u2019s future held- ironic isn\u2019t it? We always clamor for knowledge of our future from God. What\u2019s ahead? we demand. Well, Jesus was telling Peter what was ahead and Peter wasn\u2019t all that thrilled so he looked around, spotted John and asked Jesus, \u201cWhat about him?\u201d<\/p>\n

Not his finest moment. Not mine either.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when The Question comes in. God asks us all The Question. The Question that will not accept a verbal response.<\/p>\n

Do you trust me?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u201d will not suffice. If I trust God I must get out of the boat. If I trust God I must take His hand and walk with Him.<\/p>\n

If I trust God, I must do it.<\/p>\n

God is holding out His hand, asking, Do you trust me?<\/p>\n

Well?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been doing my imitation of the apostle Peter, and not his good side. When Jesus told Peter to come to him on the water, Peter did. But that’s not the Peter I’ve been imitating lately. I\u2019d like to get to the part where I climb out of the boat toward Jesus, He\u2019s certainly waiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2O0qX-bp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}