Leaning Into The Truth Of Our Vulnerabilities

Read Matthew 17:1-9. Do you ever look at your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities and think I’m never going to amount to much for God? I’m destined to being a mediocre Christian at best?

I suspect poor Peter might have felt a little of that as he, James and John, and Jesus began to make their way back down that high mountain. Six days before, he’d tried to protect his friend Jesus by challenging him over his insistence that he would be going to Jerusalem, where he would suffer at the hand of the religious and political leaders in the city and would eventually be put to death, before rising again. Jesus called him Satan in return! (Matthew 16:21-23).

Then he’d got over-excited at seeing Jesus transformed on the high mountain and had suggested building three shelters as memorials of the event, and God had to interrupt him to get him to shut up and listen to Jesus!

A bad week in anyone’s book!

As they made their way of the mountain, Jesus tells Peter, James and John not to tell anyone what they had just witnessed until after his resurrection. Why? Because he knew they did not yet fully understand. In fact, perhaps they could not fully understand until Jesus had died and been raised from the dead.

We can’t always understand our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. We’d rather not have them. But we can learn to sit with them. We can lean into the truth that God has the strength to transform them, to equip us to take the next step in our journey of faith. We have so much more to learn! And there is so much more to come!

THINK IT OVER

Think about the following:

• What weakness and vulnerability might you need to learn to sit with and allow God to slowly transform?

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Unless otherwise shown, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.