Open Mouth, Insert Foot!

Open Mouth, Insert Foot!

²⁶ When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. ²⁷ "You will all fall away," Jesus told them, "for it is written: "'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' ²⁸ But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee." ²⁹ Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not." ³⁰ "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times." ³¹ But Peter insisted emphatically, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the others said the same. Mark 14:26-31

Peter’s brashness would almost be comic, if it wasn’t so sad. Open mouth, insert foot. How so like Peter I am. I am sure that when Peter spoke he meant what he said. He was speaking sincerely and with good intent, but he was speaking ignorantly, pridefully, and foolishly.

How so like Peter I am. My words although spoken with sincerity at the time merely demonstrate my ignorance and foolish pride. Paul expresses some of this struggle between good intentions and actual behavior in Romans 7:15-18 where he writes. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” Paul’s struggle leads him to cry in despair: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Ro 7:24 (NIV) It is at this point of despair that the Holy Spirit reaches out to Paul and Paul’s despair is turned to expressions of ecstatic joy. “Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!... Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.” Ro 7:25-8:4 (NIV)

Jesus, thank You for forgiving me ignorant, foolish, prideful brashness by becoming our sin-offering. As Your new creation, empowered by Your Spirit move me now to humbly live a life more worthy of my calling.