Intimacy with Christ and the warfare of the spirit. Jesus really helps us cry!

Stu Johnston's sermon on Luke 22Thank God for good exegesis as a tool to become a workman that "needeth not to be ashamed". Satan was going to sift Peter as wheat. Jesus told Peter that this was his coming experience. How very scary an uncovering of future events this must have been for Peter? I would imagine that this was part of the many things that Jesus couldn't have told them any earlier or any later than He told him. Even a close friend and the Lord of Glory would tell his dear one of the coming stumblingblock. Peter would have seen that Jesus was speaking to him from a Heavenly enthroned perspective. His friend was God of glory. His friend was a loving advocate. His stumbling gave him a glimpse of the reality of the identity of this dear friend and God of glory that no one else saw. This friend, "in the appearance as a man" that everyone saw as divine; no one could fully embrace the full reality of how great He really was.

Jesus said to Peter that he was privy to the interaction between God and Satan. Peter's only reference for this reality would be the book of Job. This personal transfiguration coming, just at the junction between His passion and His death. This concept would be inconceivable for any human. Jesus trusted Peter with this truth for his own sanctification. He was leaning on the relationships, Our Savior and this was a disappointment that God the Father had shown to His perfect son. There is no leaning on the arm of flesh, for Christ in His passion. Everyone was an enemy and on the side of sin. He became a curse for us. He knew that His desertion in heart and reality was the next step on the road to the cross. Christ paid the price of this for us. He remained a true friend. He faithfully took up the cross and acted in love, when bitterness could have caused Him to just keep this truth to Himself.

God is building His Church that we can hold one-another together, when the sifting and the sorting of Satan is our portion. Let us lean on the everlasting arms of our Lord and Savior. Let us see His faithful friendship to draw His beloved close to His heart, even in our direst of temptations. Hold us up, dearest Savior. Draw us close to Your perfect heart, that we may know You and know Your love expressed in Your Church, for Your glory and for the growth of Your Church on the earth.

He ever lives to make intercession for us. He remains a faithful and true High Priest on our behalf. The payment had not been fully paid for Peter, as yet. Now, when Satan asks to sift us as wheat, Jesus prays for us. Jesus says, My bleeding wounds are pleading, Father. Forgive him/her! Don't let her die in her sinful estate. Draw her closer to grace and faith. Don't let him go that far from my presence.

God wants us closer to Him than we could want to get. Sometimes the challenges make us run to Him, sometimes they are the magnet away from Him. Whichever way, Jesus untangles us and builds us personally and builds His Church corporately and we see the gates of Hell, not prevailing against His Church. Corporate prayer, individual prayer, praise and worship, attendance upon the Word of God are all the tools that God uses to whittle a Church into a Glorious Church without spot or wrinkle. He whittles the image of Christ, first upon our desires and then slowly upon our experience. Halleluia, What a Savior.