| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 11 |
Page 5 |
These are hints only of what the personal friendship of Jesus meant to Simon. Think what uplift there was in the new name the Master gave him. He was going to be a Rock. He certainly was not that now, but just as certainly he would be. “Thou shalt be Peter.” In just this same way Jesus comes to us with a new name. We shall not always be poor fishermen – some day we shall be catching men, some day we shall be great apostles. The life before us is glorious. Jesus sees us first as we are, with all our imperfections, our blemishes, and faults. But he sees also the possibilities that are in us. We do not consider enough what we are to be when the new life in us grows into all its splendour of character. We ought to think of the splendour into which we shall come through Christ’s grace. We are not worms; we are immortal beings. We are children of God. We are heirs of heaven. Now we are imperfect and very faulty, but we are going to grow out of all that and become glorious creatures. It is when we realize this and the glorious vision bursts upon us, that we begin to live truly.
The Master sets before us the goal of our being. He has a beautiful plan for each life. There is something definite for which he has made us, into which he would fashion us, and toward which all his guidance, education, and training will tend. This is not a world of chance – it is our Father’s world. All the experiences of our lives have their part in making us what Christ would have us become, in bringing out the possibilities that he sees in us when we first come to him.
All life is a school. Our school books are not all in English print. Our lessons are set for us in many kinds of type, in different languages. The Bible is our great text book, and we are to use it daily and always. The lessons are not written out plainly for us on its pages. But life is our practice school. There we are to learn patience, joy, contentment, peace, gentleness. All the experiences of the passing days have their lessons in them. Sometimes we are alarmed by the disappointments, the sufferings, the sorrows we have to endure. But there really is no reason for alarm or dismay, however full of pain or seeming loss the days may be. God is in his world, and whatever the experiences may be, nothing is going wrong. The disappointments which seem to be working confusion in our hopes and plans are God’s appointments, yielding better things in the end than if our ways had been realized. The sufferings and the sorrows of our lives have their part in the working out of the Master’s vision for us. Peter owed a great deal to the hard things in his education. He paid a large price for his lessons, but not too large.
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