Today we have a lesson from my Uncle Malcolm on the ups and downs of the Christian life and the need to develop a consistent walk with God, is necessary for us all as we go on in our Christian life.
Let us not be caught sleeping as we wait and live for HIm.
To combined Leicester Central Class
27/7/41 (before breaking up for Summer)
St Matthew 16.13-17 and Matthew 16.21-23
This little incident is typical of poor old Peter’s early Christian life.
Peter was always up on the hilltops of Christian experience one minute and down in the valleys the next. One moment he was vowing that he would never forsake Our Lord – and meaning it – and the next he was denying that he ever knew him.
Yes, Peter’s early Christian life was a very “up and down” affair and we’re often inclined to condemn Peter and look down our superior noses a bit at him. But it is surprising how many of us are very like him.
I wonder if any of you have ever been on one of those switchback arrangements where you sit in a car at the top and the wretched thing freewheels over an amazing assortment of hills and hollows and causes a very realistic vision of what you’ve had for lunch for the past week to rise up before you!
Well, that switchback is a jolly good picture of the way some of us Christians carry on our lives.
One moment we’re up in the air, next down in the dumps with an awful feeling in our tummy!
We’re jolly good ‘switchback Christians.’
And some of us try to keep going in the same way as that switchback car.
You see, that car gets enough impetus when it’s going downhill to just surmount the next hill and leaves a Christian chap doing just the same thing.
Off he goes to Buxton and has a jolly good time, especially in spiritual things.
When he comes back he’s all on fire for God for a week or so, but then it begins to fade.
He tries to make the blessing he had at Buxton last him until he can get another one, just like a camel feeding on its hump.
But just when he’s not doing so well in the fight, along comes another House-party or Special Weekend, Lutterworth perhaps – and once again he has a hill-top experience and it’s plain sailing for a bit.
And so the story goes on – at least, it goes on for a time.
But, as you know, it can’t go on forever, because, just as that switchback car must ultimately come to rest, as Mr Switchback Christian cannot continue his way of living the Christian life indefinitely.
Sooner or later he meets a succession of “valleys” and then he’s done for.
The only way that the switchback car can keep going indefinitely is by having an engine fitted and the only way a ‘switchback Christian’ can become a steady soldier is by having an inward source of power.
Let’s go back to Peter. Peter had his engine installed – that’s how he became such a great Saint afterwards. The great alteration took place on the Day of Pentecost.
Look at verse 14. You can see the difference already and if you read your Bible you’ll see that there were no ups and downs about Peter after Pentecost.
He simply went onwards and upwards from that day forth.
Well, what happened at Pentecost to make this great difference?
Well, we all know that at Pentecost was given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that is the secret of a consistent walk with God.
That is the source of power within us, which will conquer all our unsteadiness.
And note that it is a GIFT.
All we have to do to gain the power which we lack, all we have to do to be changed from ‘switchback Christians’ to steady soldiers, all we have to do to gain the victory throughout this coming holiday and the rest of our lives is to ask:-
‘Ask and it will be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.’