Peter – Encountering a God Who Knows

Mark 14:27-31 (NLT)

2 Tim. 4:3 (NLT) 

    For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to right teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever they want to hear.

Only secure people can humbly consider uncomfortable truths before learning from them or Biblically rejecting them.

1. God knows us better than we know ourselves – take seriously how God defines us and what He tells us to do, over our own thinking

Psalm 139:1-6 (NIV) 

    O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down;        you are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.  You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Obey God, even if at first, we do not understand

Luke 22:32 (NLT) 

    But I have pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail. So when you have repented and turned to me again, strengthen and build up your brothers."

2. When we fail, first repent, then focus on the promising future that Jesus is focusing on by converting our failures into stepping stones to maturity

Luke 7:47-48 (NIV)

    I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love." [48] Then Jesus said to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven."

In the midst of discouragement, choose to move ahead and dwell on God’s possibilities instead of dwelling on the present circumstances

3. If God knows us better than we know ourselves, God will deal with us differently in order to bring out what is best according to our maturity

If God knows us better than we know ourselves, where we are now is the best place to learn what we need to learn