Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
7/17/2023
Satan has asked to sift you. I prayed your faith would survive the test.
(The Lord gave me a word Sunday).
“I am coming soon. Are you ready? Prepare yourself in the days that remain. Keep your oil lanterns, bright and full. Focus on the eternal. You are eternal… with me Or with Satan. Be vigilant. Don’t grow weary or distracted by the half-truths that surround you. Satan has asked to sift you like Peter, but I have prayed for you… for your faith to stand so that you might strengthen your brothers. The time is closer than you think, and each of your days is numbered. Plant in them the seeds of eternity. I am with you, reach out your hand and take it. The Set of-foot prints in the sand are mine”.
Luke 22: 31-32 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail”.
Sifting is a process God uses to grow us. Peter would never have been the rock for Jesus if he had not gone through the sifting of denying him three times! Jesus was looking for the end result… Our maturing into the vessels of his making, for his plan and purpose. And then he told Peter. “And afterwards go and strengthen your brothers”. He knew he would fall, he knew he would endure after much anguish and dying to himself so that he could share that love, grace, and maturity with others. Surprised?
James 1:2-3 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials (sifting) of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Look at what he says in: 1 Peter 1:6-7 “In this, you greatly rejoice, though now for a little, while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
All of us like Peter have gone through our failings…our stupid selfish and often senseless mistakes. It was all about us. Our comfort, our plans, our dreams and aspirations. But when God sanctions the sifting, he is preparing us for His plan…His purpose. For our ultimate good, even though awkward, and painful. Peter was driven to despair, to heartbreak similar to what Jesus feels when we fail him. God loves us for who we are but someone said, he loves us too much to leave us as we are. THANK YOU LORD FOR THAT!
Have you ever looked up the process of sifting wheat? It is to remove the chaff, that is inedible. God removes from us that which is displeasing, ugly, not palatable…has no earthly or certainly no heavenly or eternal value, and has to go. We sift our children. We teach them lessons. We walk with them but let them feel the pain of a wrong decision, a poor expression of selfishness, or the result of their cruelty to others…Why? So they could learn and grow.
These are the times, like Peter, we should be on our knees. There is power in prayer! These times of sifting, of preparing you, should be driving us to our knees. You cannot know God outside of His word, You cannot have any real relationship with Jesus without talking to him in prayer and hearing him in prayer and through his word. Your sifting may be of a magnitude that you will need fasting to stand you up taller in your attachment to Jesus and reaching out for his hand to hold us up in our journey.
In Matthew 16:21-23 “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
Because we are Christians does not exclude us from this process of maturing. Not just maturing… but maturing in Christ. Dieing to ourselves as the proud Peter did. So we might be used by God and go back and strengthen our families and brothers.
Our Days are Numbered. Do Not Grow Weary.
His are the footprints you see in the sand, carrying you,
because he prayed for you that you would not lose your faith.
I give you my heart.. Renata Triani
