Central to our discourse over the last two sessions was the place of the heart, where the heart is—with the Lord or otherwise—and what the conduct and confession of sons of encouragement are. Still on the same basis of where the heart is set, we’ll take another example—one of the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The first time around in Matthew 16:13-28, Jesus began to speak and ask His disciples, who men thought that He was. He thereafter asked who did they think that He was? In the very presence of the Lord, revelation light came, and Peter got it right. But was his heart perfectly in order? Not quite.
Right after that, the Lord began to reveal unto them what He would go through. Boom! Peter began to rebuke the Lord. Would you say he was a son of encouragement, a positive influence? The Lord discerned and rebuked him for being a mouthpiece for Satan.
Fast forward to John 21:2-3, reeling from the discouragement and the failure that he had gone through in denying the Lord, he had given up hope on all the promises that Christ had given, that he would be a fisher of men and he dropped all of that, and you know the things that followed.
Even though his comment, I go a fishing, was specifically with respect to himself, he hardly thought of the impact that it was going to have on the others. They all said, we also go with thee. We need to take a look at ourselves. We are not our own and we are not alone. Every word, every thought, let your hearts be in the right place always because you risk becoming counterproductive instruments of discouragement; instruments of backsliding to the cause of the Lord in the lives of many of His people. Take heed to yourself.
Selah.
Pastor Afolabi Oladele
Dingwo Christie
Take heed to yourself! Let your heart be in the right place at the right time or else you risk being counterproductive.
Hmm! A timely warning for the saints of God, not to be instruments of discouragement at such a time as this.
Dingwo Christie