God Believes In You

Recently my heart has swelled with compassion for men and women that truly and deeply desire to follow Jesus Christ and yet find themselves stuck in addictive behaviors that they want desperately to be free of. I was recently in a meeting with Perry Stone where he talked about the story of Peter.

After Peter denied Jesus three times he basically gave up on himself and had decided to go back to his old life. This is when Jesus appeared to Peter and asked him, “Peter do you love me?” When you go back to the original text Peter actually replies, “Lord you know I LIKE you.” But he doesn’t reply with the same word for love that Jesus used. Twice Jesus asks, “Do you LOVE me?” and twice Peter replies, “Lord you know I LIKE you.” Finally the third time Jesus asks (paraphrased), “Peter, do you even like me?” Peter is hurt and replies, “You know I like you.” Peter was so ashamed and disgusted with himself that he couldn’t even bring himself to say that he loved Jesus. I don’t believe at all that Peter didn’t love Jesus, I do believe that Peter did love Jesus. I just think that Peter had so lost confidence in himself that he felt like a hypocrite saying he loved Jesus after what he had done.

I believe the reason Jesus came to Peter and asked him three times (the same number of times that Peter denied him) if he loved Him was simply to build back Peter’s confidence in himself. Jesus still believed in Peter even when Peter had given up on himself. Read the story for yourself in John 21.

Peter messed up worse than any of the rest of the disciples and yet he went on to become one of the most powerful and forefront leaders for Christianity and a leader among the disciples. He was a powerhouse.

The point – You may have blown it big time. Maybe you have lost confidence in yourself and no longer see yourself as worthy to do the Lord’s work. But I want you to know the Lord sent me to tell you that He still believes in you. He hasn’t given up on you and He wants you to believe in yourself too. For many of you, the only thing standing between you and meeting your destiny is believing in yourself. You have confidence in God, it’s just the confidence in yourself that you have lacked. If God believes in you, shouldn’t you? And God does believe in you.

Freedom from addiction

The lord recently made me write a post about all the struggles and addictions that I have dealt with in my life and the methods the Lord taught me to get free of them. You can find that entry at divine-romance.com/blog. It is the post entitled “Burning Love Affair Bridges.” I once found myself in such sin and bondage that I believed the Lord was going to give my assignment to someone else. It was a hopeless and sad feeling and not from the Lord. Conviction is from the Lord, but hopelessness and despair is not. If you have been dealing with any of the feelings I described above please check out that entry. And not because I want to promote my blog, but because I sincerely believe that it will help you. It is a window of complete transparency into my life and as someone that has been there I really think it could be an encouragement to you. My contact info is also there in case you feel like you have no one to talk to, or if you feel you would be judged or ridiculed somewhere else. We Christians need each other in this Christian walk. It wasn’t meant to be done alone. I promise you can trust me and the other members of the team. If you need a safe place to open up, than please contact us.

I love you guys! (and gals) I really do.

Living to touch God’s heart,
Chris Ulery
divine-romance.com