You Can’t Judge a Book, or a Person, by the Cover

In thirty-five years of teaching at the university and seminary level, I learned this – you can’t always tell when a student is learning, nor can you accurately predict their level of future achievement. Some of those I thought would surely fail now serve significant positions of leadership and ministry. Some I thought were “can’t miss” types, have been disappointing. I wonder what the Lord thought about Peter. The meaning of disciple is “learner.” Did it ever appear to our Lord, the ultimate teacher, that Peter was learning anything; anything that would help him become a success in his calling? And what about Judas? Eugene Petersen wrote, “Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically . . . and Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept.” It’s true, you can’t judge a book by its cover, nor can you judge a person by the outer appearance. Jesus saw people not as they were, but as they were becoming, and He gave them “the right to become . . . (John 1:12).” I want to be like that, don’t you?

Join me this week in remembering the following global concerns:
• Pray for four church leaders from Texas who will be in Vancouver, Canada this week seeking partnership possibilities with new church starts.
• Pray for the almost 2 million Polish people living in Brazil, with no known church planting efforts to reach them in their language.
• Pray for missionary kids who begin school this week, many of them in boarding schools, away from parents and for missionary parents who home-school their children.
• Continue to pray for missionaries who serve in West African areas where Ebola is present.