Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

This month we will be looking at some of the traits of Peter the apostle and seeing how we can learn from his journey of faith in our modern world.

The life of Peter is an interesting one. He lived in Galilee where he plied his trade as a fisherman. He was a businessman and worked in the family business with his brother Andrew. The fishing business was messy, labour intensive, but very lucrative. From this Peter was able to build a house by the sea, purchase several boats and run a small consortium in Galilee among the local businessmen, possibly in Capernaum(see Matt 4:12-18).

At the start of Jesus’ ministry he needed people who he could train and pour himself into for three years. Having waited for thirty years to fulfil the legality of manhood [the legal age to become a man and speak in public according to Judaism was 30 years old], the time had come to start the proclamation that the ‘kingdom of God’ had arrived. And that this kingdom was already here on earth but was only visible to those who could ‘see’ it. At first neither Peter or his brother Andrew understood what Jesus was about but they sensed that something out of the ordinary was happening and put their business on hold to find out what was going on.

So our first encounter with Peter is one where he leaves his business and his personal interests to follow a man who spoke about a parallel kingdom, told people about their past and prepared them for a great future (John1:48) .

Today a real encounter with the Jesus of scripture will turn your world upside down. Like Peter, however, we have to ‘see’ Jesus for who he is [the son of God, who is God the son] lay aside our businesses and follow him.

Read St John 1:19-51