Ashley’s Reviews > Hidden in Plain Sight: The Secret of More > Status Update

If Peter had a tendency like that once, I think he did, he overcame it. He made every effort to add virtue to his faith - things such as goodness common knowledge, self control a, perseverance, godliness. He added brotherly kindness. He added love. And he also became a man who turned former enemies and potential rivals into dear brothers.

... A Peter was saying if something else calmly did not consider himself to be worthy of a death that married his savior's. His death would be like Jesus's death, but also unlikely. It would be both a mimicry and a parody of it.

So Peter, who once reviewed Jesus for fruit being towards a cross, and another time for stooping to wash feet, himself learned to go and do likewise. The tradition is that Peter about to be killed in the same manner Jesus was, asked to be crucified upside down. His captors were delighted to comply - it added to the carnival desk atmosphere, the body ness and lordness of the spectacle. But Peter was thinking....

I'm also learning from Peter the art of leading from behind. This was not a natural position for him, or for me. Despite what I just said about Peter's humility, the man loved the forefront. He loved the helm, even if he didn't know which direction to take once he got there. But some impulse in him, part child, part bully, part curiosity hound, part dare devil, kept thrusting him to the forefront of the pack.

What we imagine matters. The future we picture shaped the reality we create, for good or ill. This book has been an attempt to help you imagine a future different, perhaps, from the one you've been living towards. It's to remind you that something utterly good, beyond what you have asked your imagined, has come into your life through Christ, but that to taste the fullness of this gift you must embrace him with passio

Agape works the opposite way. With agape, emotion follows decision. Agape is not emotionless - no love is - but its emotion is the fruit of decision. I will love, therefore I will feel love.

It's crucial we grasp this period if my father is God, and your father is God, then we are children of the same father. And that makes us kin. And if I love my father, I will also love what the father loves, and then more than anything that's his children. As an expression of love for the father, I must love them also. I must love whom the father loves. Not all of them are lovable. However, I will love them.

And to, practice and practice and practice the daily discipline of dying to yourself. This is worked out in the mundane more than the heroic. It is faithfulness in the small things before it can be carried off on the grand scale. It is the barb of sarcasm or the morsel of gossip or the retort of selfvindication that you don't speak. It is a flare up of anger that you take to prayer rather than take out on your wife.

Worldliness is not the same thing as earthlyness. Earthlyness is an admission of our limitations, frailties, needs, possibilities as humans made in the image of God. In fact, worldlyness is almost to be the opposite. At some level worldliness involves a denial of our humaness.

Worldliness. The opposite of godliness is devilry or demonism. That is the extreme opposite, but not the common, garden variety. It's opposite as worldliness. John describes worldliness this way - for everything in the world - the cravings of simple man, the loss of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the father but from the world (1 John 2:16 16)worldlinesses in a word selfishnes