Be Still And Know

Matthew 16.18 NLT 'Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.' Peter is a fascinating character. We know little about most of the disciples, but that’s not true of Peter who we get to know extremely well. Time and again he is the one who speaks first and on many occasions he gets things seriously wrong. It was Peter who tried to walk on water on the Sea of Galilee and sank, and he who denied ever knowing Jesus on three occasions. We wouldn’t have been surprised if Jesus had compared him with jelly, but instead Jesus declares that, just like his name, he is a rock. Having declared the true nature of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, he declared Peter to be the rock on which the church would be based and that not even the powers of hell would be able to conquer it. And the wonderful fact is that that is precisely what happened. Peter became the leader of the church in Jerusalem and played a pivotal rol