I was talking with some friends the other day over lunch about how we evaluate or gauge success for a pastor, and it reminded me of some thoughts I’d had in the past about our Christian faith in general.

I feel like often we look at our Christian faith as it should be more like the faith journey of Paul than the faith journey of Peter. Paul, fought hard against God, and God brought him to his knees in a miraculous, amazing way. Peter was called by Christ, and he recklessly followed, experiencing the hardships of this calling and making major mistakes along the way. Cutting off peoples ears, denying Christ, and the list of mess ups go on. Now I must say for myself that when I talk about Christianity I normally talk about how I want to be like Paul. A stately, refined, committed Christian. But I feel like in actuality, I’m more like Peter, reckless, unstable, and too frequently a failure. I don’t have some crazy past that I was miraculously saved from. I’m just a simple guy, who’s been fortunately saved by Christ.