Matthew 26:56 “But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.

I was reading this the other day, and even though I have read this hundreds of times, the last part really struck me. The background to this verse is that Jesus was just arrested at Gethsemane by the religious leaders of that day, right before he was crucified. What is interesting about this is that it says that “all the disciples deserted him and fled”. This made me question how often have I deserted Jesus and fled? When people question what you believe or come against you for what you believe, what do you do? Do you desert God or do you stand firm? Do you stand up and let them know what you believe? A lot of times instead of standing by what we believe, we change our minds and say I am not like that or I don’t believe that. Maybe there is an opportunity to share Jesus to someone and we don’t. No matter how spiritual you think you are you have deserted God at one point in your life by not standing up for Him or sharing about Him. I know in my life there has been times that I backed down and was a shamed, instead of standing up for God. I remember times of God urging me to say something and I didn’t. No longer will I do that. What’s so great about this story is that later on in Acts Jesus uses these same men who deserted him to spread Christianity throughout this world. In spite of us deserting God, when we turn back to Him, through His love He still uses us. Thank God he still uses me. What we have to strive for is to not desert or flee from Him when things get hard. Instead we should strive to stand firm in Him in good times and hard times. Remember when things get tuff, the tuff get going. No matter what you face share and show people Jesus.

Genesis 4:7"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? but if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."

I was reading this and the end part of this scripture hit me. God is speaking to Cain before he kills Able. What he is talking about is mastering your sin. This is something I believe we have all tried to do but never do completely. The only way we can completely master our sin is with the help of Jesus. When we surrender our sin to Jesus that is when we master it. Some of us make that a hard thing to do because we are so deep into our sin that it takes a daily surrendering. Some sins are easier to surrender. The point is no matter what, to master your sin you can't do it by yourself, you need God’s help.