I’ve been thinking about a passage of scripture recently and feeling the Lord showing me something through it, so I thought I’d write it down as a wee encouragement. 😃 The passage is Matthew 17:24-27, where the temple tax collectors accuse Jesus and Peter of not paying the temple tax.

I always love how Jesus addresses accusers – He is never defensive or caught off guard (I think probably because He is so secure in who He is and who His Father is – that might be another post at some point ❤️😃) Jesus simply says what He knows to be important, and He always speaks to the real heart of what is going on! In this case, He asks one simple question that deals with it.

‘When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?’ Matthew‬ ‭17‬:‭25‬ ‭

Jesus was drawing people’s attention to the fact that He was the Son of God and that they were His children – and then He moved on – no drama, no big fighting statement, just a secure, wonderful response that addressed the heart of the moment ❤️ But this next part is the bit that I’ve felt Him speaking about!

Jesus then tells Peter to go down to the river to get a fish to pay the tax. Now, Peter was a fisherman by trade, and so I wonder when he started hearing what Jesus was asking him to do, might he have immediately thought that he knew exactly how to do what Jesus was asking without fully listening to the end of the sentence? I wonder, if he hadn’t been paying attention, if Peter might have grabbed all his fishing gear, headed to the river to catch some fish which he later would have sold at the market to make some money to pay the tax?

As I read through the gospels I can see a bit of a pattern of Peter reacting a little rashly sometimes, and honestly, I can personally relate 😬 I remember so often as a kid, my poor Dad trying to show me how to do something, and as he was teaching, I was thinking I’d caught what he meant and rushed on ahead to do the thing, only to hear him shouting ‘Wait! You’ll wreck it if you do it like that, I haven’t finished talking!!!!! Slow down!!!’ Sorry Dad 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

If Peter had just done what he’d always done in order to get money from fishing, he, and those standing around him, would have missed out on a totally miraculous moment with Jesus! But thankfully, this wasn’t a time when Peter jumped the gun, and he listened to the fullness of what Jesus was saying!

Because Jesus didn’t simply say to go get money from fishing, He instead spoke into a super familiar scenario and opened up a new and creative solution in the middle of it that no-one could have seen coming 🙌 If we’ve read this passage, we know that Jesus’ full instruction was that He was going to put a coin in a fish’s mouth for Peter to find!

It was important for Peter to hear the fullness of what Jesus was saying to him. Because, while Peter knew how to make money from fishing, he didn’t know that Jesus was about to turn everything Peter had ever known about fishing on its head! Jesus didn’t send Peter to do what he’d always done; He sent him with a new instruction, a creative solution, a miraculous provision! It was a familiar place for Peter, but God met him there in an unfamiliar way 🙌

I wonder how many times God is trying to do this very same thing with us? What if we think we’re just living through a ‘normal’ or mundane routine, but God is asking us to wait for the end of His sentence! What if God wants to release a miracle in our lives in a place that feels normal to us, but in a way that is not at all what we expect!

I guess my encouragement is to keep our eyes and ears open in our everyday moments, waiting for the end of the sentence. ❤️🙌

Matt 17:24-27