Peter the Humble Bold One scene 2 (click for next scene)

Acts 1:14 says “These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.” Their minds and hearts for the first time ever were experiencing unity in humility and joy. The disciples had spent years arguing over who was the greatest and had only succeeded in hurting each other and wounding the tender heart of their Master. They had had such a difficult time understanding His emphasis on a kingdom based in the heart instead of on rules and religion. They had treated women as second-class humans unworthy of credibility or respect. Now they realized that these women had a much better grasp of matters of the heart than they had. Their own hearts were just waking up and they now realized their great immaturity. These women were vitally necessary as a resource of wisdom and heart training as the men began trying to collate their left-brain knowledge with their newly awakened right-brain affections for Jesus.

They were all with one mind. For the first time they were not only using both sides of their brain usefully but their newly acquired humility and love was bringing the full diversity of minds, hearts and personalities together in creation of a new composite unity that amazingly in a collective way resembled the way Jesus had been known to them over the last few years. Together in joy – and only together – they were emerging as a unified body sharing and displaying the emotions, desires, disposition and passion of God.

As they connected with each other in humbleness and deference, as they eagerly listened to each other share their experiences of Jesus, their hearts burned with intense desire to know God much more, to recapture every word of Jesus' ministry to them, to remember His face and emotions and redeem the time they had squandered in self-focus when He was physically with them. They began to act on His words and press their prayers more and more intensely to the throne of God. They released more and more sinful, divisive attitudes and memories in open confession and tears of repentance. They released every grudge and prejudice and their hearts received more and more love and light replacing lies about God and each other with liberating truth. Knowing God became their overwhelming obsession and everything else faded in significance in their burning desire to seek His face.

Peter's life and disposition were radically changed from what he had been before. Previously he had little time for the Scriptures. He accepted that they were an integral part of his religion and culture, but he had always depended on his own instincts to figure out what was right even though this had earned him a number of rather strong rebukes from Jesus at times. Peter had felt that he was capable, maybe even a little more capable than others, of discerning what was right and wrong. He felt that if he just listened to his heart and followed his instincts that sooner or later he would come out on top. He had not realized the deceptiveness of his sinful heart, his human nature, until it had betrayed him and caused him to betray Jesus.

Now he was realizing that his own natural heart was not trustworthy, it could not be depended on to make him a righteous person. Living from his heart was a very positive attribute that Jesus had appreciated in him and even encouraged. But he had come to realize that he needed to have a new heart that was not originated from himself. He was now learning for the first time how to live from the heart Jesus had given him.

He was also learning the enormous importance of having his heart surrounded and protected by Scripture and the Words of God. Jesus had spent years trying to get His disciples to understand this vital principle, but it was after the resurrection before it finally began to sink in for most of them. The event on the Emmaus road had directly addressed this issue. Nathanael's penchant for study now had new respect from the others. All of them now willingly and with new fervor turned to the Scriptures to discover the treasures Jesus had so often spoken of .Connecting their re-birthed hearts and their freshly opened minds they entered into a new realm of perception and understanding of God, of life and the Kingdom of Heaven that they deeply regretted not entering years before. If they had not been so blinded by their all-consuming obsession with promoting themselves and their selfish interests they could have better understood and appreciated the words and spirit that Jesus had been offering them and he would have been able to give them so much more. As it was, they had blocked His progress with them to a great degree and they now realized how much they had ended up cheating themselves out of enormous blessing from the presence of Jesus when He was there with them

As they bonded closer and closer to each other and excitedly poured over the scrolls of the Old Testament, a particular Psalm impressed Peter's mind and a conviction began to settle on him. Maybe Nathanael brought the passage to Peter's attention or maybe several did. Up to this point he had been the most subdued and quiet of the group. His new humility was real and noticeable. This had actually opened the opportunity for others in the group who were naturally quiet and thoughtful to more freely express what was in their heart, to share their experience and convictions. Peter no longer dominated the discussions and instead was now eager to listen and care about what others felt and perceived. The discussion of recent events had naturally involved Judas' role and they were all ashamed at how much they had admired his personality and had been influenced by his self-promoting spirit. He had always had a subtle undercurrent of criticism, of questioning the decisions of Jesus. They had often sympathized with Judas' views and opinions and found themselves at odds with Jesus as a consequence. This had always baffled them and they had many times concluded that Jesus just didn't understand or appreciate their deep desire to exalt Him and assist Him in fulfilling the grand mission of becoming the heroic Messiah of the Jews.

Now as they looked back on the events of that tragic, terrifying weekend, they saw things with startling new perspective. The unmasking of the results of selfishness and bitterness, not only in Judas' life but in their own as well. But although most of them had forsaken Him, Judas had rejected Jesus' passionate appeals to his heart beyond the point of return and had destroyed his life in the service of Satan. From their study of Psalm 109 they saw a prophetic description of Judas and his final demise. As they discussed these things with mixed feelings and growing understanding, Peter was convicted that he must align and unify the group of believers with what was becoming clear in the Word before them. They must not only understand Scripture, they must act on it.

Moved by the Spirit of God, he stood up to speak in the midst of his new close family. He had lost all confidence in himself, but he now had a new and growing confidence in the Word of God. He decided to present a proposal based on the Word before them and submit it to the will of the collective body of newly bonding believers. He was impressed that Jesus had worked especially with twelve people during His ministry for some good reason and that reason had not ended with His death and the death of Judas. Jesus' often repeated and emphasized goal for His disciples had been one word – witnesses. He had had them practice it and even had a backup team of seventy trained along with them. His focus had always been on the issue of witness. Their identity was to be one thing only – a witness. They had thought they were to be rulers and administrators and executors in various ways in His conquering kingdom. But He had always insisted that they were to simply be witnesses.

Now they remembered His instruction and realized that the time was ripe for the witnesses to witness. But now one witness was missing, and the Scriptures seemed to be clear that someone should replace him. Peter with the others carefully considered what the primary qualifications should be to select a replacement. There agreed there were two basic requirements that must be considered as qualification for replacing Judas as one of the original twelve, two elements necessary to be a true and faithful witness. (v.25) This position required one with a servant attitude which they now recognized was most definitely missing in Judas, and the other was to be one who had been delegated to carry a message – an apostle. They now realized that since their one job was to be passionate witnesses that this qualification had to be primarily a condition of the heart as well as external involvement in the life and ministry of Jesus while He was with them. Peter realized that though the believers could easily select someone based on that person's history of association with them over the past few years that there was no way they could look into a person's heart and truly evaluate his passion for Jesus. They had failed miserably in understanding another person's heart condition in their long admiration of Judas and they now realized they must not trust their own perceptions again. Only God can read the heart and He must be the one to make a final selection. So they narrowed down the selections to two people based on the best external qualifications of time spent with Jesus in ministry and then humbly asked God to make the best choice based on heart qualification.