15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
Are there things in our lives that God has called pure that we continue to call dirty? Do we make something dirty again that God has already cleaned up? Do we return to a sin after the Lord has already cleansed that area of our lives? Are there people that God considers acceptable that we continue to push away from us because they don’t meet our standards? I know in my own life there are times when I forget that the Lord has already cleaned me up. In His sight, I am perfect, I am the righteousness of Christ. I am already seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. My redemption is complete. It is finished. Sometimes I forget these things and act as if I were not these things. I am an heir and I act like a barnyard pig. I possess everything and I act like I lack everything. Peter hears a voice in a vision and it startles him. The voice tells him that eating these foods that Peter has always learned were unacceptable was not commanded. When he objects the voice tells him that to not eat is like undoing what God has done. God has made these animals clean. What right does Peter have to tell God, the one who says they are clean, that they are not clean! Peter is trying to tell God that He doesn’t know His job. Maybe Peter pulled out his wall chart and used his pointer to show that those animals did not fit in the ‘Eat’ column of the “God’s Official Foods Chart.” He had done that mentally for years, and so had every other observing Jew. You have one of those charts in your head right now. Do you eat earthworms or cockroaches? How about ice cream or hotdogs? You have a chart! In that moment, God was redoing Peter’s chart. God was getting Peter ready to step very far away from his ordinary religious practice, a practice which he felt brought him closer to the Lord, but which, none the less, kept him from experiencing the fullness of God’s presence in his life.
The Arnold Journey 