presumption

149:4.4And then Je­sus dis­coursed on the dan­gers of cour­age and faith, how they some­times lead un­think­ing souls on to reck­less­ness and pre­sump­tion. He also showed how pru­dence and dis­cre­tion, when car­ried too far, lead to cow­ardice and fail­ure. He ex­horted his hear­ers to strive for orig­i­nal­ity while they shunned all ten­dency to­ward ec­cen­tric­ity. He pleaded for sym­pa­thy with­out sen­ti­men­tal­ity, piety with­out sanc­ti­mo­nious­ness. He taught rev­er­ence free from fear and su­per­sti­tion.

147:5.9But Je­sus earnestly warned his apos­tles against the fool­ish­ness of the child of God who pre­sumes upon the Fa­ther’s love. He de­clared that the heav­enly Fa­ther is not a lax, loose, or fool­ishly in­dul­gent par­ent who is ever ready to con­done sin and for­give reck­less­ness. He cau­tioned his hear­ers not mis­tak­enly to ap­ply his il­lus­tra­tions of fa­ther and son so as to make it ap­pear that God is like some overindul­gent and un­wise par­ents who con­spire with the fool­ish of earth to en­com­pass the moral un­do­ing of their thought­less chil­dren, and who are thereby cer­tainly and di­rectly con­tribut­ing to the delin­quency and early de­mor­al­iza­tion of their own off­spring. Said Je­sus: “My Fa­ther does not in­dul­gently con­done those acts and prac­tices of his chil­dren which are self-de­struc­tive and sui­ci­dal to all moral growth and spir­i­tual prog­ress. Such sin­ful prac­tices are an abom­i­na­tion in the sight of God.”

196:0.14Je­sus’ earthly life was de­voted to one great pur­pose—do­ing the Fa­ther’s will, liv­ing the hu­man life re­li­giously and by faith. The faith of Je­sus was trust­ing, like that of a child, but it was wholly free from pre­sump­tion. He made ro­bust and manly de­ci­sions, coura­geously faced man­i­fold dis­ap­point­ments, res­o­lutely sur­mounted ex­traor­di­nary dif­fi­cul­ties, and un­flinch­ingly con­fronted the stern re­quire­ments of duty. It re­quired a strong will and an un­fail­ing con­fi­dence to be­lieve what Je­sus be­lieved and as he be­lieved.

139:2.3Si­mon Pe­ter was a man of im­pulse, an op­ti­mist. He had grown up per­mit­ting him­self freely to in­dulge strong feel­ings; he was con­stantly get­ting into dif­fi­cul­ties be­cause he per­sisted in speak­ing with­out think­ing. This sort of thought­less­ness also made in­ces­sant trou­ble for all of his friends and as­so­ciates and was the cause of his re­ceiv­ing many mild re­bukes from his Mas­ter. The only rea­son Pe­ter did not get into more trou­ble be­cause of his thought­less speak­ing was that he very early learned to talk over many of his plans and schemes with his brother, An­drew, be­fore he ven­tured to make pub­lic pro­pos­als.

181:2.27Then the Mas­ter went over to Si­mon Pe­ter, who stood up as Je­sus ad­dressed him: “Pe­ter, I know you love me, and that you will ded­i­cate your life to the pub­lic procla­ma­tion of this gospel of the king­dom to Jew and gen­tile, but I am dis­tressed that your years of such close as­so­ci­a­tion with me have not done more to help you think be­fore you speak. What ex­pe­ri­ence must you pass through be­fore you will learn to set a guard upon your lips? How much trou­ble have you made for us by your thought­less speak­ing, by your pre­sump­tu­ous self-con­fi­dence! And you are des­tined to make much more trou­ble for your­self if you do not mas­ter this frailty. You know that your breth­ren love you in spite of this weak­ness, and you should also un­der­stand that this short­com­ing in no way im­pairs my af­fec­tion for you, but it lessens your use­ful­ness and never ceases to make trou­ble for you. But you will un­doubt­edly re­ceive great help from the ex­pe­ri­ence you will pass through this very night. And what I now say to you, Si­mon Pe­ter, I like­wise say to all your breth­ren here as­sem­bled: This night you will all be in great dan­ger of stum­bling over me. You know it is writ­ten, ‘The shep­herd will be smit­ten and the sheep will be scat­tered abroad.’ When I am ab­sent, there is great dan­ger that some of you will suc­cumb to doubts and stum­ble be­cause of what be­falls me. But I prom­ise you now that I will come back to you for a lit­tle while, and that I will then go be­fore you into Gal­i­lee.”

100:7.15His cour­age was mag­nif­i­cent, but he was never fool­hardy. His watch­word was, “Fear not.” His brav­ery was lofty and his cour­age of­ten heroic. But his cour­age was linked with dis­cre­tion and con­trolled by rea­son. It was cour­age born of faith, not the reck­less­ness of blind pre­sump­tion. He was truly brave but never au­da­cious.