
Jesus
is telling His disciples that He is leaving them; He is going away and where He
is going they cannot follow right now, but they will be able to follow later.
Peter, being the impulsive, confident man that he is says, “Lord, why can I not
follow You now? I will lay down my life for Your sake.” (John 13:37) Jesus
tells Peter that he will deny even knowing Jesus three times before the rooster
crows at the coming of dawn. Peter was probably taken aback by what Jesus tells
him. To Peter, he was pretty sure that Jesus was God, that He was the Messiah,
and Peter was determined to follow Him no matter what. But Jesus knew Peter’s
heart, just as He knows mine and yours.
When
Peter tells the Lord that he will die for Him, Peter is not speaking out of his
faith in Jesus, he is speaking out of his faith in himself. When I start
thinking that I can do that, and I can do this, before going to the Lord and
seeking His guidance, I too am being a Peter, and that means that I trust my
abilities more than God’s abilities. Paul speaks to this as well in Philippians
3. Paul says that if anyone has the right to be confident in one’s abilities it
is he.
“If
anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so; circumcised
the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of
Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the
church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”
Philippians 3:5-6
Peter
too speaks out of his confidence in his own abilities. To be confident in
oneself means that we trust our abilities, our schooling, our learning, our
lineage to get us to where we want and need to be. To be confident in oneself
means that we trust our own self more than we trust God, it means that we rely
on our own knowledge, rather than seeking the Father of all knowledge. When we
trust in ourselves, we are telling God we don’t need Him for this part of our
lives- we got it covered, because we know what we are doing.
Just
like Peter and Paul needed to be broken of their confidence, so we too must be
broken. Peter was sincere in his faith, he was sincere in his devotion to die
for Christ; and his only fault was that he wanted to do it for Christ, instead
of letting Christ do it through him. The Lord brought both Peter and Paul to a
place of brokenness. When Peter denied the Lord three times, he became a broken
man. He saw that his ability to live and die for Christ came to nothing. Paul
also knew that his ability to live for Christ was not in who he was, but it was
through the power of the Holy Spirit living in him.
Paul
was broken on the way to Damascus. The Lord God spoke to Paul and blinded him.
He took Paul to the ground, to a place of broken surrender and showed him that
the only way to live for Him was through a broken and contrite spirit. Peter
was heartbroken when he realized that he had denied Jesus, his Lord and Master.
He had just told Jesus that He would go and die for Him, and in a few short hours
he is telling people that he does not even know who this Jesus is.
It was
through the brokenness of Paul that the Lord Jesus Christ was able to bring the
Gentiles, the non-Jewish believers to knowledge and salvation in Him. Peter and
Paul were confident in their abilities. They were confident that they could do
all things, but the Lord God does not want us to be confident in our abilities,
He desires for us to be confident in His abilities. Psalm 118:8 tells us that
it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. The Lord God
does not want us to have a can do attitude, what He wants is for us to be
broken, to have no confidence in and of ourselves, but to bring all that we
are, all that we have before Him and let Him live through us. I must be broken
before I can be the woman God desires me to be. When I have confidence in my
abilities, I cannot have trust in God.
Let us
be heartbroken today. Let us, like Peter and Paul let go of all the confidence
we have in our abilities and turn to the Lord Jesus who is the author of
ability and the Father of our lives. Let us turn away from our impulse and
learn to go before the Lord in the spirit of humble submission, allowing Him to
lead us and guide us as He desires. Let our confidence be in Christ and not in
ourselves. In Jesus Name, Amen and Amen.