It’s one thing to commit to following Jesus when we are young in the faith and just starting out. It is another thing to choose to follow Him once again after we had lost our way and lived a lifestyle that denied His presence in our lives.
It all began one day when Peter and Andrew were fishing and the Lord approached. “Jesus called out to them, ‘Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!’ And they left their nets at once and followed him” (Matthew 4:19-20). That was a significant decision to leave behind a familiar livelihood, but for Peter, a more significant invitation to follow the Lord would take place three years into the future.
Peter followed the Lord for the next three years expressing his boisterous self-confidence. As Jesus was about to be crucified, Peter’s faith was severely tested. As a result of that testing, he denied the Lord three times. Days after his abysmal failure, not knowing what else to do, he told his friends “I’m going fishing. We’ll come, too, they all said. So, they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night” (John 21:3).
As the disciples were fishing, Jesus appeared on the seashore and prepared a fire. He invited the disciples to bring some of the miraculous catch they had just hauled in under His direction. It was on the same seashore – the Sea of Galilee – where Peter began following Jesus that the Lord would now restore Peter.
The Lord spoke three directives that would lead to Peter’s restoration and lessen the remorse he carried because of his three denials. The Lord issued an invitation to Peter similar to the one Peter heard three years previously when he began his journey of discipleship, “Follow me” (vs. 19). In other words, “Peter, I can handle your failures if you choose to reengage My original invitation to follow Me and not let what happened to stand in your way.”
Our first following is important. It begins our life of faith. Our second following takes place after a significant and life-altering personal failure. It is in the second choice to follow where we are broken and without hope that the words of the Lord, “Follow Me” can have a deeper impact on our lives. It is in the second following that we are able to experience the depth of God’s unshakable love for us – a love expressed when we did not think another chance was possible.
As it happens I am in the midst of writing a message about Peter’s denial – thank you Garris! I chose to begin it by contrasting the first call of the apostle on the banks of the Jordan, as recorded in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, with his later failure: “Peter’s fall was tragic indeed, especially when one remembers the high hopes which must have attended his first becoming a follower of Jesus. As we retrace in our imagination those early days, when all lay bathed in the morning-light of that encounter, we can comprehend how sadly removed is this episode from the springtime of faith. In that vernal period, when surging hope and unbounded confidence are the hallmark of vision, there is no conception that the road may be marked by suffering and failure, and that these may be a necessary way of reaching the goal – that the dream must die before it can be resurrected in new potency, purity and power.