The apostle Peter had done the unimaginable. He had denied that he even knew Jesus. He did it not once, not twice, but three times on that dark night. We have no idea what he was thinking. Maybe he was scared that they would crucify him with Jesus. Maybe he simply did not want to align himself with a failed leader who was about to die. Maybe there was something darker in his soul that we will never know. No matter the reason, he denied knowing the man who he previously had said he would stay beside till the bitter end.

Fast forward several days. Jesus is resurrected. The apostles have seen it in person. They have touched the nailed scared hands and felt the power of life over death. I am sure Peter wanted to talk to Jesus and explain what had happened. He wanted Jesus to know his contrition over the previous events. Finally in John 21 we are told that Peter gets his chance to talk to Jesus. John 21:15-19 tells the story. Three times Jesus asks this deeply penetrating question, “Simon Peter, son of John, do you love me?” Scholars tell us that Peter and Jesus keep changes the Greek words for love and sheep/lambs that they are using. In fact, I have heard entire sermons based off of this changing of words and their meaning. On top of that, I have preached on the number of times that Jesus asks this question. Three times Peter denied and three times Jesus asks about love. A reaffirmation for every denial. Finally one day I looked at what Jesus told Peter after after Peter had responded that he loved Jesus. All three times Jesus says something about his followers. “Feed my lambs,” “Take care of my sheep,” and “Feed my sheep.” Then I noticed something I had never seen before. After Peter had failed Jesus did not tell him to take some time to heal. He did not tell him to sit back and come to peace with what had happened. He didn’t even tell him to step away from ministry for a time and focus on his own soul. Jesus does the unthinkable. He tells Peter to get back up and start serving other people. Jesus words for Peter are that he needs to teach other people, care for other people and preach the gospel to others.

My fear is that when we fail we tend to turn the focus back onto ourselves. We use our difficult situation as a place to sit back and “be fed,” which is our way of saying “do nothing.” Maybe Jesus is pushing us another direction. Maybe the best answer to our failure is to reaffirm our love for Jesus and then start serving. Maybe we need to take the focus off of ourselves and put it onto others. Nothing helps people grow more than teaching. Maybe Jesus knows that we should not withdrawal from community when we fail, but rather embrace community as we work through forgiveness together. Maybe Jesus knows that our greatest failure can be our greatest point of service. Who better to speak to people who are struggling with doubt than Thomas and who better to speak to those who have failed Jesus than Peter.

Every time I fail I find myself back on the seashore with Peter ready to offer up my excuses. Jesus patiently listens and then tells me to feed his sheep. I look for an easier answer, but so far I have found none. Christian service is not about being perfect, it is about standing up and serving even when I have failed.

This is a phrase I have hated for years. I hate it for a couple of reasons. First, it is not found anywhere in the Bible. I think we should call Bible things by Bible names and this does not fit that description. Second, I really dislike the word relationship to describe how I follow Jesus. Again it is not Biblical and the Biblical words are follow and obey. Having a relationship sounds very feminine and I think can lead to men rejecting Jesus (But that is another blog for a different day).

With all that said, the older I get in my walk with Christ the more I starting to embrace the concept. The main reason is because relationships have dynamics that are hard to explain. If you asked me to describe my relationship with my wife or my parents or my children, it would be hard for me to explain how I think and feel about those people. I could give you some facts about how many times we have said this or done that, but that still falls short of what my exact relationship with those people is like.

I am starting to think this is also true in my following of Jesus. If you wanted to know about my relationship with Jesus I could tell you about how many times I have been to Church or how many books of the Bible I have read or even how many times. But is that a relationship with Jesus? A relationship is an ever evolving thing that changes in dynamic with each new experience. How can I explain to you the comfort of my faith when my best friend died? How can I make you feel the depth of forgiveness I felt after I sinned in a major way? What words would describe that quiet joy I felt with the birth of each of my children? Is there any way to explain how I felt when the money that came in unexpectedly when I had a bill that was about to go unpaid?

Through the years I have had numerous personal experiences with Jesus in my life of faith that you will never fully understand. In the same way that I cannot fully explain the relationship I have with my parents or the love I feel for my wife or the joy and heartache my children bring into my life, I cannot fully tell you what it is like to spend a life with Jesus. I want people to know what it is like. I want you to know what it is like. But to fully understand what it is like to follow Jesus you need to experience for yourself – or said in another way – you need to have your own personal relationship with Jesus.

I few months ago my wife and I asked one of my boys about girls. He explained how he didn’t have time for them. He had no interest in any type of relationship with any girl. Now, six months later he can’t go more that a few hours without texting one of them. He is head over heals for a girl. You know, one of those creatures he didn’t have time for? We asked him what changed in his mind and he had no answer. Something happened that flipped his life upside down and he had no idea what happened or how to explain it. I think the same thing can be true between us and Jesus.

What is a like to follow Jesus? That is hard to explain, but I can promise you that it will change your life.

I love to read blogs and I am always bookmarking the best stuff. I also love to share what I am reading

Here are two about family and two about Church

Church –

1. 14 Characteristics of Guest Friendly Churches is over HERE [you might also check out THIS POST too]

2. Would you rather? Competing choices for growing Churches is over HERE

Family –

1. 5 Bad Substitutes for Discipline is over HERE

2. Real Life Job Descriptions for Dads – over HERE – made me smile.

I read this article today and it touched me. It is entitled “She is a Public Nuisance” and was published on challies.com by Tom Challies and David Murray

My neighbor is a public nuisance. It’s official, actually. She has been declared a nuisance which means the police are no longer obligated to respond to her phone calls. And she calls them a lot.

I first encountered Elizabeth a few years ago when I saw her propped up on crutches, trying to sweep several centimeters of snow off her very long driveway. I grabbed a shovel, cleared off her drive, and have been doing it ever since (see here). She is a fascinating woman who has lived in this neighborhood since before I was even born. She is well advanced in years and full of fascinating stories. But, sadly, she is losing her grip on reality. Through a long history of belligerent behavior and a shorter history of paranoia, she has alienated herself from every other neighbor. She has a reputation in this neighborhood and is the butt of many jokes. Most people just know to keep their distance.

Elizabeth recently called me over to her home to have me replace a lightbulb in her basement. While I was there, sorting through a box of many, many long-dead lightbulbs, she explained her most recent crisis. She had awoken from a nap just a few minutes earlier to find that someone had snuck into her house and varnished half of her coffee table while she slept. She was beside herself with concern and was planning to call the police. I looked around and saw every evidence that she had varnished half of her table, taken a nap, and, upon awaking, forgotten that she had ever begun. But I couldn’t exactly tell her that, could I? She called the police who opted not to respond.

This is just the most recent in a long series of similar incidents. Last year she accused local politicians of sneaking into her car port and dumping oil underneath her [very old] car as come kind of retaliation. She was upset and perplexed that the police didn’t believe her and refused to write up a report. Before that she accused local garden center workers of prowling her garden at night, splitting her hostas, and carrying away half of each plant. And before that she was convinced that the mayor had sent a team to break into her house and spray her furniture with a clear coat. Again, the police did not buy her story.

Our neighbors find this all hilarious, but I find it sad. It is sad to see her descending into paranoia and living on the edge of reality. She lives on her own, her sons have little to do with her, and she is steadily growing worse. But despite it all, she maintains her independence and walks to the grocery store just about every day, summer or winter, rain or snow. She tells me she is a medical test-case who has refused every medication doctors have offered her, and she just keeps going. Every Halloween she hands out grapes and bananas to the few children who will brave her driveway, every Christmas she brings my kids a little gift of hot chocolate, every summer she leaves her garden wild and untouched and considers it her pride and joy. And almost every week she finds another reason to call the police or to write another letter to the local newspaper. As eccentric as she is, I consider it a privilege to know her.

I have another neighbor who is quite a lot younger than Elizabeth. He is advanced and successful in his career. He makes lots of money and is quickly climbing the corporate ladder. He drives a nice car and speaks highly of himself and his accomplishments. He engages in banter with all the neighbors (except Elizabeth) and is well-known, well-liked and much admired. But he is also proudly atheistic, boldly denying the very existence of God.

Of these two neighbors, which is more to be pitied? Which of the two lives under the greater delusion? Is it the neighbor who can’t remember that she began to varnish her coffee table, or the neighbor who denies the very existence of his Creator? The Bible tells us “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’ (Psalm 14:1).” Romans 1 insists “[W]hat can be known about God is plain to [all humanity], because God has shown it to them (v. 19).” One of my neighbors is succumbing to age and infirmity and living in a sad fantasy. The other is willfully blinding himself to the most obvious reality in the world—that he and all that he sees and experiences have been made and formed by the Creator. He, by far, is most to be pitied because he, by far, is in the most perilous condition.

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself…

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.
I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.

This was adapted from a sermon by Dr James Allan Francis in “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons” © 1926 by the Judson Press of Philadelphia (pp 123-124 titled “Arise Sir Knight!”).

I know this has been around a while but it bears repeating.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Jesus may submit to being marginalized, but not to being generalized. With other great religious leaders, we are satisfied once we have extracted the essence of their teaching from their sacred texts. Stories about Buddha, for instance, are didactic rather than dramatic; the narrative arc of his life is relatively unimportant to his message. The Tao-te Ching yields useful instructions for ordering one’s perception of life. No one worries about discovering the “real” Loa-tzu behind the words. But with Jesus, the story is important, and we want it to be about a real person. Where did he come from? What did he do? Who were his friends and enemies? Why did he die? What happened next?”

– from “Looking for Jesus” by Virginia Stem Owens

Everyone has an opinion about Jesus. Many of us think he was God in the flesh while others do not. Almost everyone can come to the agreement that Jesus at the very least was a good teacher.

I was sitting in the home of a woman named Angela and her cohabitant whose name I can’t remember. She had been reading and learning about Jesus and had several questions for me as a preacher. We talked about Jesus and his life and ministry. The conversation had been going for a while, probably over a half hour, when the man chimed in his thoughts. “Jesus had it right,” he said, “If we all just loved our enemies and turned the other cheek, the world would be a much better place.” Angela and I finished our conversation but his words still lingered in my head.

As the providence of God would have it I was preaching on the life of Jesus a couple of weeks later. The sermon was about Jesus’ life and teaching. I used the man’s words as an illustration for the sermon and then I stated the obvious – at least to me. Jesus was a good teacher with nice words that people liked in his day and still do now. The problem, as I see it, is what happened to that good teacher who taught nice things. The people heard his words and then turned around and crucified him. It appears Jesus was killed trying to be a nice person.

The reality is this, God may want us to live a nice life following a Good teacher, but the problem is the evil in my heart that rejects his good teaching. Jesus brought us a new way to live but his greatest gift was that he handled the evil inside me through his death on the cross. Receiving the grace of God is bigger than turning the other cheek.

Today I am thankful that Jesus was more than a good teacher, because his nice life that led to his death was for my salvation.

I occasionally like to post links to articles that are insightful. Sometimes I like to link to posts that are generating a buzz around the internet.

Christian writer and researcher Thom Rainer posted THIS BLOG last Friday about why guests do not return.

The number one item on his list has generated numerous discussions all over the web. So this morning Mr. Rainer posted a follow-up post RIGHT HERE that is worth reading.

Hopefully these are thought provoking.

*Update* Another follow-up post was added HERE on Nov. 5