Speaking to Our Hearts

This is another excerpt from my devotions this morning. The passage quoted is from the Gospel of John 21:1-19,

Imagine what it would have been like to be Peter at this moment. Just last week you were eating dinner Jesus, when He turned to you and said, “Peter, the Devil wishes to sift you like wheat, but I have been praying that you will weather the test.” This would certainly raise my awareness. This is the man you have come to see as the very Son of God, the Messiah you’ve been waiting for years to come. The One Who had said you would receive the keys to the kingdom and that upon you He would build His church. And now He’s say the devils wants to “sift you like wheat!” Whatever could he mean? Then Jesus tells you that you will betray Him not once, not twice, but three times during the coming night. Such is unfathomable and of course you deny it adamantly. Yet just a few hours later you find yourself doing the very thing you just swore you would never do. And you do it just as Jesus said you would. Of course you find this a cause for weeping. The devil has come and you have been sifted out. You betrayed the very One who entrusted you to lead His future church. You have failed as a leader among your fellow disciples. Your world is falling apart.
You can’t even bear to watch your Lord’s execution. You feel at a total loss for what to do next. Then you hear from a fellow disciple that Jesus’ body is missing and you run to the tomb only to find the burial cloths folded neatly in the corner. Your world continues to stumble out of control. You decide to back to the one thing you know best. Fishing. Yet you find yourself, even in that, a failure. You and a few fellow disciples spend the night fishing and catch not even one fish.
Then a stranger calls out from the shore and has the nerve to ask you if you’ve caught any fish. Exhausted and tired you and your friends yell back, “No!”
The stranger has the gall to then ask you to try throw your net on the other side. Can he not imagine you haven’t already tried there? Yet you decide to give it a try anyway. Suddenly, the net fills with fish and you find yourself reminded of a previous encounter like this. You begin to realize this is no stranger who called out to you. One of the other disciples speaks aloud the truth your heart has already recognized. “It is the Lord.” You run to meet Him. He then asks you and the other disciples with you to have breakfast with Him.
After the meal, Jesus takes you aside. You want to beg His forgiveness. You want to try and explain your actions. You want to . . . But He beats you to the punch and with loving words speaks right into your heart. Three times He asks if you love Him. Three times you answer that, of course, you do. Three times He asks you to feed His sheep. Maybe it was at the moment, maybe it wasn’t until afterwards. At some point you realize Jesus just reinstated you as His chosen leader for His church.

In this moment Jesus showed immense compassion and insight into the life of Peter. Jesus knew that Peter’s betrayal of him would crush him. He knew it would utterly break his heart and if not treated rightly would ship wreck Christianity before it even got started. This, I think, was what Jesus meant by saying that the devil wished to sift Peter as wheat. I don’t think this is a reference to Peter’s future betrayal, but that Jesus knew Peter’s leadership potential and the very future of His church was on the line. That’s why Jesus spoke to Peter as He did in this passage. He told him the exact words he needed to hear in order to get at the root of the problem. What Peter heard and experienced in the exchange spoke right to his broken heart and floundering leadership ability. Jesus knew exactly what to say to Peter.
Maybe you have problems too many to count, issues too weighty to surmount, a life you are finding very difficult to weather your way through. Maybe you feel a bit like Peter did here. Jesus knows your needs. He is attending to them even now. If you slowed down enough to listen, you might even hear Him whispering the very words you need to hear.