Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”
And if it happens that he says to you, “I will not go away from you,” because he loves you and your house, since he prospers with you, then you shall take an awl and thrust it through his ear to the door, and he shall be your servant forever.
Also, to your female servant you will do likewise.
After these things Jesus showed Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and in this way He showed Himself: Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together.
Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.”
They said to him, “We are going with you also.”
They went out and immediately got into the boat, and that night they caught nothing.
But when the morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
Then Jesus said to them, “Children, have you any food?”
They answered Him, “No.”
And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.”
So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish.
Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”
Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he had removed it, and plunged into the sea.
But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from land, but about two hundred cubits, dragging the net with fish.
Then, as soon as they had come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread.
Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish which you have just caught.”
Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to land, full of large fish, one hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not broken.
Jesus said to them, “Come and eat breakfast.”
Yet none of the disciples dared ask Him, “Who are You?” knowing that it was the Lord.
Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish.
This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead.
So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?”
He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”
He said to him, “Feed My lambs.”
He said to him again a second time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?”
He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”
He said to him, “Tend My sheep.”
He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?”
Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?”
And he said to Him, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep.”
“Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.”
This He spoke, signifying by what death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, “Follow Me.”
We love Him because He first loved us.
Lord, we ask You to open Your Word to us and speak to us from it. We entrust ourselves to the Holy Spirit. Lord, You have something to say, and we ask that You would be able to do that. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Ignore the Old Testament for the first time. In talking about denying yourself, I know that I have been a little different in my approach. I have not given you a how-to list—this is how you do it and so forth. Rather, we have been looking at the fact that we deny ourselves not because we have to, but because we see that there is a greater purpose at hand.
That greater purpose is that we be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. Again, it is not a list of do’s and don’ts written out for us. Like Paul, we find that the life of Christ in us is what disciples us and leads us into denying ourselves.
The beginning of discipleship is to deny yourself daily and follow Him. The end of our discipleship is that we become like our Master. Even the Lord Jesus said that it is enough for a disciple to be like his master.
The Lord said, “I came to serve, not to be served.” So, to be like our Master means that we are conformed to the image of Christ, and in that image we become servants of the Most High God. That is the end. That is why we have been saved.
I believe there was a brother from North Carolina who, when asked, “What is the purpose of man? Why did God make man?” said, “To serve God.” When you come down to it, we are to be men and women like Christ. Christ came to serve, and in the same way, we have been saved that we might serve the living God in newness of life. That is what it is all about.
I would like to talk about the deep work of the cross. I do not mean the cross that we are doing; I mean the deep work of the cross that Christ bore for us. His work on the cross is what makes us able to carry the little cross we have, in comparison with the cross He bore for us.
I want to look at three things that show us this deep work. It is a deep work. It cuts beneath the surface.
One reason we are able to play the Christian game is that we always look to the surface. If my surface is okay, then I am okay. But even as Victor shared about the law, it is not the surface. It is not merely that I do not commit adultery; it is that if I lust, I have committed adultery in my heart. It is a deep thing.
The work of Christ on the cross is a deep thing. It is not a little paper cut to us. It is a decision that goes in and does surgery. It is a deep cut through the bone, through the façade, through the hard parts of us, and down to the tender part where, when you touch it, you feel it.
A lot of us come to conferences and hear ministries, and it is like water off a goose’s back. Remember Tuesday, when it rained really, really hard? You were in your groups that first day, and it was pouring. I could not get back to my dorm because it was raining so hard. There were all these Canadian geese standing out in that deluge.
You know how you can tell a Canadian goose, right? What do they say? “Honk, eh?” They were standing out in the rain, and it was just like, “Hey, is it raining? I do not know. Just water off my back.”
Some of us have a hardness. We have been Christianized. We know what to do. We come to conferences, go to meetings, have a quiet time—but we have developed that oil, like the oil on a goose’s feathers. Things cannot get in. They touch us, but they roll off.
But if we really see the work of the cross—the cross of Jesus—and if we really have the Lord reveal to us what that means for us, it gets below the surface and reaches the fleshy part. When you touch it, it is sensitive.
Sometimes, when you get a really deep cut and touch it, it hurts. It is sensitive. I will tell you this: at the beginning, the cross does hurt. Even the cross of the Lord hurts, because we find out who we are. We see who we are, and that hurts.
But the wonderful thing is that, even though it hurts, it is redemptive. That is why the Lord went to the cross: to redeem us.
I want to look at three things today that show us that deep work of the cross:
After each section, I want to share a hymn. I think each hymn sums up the response to each vision of the cross. It is a response from us.
I want to look at a verse in Malachi, and I want to take it a little out of context. In Malachi 1, the Lord says, “I have loved you,” and they respond, “In what way have You loved us?” It is spoken as a complaint: “Well, show me.”
But I do not want to look at it in that way. I just want to take those words and ask the question, “Lord, please show me how You have loved me.”
It is not just that You went to the cross for me. There are things that lead up to our realization of what the Lord did on the cross for us—things that show us that He loved us. When we ask the Lord, He answers us. Sometimes the answer is no; sometimes it is wait, because we are not ready for it. But He answers.
Like the disciples in the upper room before the Lord died and went to the cross, He said, “I have many things to tell you, but you are not ready for them.” Sometimes He waits until we are ready—until we go through an experience that makes us ready.
We go through a problem or a change in our lives, and suddenly we are ready. Now the Lord can speak to us.
I remember one of my daughters. She is really quite fashionable, but she was always asking, “Why can’t I wear this?” We would be getting ready to go to a meeting, and she would ask, “Why can’t I wear this?” We would say, “Well, some guys might look at that.” Her response was, “That is their problem.” That is the way the flesh is: “It is not my problem; it is their problem.”
Then, when the Lord really touched her while she was in college, she called me and said, “Yeah, Dad, I really feel I ought to watch the way I dress, because other people might see this.” I had been telling her that for years, but she was not ready. It took something to happen before she was ready, and then she heard it. That is what counts.
The bondservant says, “I love my master, and I do not want to go away from him.” Something must have happened to make him love his master. That is the key. Why would someone say, “I want to serve you forever. I want to be a slave—no rights, no pay—forever”? What would make him do that?
In Deuteronomy, and also in Exodus, we see that Israelites sometimes sold themselves into slavery when they went broke. Under the law, a master could have a slave for six years, but in the seventh year he had to let him go free.
Here you have a person who has probably served his master for six years. At the end of those years, what would make him say, “I want to keep being a slave”? That is not natural.
The ear of the bondservant will never be pierced unless the heart of the bondservant has been touched in some deep way.
This is not a façade. When you say, “I want my ear nailed to that wall, and I want to serve you forever,” that is not a light thing. It is not merely saying, “How many want to be bondservants?” and everyone responding, “Oh, we want to be bondservants,” because we are doing a religious exercise.
When it comes down to it, though, and it means you have no rights, you may say, “Well, let me rethink this.” So what happened to this bondservant?
In John 13, Jesus took His disciples and washed their feet. Feet can be some of the most awful things in the world. Back then they wore sandals, but even now, with our Nikes and little footy socks, feet can be embarrassing.
It can be difficult going into some Chinese or Korean homes, because you have to take your shoes off. My feet sweat, and you are always wondering about it as you leave your shoes at the front door.
Jesus did not wash their heads. He did not wash their hands. He took their feet. Why their feet? In this world, that is where they walked. That is where they picked up all the grime.
But the bottom of the feet is also one of the most sensitive parts of your body. Have you ever been hit on the bottom of your foot, between the heel and the ball of the foot? It hurts.
The feet are very sensitive. Here you have Peter, and Peter is the first one the Lord comes to. What does Peter say? “You shall never wash my feet.”
That is who we are. We do not want anyone to clean us up. We can clean ourselves up. We do not want someone touching the most sensitive place. We do not want someone to see how dirty our feet are. That is a private matter.
But the Lord says, “I have to wash your feet, because if you do not let Me wash your feet, you have no part with Me.” In other words, our feet represent our natural man. We do not want our natural man to be cleansed by Him. We say, “We will clean it ourselves. We can do it ourselves.”
The Lord says, “No. I have to do it. I have to touch you there. I have to wash you there.” It had to be very humbling for Peter to let the Lord do that. Then Jesus washed all of them, even the feet of Judas, who betrayed Him.
We have to be touched deeply. We have to be touched in the part that is most sensitive before we can really respond. The deeper the response, the more lasting the result.
When something does not matter much to us, there is not much response. Some things are hidden until a time comes when they can be touched and responded to. The Lord is wonderfully persistent. He says, “Okay, can I wash your feet now?”
The Lord wants to love you. When we look at this master’s house, and we think of the house of God, we ask, “How has God loved us?”
The bondservant is someone who has already been there for a long time. We might compare him with the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. The older brother was in the house, just like the younger brother, but he never saw the goodness of his father.
His attitude was, “How come You have not done anything for me? I have been working all this time.” But it is not to be you working. Look at what you have. Look at what the Father has given you.
For some of us, we know the Lord’s love because He has put a hedge around us that has kept us from all sorts of evil things.
We were talking in our dorm room—Dana, John Smith, and I—about the times in which we grew up. Dana graduated from high school in 1962. I graduated in 1971, and John graduated with Methuselah, I think. No—John, I think, graduated in 1969.
We were talking about the difference in the eras we grew up in and the things we faced. Dana was saying, “We did not have the problems that you guys have. It was a much simpler time. We did not worry about drugs or things like that.”
By my time, there were drugs and the free-love movement. But the Lord hedges us. He puts a hedge around us.
Drugs were real in my day. Everybody on the basketball team was smoking and doing hallucinogenics. My two brothers were what we called “heads” in those days, which meant they did drugs. But I did not do drugs.
I did not do drugs because my older brother put a hedge around me. We were at a Jimi Hendrix concert, and people were passing things around. I thought, “Okay, I will take some of this.” My brother put his hand on my shoulder, pulled me close, and said, “If you do that, I am going to beat the living daylights out of you.”
Now, he was thinking about my basketball career. He did not want me to mess it up. But that was a hedge.
How many of us have had hedges around us? Maybe in the home in which we grew up, we were protected from a lot of things simply by having parents there. Maybe, if our parents were not there, we had loving grandparents who knew the Lord and helped us.
Can you look back and see how the Lord has hedged you? Can you see how He has put a hedge around you so that you have not fallen into sin and have not had to be brought back from the boat again? What a wonderful thing it is that the Lord has put a hedge around some of us.
Another way we have been blessed in His house is that we have been given brothers and sisters with whom to run the race—like-minded people with the same heart for the Lord.
I am sorry that I use examples from my own life, but I think that when you use examples from your own life, they become real. Sometimes we use examples from the Bible and say, “Oh yeah, that is just the Bible.”
When I first got saved, I did not know what that meant. It was three or four years before I really found out, “Oh, I am a Christian. That is what this means.”
I was going to a hippie church that met in Covina Park. My two brothers had gotten saved, and then I met three other guys: Lou Police, Jerry Linaber, and Ed Lee. We were all fresh. Some had rededicated their lives, and some had just been born again. We all wanted to serve the Lord and follow Him.
We were led into a Bible study taught by Lou Police’s dad. That opened up something wonderful to us: the richness of the Word. We had never studied the Word before. We read our Bibles, but it was always preached to us. Now we were studying the Word, and it opened everything up to us.
We encouraged one another. When one was down, another picked him up. One would admonish another. The Lord gave us all those wonderful things.
The Lord also gives us older brothers and sisters. I know some of you look at older brothers and sisters and think they are no fun. You see an older saint and imagine that she is saying, “They were not calling the right songs. That is pronounced Isaiah, not Isaiah.”
You may think the older saints are judging you all the time. But, brothers and sisters, I had a couple of older saints—especially a couple of ladies—who really got me on the right road.
After I finished my basketball eligibility, I quit college with only four classes left for my degree. I was floundering around. I was a gardener for a while and a carpenter for a while. That did not pan out.
These wonderful ladies would see me and say, “Well, Jim, you only have four classes left. Do you not think you should just finish it? Just think of all the doors that will open for you.” How can you resist that?
She did not say, “You are being stupid, Jim. Just go and do it.” It was so entreating. So I finished.
Then Judy Stover and others said, “Now that you have your degree, why do you not think about teaching?” So I became a teacher.
Older saints were the encouragers. Sometimes they were comforters when things were not going right. They were teachers when we did not know what was going on. They were admonishers when we got off track.
When the bondservant says, “I love my master, and I love his house. I do not want to leave,” the master can say, “Okay, I want you to stay,” and pierce his ear. It is because we have tasted these things—not merely learned about them, but tasted them.
I tasted the goodness of being with other brothers with the same desires. I tasted the help of older saints who encouraged me. I tasted the hedge around me. I experienced those things, and I came to the place of saying, “I want to stay here.”
I love, I love my Master;
I will not go out free,
For He is my Redeemer;
He paid the price for me.
I would not leave His service;
It is so sweet and blest;
And in the weariest moments
He gives the truest rest.
My Master shed His lifeblood
My vassal life to win,
And saved me from the bondage
Of tyrant self and sin.
He chose me for His service,
And gave me power to choose
That blessed, perfect freedom
Which I shall never lose.
I would not have my service
His only it must be;
His only, Who so loved me
And gave Himself for me.
Rejoicing and adoring,
Henceforth my song shall be:
I love, I love my Master;
I will not go out free.
When you look at this hymn, why is this person saying, “I love my Master”? It is because of all the things the Master has done for him.
What man would want to be a bondservant to a master who was overbearing and cruel? None of us would. But here we have seen the love of God and tasted the love of God. It has won us. It is that love that draws us to the place of saying, “I want to serve You forever. I do not want to leave this.”
Secondly, we have this idea of Peter going fishing. This is the third time Peter goes back to his boat.
In John 1, Peter comes to the Lord, and that is when the Lord calls him Cephas. Simon, now your name is Cephas. Then the next time we find him, he is out in the boat and Jesus calls him. So I suppose he went back to the boat the first time.
In Matthew 4 and Mark 1, they are back in the boat, and the Lord calls them. Then in Luke 5, we find them back in the boat again. The Lord comes, and Peter says, “I am a sinful man. Depart from me.” But the Lord says, “Do not fear. Come and follow Me.”
Peter follows Him all the way until the Lord goes to the cross. After Peter denies Him and the Lord is raised from the dead, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared first to Cephas. He restored him.
Peter denied Him three times. Is that not gracious? The Lord did not wait for Peter to come to Him. He went out to Peter and said, in effect, “I knew you were going to do that. I told you. But I love you, Peter. I forgive you.”
Then Peter is there again after the resurrection, wondering, “What do I do now?” It is just like some of us. We get saved, and then we do not know what to do, so we go fishing.
When I first got saved, I was seventeen. I had that sense that the Lord had filled me and flooded me with joy. I went to tell my friend Phil Kaup, who lived a couple of miles away. I went where my car went and said, “Phil, Phil, guess what?”
He said, “What?” I said, “I am saved. I am saved.” He said, “You are saved?” I said, “Yeah, I am saved.” He said, “What does that mean?” I said, “I do not know.”
For the next couple of years, I just went back to my boat because I did not know what it meant. I think Peter was asking, “What do I do now?” So he went back to his boat.
For some of us, going back to our boat just means that we want to get on with our lives in the way we want. When the Lord comes to Peter, the first thing He says is, “Have you caught anything?”
That is a great opening, is it not? You go off to do your own thing, and then you find yourself dry, like the prodigal son, eating the husks of the pigs. The Lord comes and asks, “Have you caught anything?”
It is an innocent question, but it is a deep question. “Do you have any food?” And Peter has to answer, “No, I do not.” It is like saying, “I have wasted my time.”
The Lord did not say, “Well, you should not have gone out there.” He said, “Cast the net on the other side.” They had a great catch. Then He said, “Come and eat,” and He prepared a meal for them.
Then He says to Peter, “Do you love Me?” The first question is, “Do you love Me more than these?”
What does He mean? Some say He meant the other disciples—Peter’s friends and relationships. “Do you love Me more than these relationships? Maybe these relationships are the things that took you away.”
Or perhaps He meant Peter’s nets and his boat. “Do you love Me more than these?” Maybe He was speaking of Peter’s business, vocation, or the thing that drove him.
I loved basketball. I wanted basketball more than anything else. I would not have girlfriends so that I could play basketball. That is pretty hardcore, is it not? If a girl wanted to see me, she could find me at the gym between games.
What is your equipment? What is the thing that drives you away? Maybe it is both the activity and the people with whom you do it. “I like these things, and I like doing them with these people. If that is not good enough, too bad, because that is what I want to do.”
The Lord asks, “Do you love Me more than these?” That is a deep question. It is not something we should answer quickly: “Oh, of course I love You more than these.” We have to ponder it.
After Jesus asked Peter three times, Peter said, “Oh, Lord, You know all things.” We can give an answer from the façade. We can be at a conference or a meeting, and when someone asks us, we can say, “Yes, I love You.” But this is deeper than that.
When the Lord gets us alone, He asks us. He took Peter aside and talked with him. Peter said, “Lord, You know. You know that I love You.”
Deep down in Peter’s heart, he had already been touched by the Lord. We may not be able to see the love we have, but do not measure your commitment to the Lord merely by how much you love Him. Your love will always seem lacking. Your love will never be enough for Him.
But that does not matter to Him. He takes you from where you are. He asks, “Do you love Me?” When He receives that response, He says, “I have something for you to do.” He puts you back on course again.
Peter becomes like the prodigal. The Lord comes back and gets you from wherever you are.
Think of Joseph and his brothers in Genesis. His brothers threw him into a pit, planned to kill him, and then sold him. They lied to their father, killed a goat, put its blood on Joseph’s coat, and said, “Do you recognize this coat? We found it.”
For years, the guilt remained with them. When they came back to Egypt, they said, “This is because of what we did to Joseph.” It was still hanging on them after all that time.
What brought them back to Joseph? The Lord used circumstances. He brought a famine. A famine is not just something where there is no food for a couple of months. You can die from famine. This famine lasted seven years.
The Lord let things dry up. He let them run their natural course until they came.
As things decrease around us, we get diminishing returns. We may like something very much, but soon we have to do it more to get the same buzz from it. Joy decreases when we are away from the Lord. Friends leave us. Things begin to dry up.
Jacob came to the point of saying, “Joseph is gone. Simeon is gone. Now they are going to take Benjamin. All these things are against me.”
But the very things that seemed against them brought them back to Joseph. Joseph revealed himself to them, brought them into his place, and forgave them completely.
Even then, Joseph’s brothers had a hard time believing that they were forgiven. After Jacob died, they came to Joseph and said, “Our father said that you need to forgive us.” Joseph wept and said, “I have already forgiven you. Do you not realize that God meant it for good?”
When we go through famines, God means these things for good: to draw us back to Himself.
I was eating with Sam from Vancouver, David from here, and David’s brother Samuel. Sam asked me, “How did you know about your calling?”
I do not remember being called to speak, but I remember going on a basketball tour. I told you the first day that I did not have the amen to it. I loved basketball. I wanted to do that.
I thought, “If I can become famous as a basketball player, think how wonderfully the Lord can use me. If I were LeBron James, what a witness I would have.” So I went my own way.
I had to find out that I had gone my own way, and I was sick of myself. I was in New Zealand, and there were no other Christians really walking with the Lord. There were a couple of nominal guys, but I was alone.
I was sitting on a bench at ten o’clock at night. It was summer down there, so the sun was still up. No one was on the street. I was alone, and I started to weep, saying, “God, I am so sorry that I am in this place, terrible and so far away.”
Then I had that experience on an airplane. I was flying from New Zealand to Australia and writing a letter to my sister. I had a real sense that the Lord was saying, “You are Mine now. You know you are Mine. This life is not for you. You have to put it down. When you get back home, you have to put it down.”
I remember writing my sister, “I cannot be the way I was anymore. I cannot do these things anymore. My life is going to be totally different.”
That was when I recognized the Lord saying, “Do you love Me?” You have to say, “Lord, You know I do.” Then He says, “You are Mine. I will take you from there.”
You may go to the boat, but He is waiting for that response. He will come out and wait on the seashore for you. He will ask, “Have you caught anything?” You will be honest with Him, and He will draw it out of you.
The whole thing renews the call—the call to “Follow Me.” At the end of that section in John 21, He says, “Follow Me.”
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
That is the cross of self-denial. We give back to the Lord the life we had taken away from Him, and our life becomes richer and fuller.
Finally, consider the prophetic word to Peter in John 21:18-19.
“Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.”
This He spoke, signifying by what death he would glorify God.
This is prophetic because Peter was the one who denied the Lord and the one who went back to the boat. What the Lord is really saying is, “You are going to come through.”
The Lord is speaking of the kind of death Peter would die. Peter would literally be crucified. The Lord is saying, “I see it. I know it. I am telling you right now: you are going to get all the way through.”
That is a wonderful prophetic word. We may say, “I know myself, and I cannot see that happening.” But the Lord says, “Do not worry about it. I know it. I am telling you, you are going to get all the way through. Just follow Me.”
We do not know what lies ahead of us. We look at ourselves through our history and say, “If I was a failure in the past, and I am a failure now, I guess I will be a failure in the future too.”
I want to use the picture of a wedding as an example. It is a terrible comparison when we are talking about the kind of death Peter would die, but here is the point: when a couple begins a new life together, they do not know what is ahead of them.
Should they be afraid? Should they fear what is coming? When you get married, the minister or justice of the peace says to the groom first, “Will you take so-and-so to be your lawful wedded wife?”
Then come the vows: for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health. “Will you take her whether things turn out good or bad? If she becomes poor? If sickness comes?” And he says, “Yes, I will.”
That is a wonderful thing for a woman to hear, because now she has a covering. That vow becomes a covering. What the man is saying is, “Whatever happens, I still love you, and you are still mine.”
But now, thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
And He that formed thee, O Israel:
Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,
I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
For I am the Lord thy God,
The Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour:
I gave Egypt for thy ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba for thee.
Since thou wast precious in My sight,
Thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee:
Therefore will I give men for thee,
And people for thy life.
We do not know the future, but Someone does. The Lord says, “I know you through and through. Fear not. I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are Mine.”
When you pass through the waters—not if you pass through the waters, but when—you will face hard times, and He says, “I will be with you.” Through the rivers, they will not overflow you. They will not overcome you.
When you walk through the fire—not if, but when—you will not be burned. You are going to go through the fire, but just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you will not be consumed.
The Lord has already said to you, “I will take you for better or worse. I will take you for richer or poorer. I will take you in sickness and in health. You are Mine. I paid the price for you, and I will not give you up.”
You may have your problems, your failings, and your shortcomings, but the Lord has none of those. He is not like man after Adam. His love is eternal. His love never grows cold. He loves us with an everlasting love.
I am the Lord’s! O joy beyond expression!
O sweet response to voice of love divine;
Faith’s joyous “Yes” to the assuring whisper,
“Fear not: I have redeemed thee, thou art Mine!”
I am the Lord’s! It is the glad confession
Wherewith the bride recalls the happy day
When love’s “I will” accepted Him forever,
The Lord’s to love, to honour, and obey.
I am the Lord’s! Yet teach me all it meaneth,
All it involves of love and loyalty,
Of holy service and unreserved obedience,
And make me, Lord, Thine own eternally.
We do not have these things in ourselves. But as we walk with Him and are discipled to the life of Christ in us, we find what it means to love Him, what loyalty means, what service means, and what unreserved obedience means.
“I am the Lord’s”—body, soul, and spirit. He has given His whole self to us, and we give our whole self to Him. Remember the seamless garment: not merely my religious life, but my whole life.
My leisure time, my school time, my relationships with others—everything. I give my whole self to You: my body, my thoughts, everything. “O seal them irrecoverably Thine, as Thou, Beloved, in Thy grace and fullness, forever and forevermore art mine.”
Before Jesus washed the disciples’ feet in John 13, John said this about Him:
Jesus, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.
I think that means this: He has a purpose for us, and He is going to love us all the way until that purpose is fulfilled—all the way to the end.
He is not going to drop us off and say, “You have gone far enough. Get out here. I am going on because you are not coming with Me.” He will take us all the way to the end.
Just like Peter, the Lord says, “I see it. I see it in the end. You are going to make it through.”
We do not get faith by looking at ourselves. You do not get faith from looking at yourself. You get faith from looking at Jesus, because He is the Author and Finisher of your faith.
When you see Him loving you, faith begins that He is trustworthy. In the end, when we see Him, we will be like Him. He will have completed His whole work.
Will that not be a wonderful day when we enter glory and, all of a sudden, we are like Him completely? Even our bodies will no longer be bodies of death carrying the sin nature. That is His plan for us.
It is His love for us that initiates the response. Our love for Him does not initiate the response, because our love for Him is only a fleshly love. But His love for us brings forth a response.
He loved us first. That is why we love Him.
We love Him because He first loved us.
In the end, we are the finished product. He is the Author and Finisher.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You. We thank You that we have been brought into the love of God by Jesus Christ.
We had no idea that God loved us—that You loved us at all—until we met Jesus Christ. When they told us that He would take away our sins, who could do that? You must love us very much to have given us the greatest treasure that You have: Your Son, Jesus.
Not just on the cross, Lord, but You put Him in us. You are also drawing us to Him and conforming His life in us.
Lord, we confess that our love is not what it should be. We can say we cannot help it, and that is true. It is not what it should be, but we come anyway.
We come just as Peter did. When You say, “Do you love Me?” we say, “Lord, You know all things. You know.” As small as it is—especially as some of us think it is so small—thank You that it is a beginning, and that it is enough for You to begin with.
How gracious You are. How wonderful You are. Lord, help us to see that You are lowly and full of grace and mercy, and that You will take us as we are.
You will take us from this point, just as You took Peter when he got back in the boat again. You said, “Okay, I am here at this point. Now come with Me from here.”
Lord, if we have been away, we want to start right now on the road back. We want to come with You. If we have been with You all the time and have not left, Lord, keep us in the place where we never leave You.
Lord, we thank You that You see the future. We pray that You will say to us, “I see the future, and you will make it through, because I will take you there.”
Oh Lord, how we thank You that You are able to do that. You are able to save to the uttermost those who come to Him. We praise You in Jesus’ name. Amen.