January 4

‘Peter said unto Him, Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now?’ – John 13:37

                I am an impatient being. Like most people, I see what I want and do whatever I can to get it at the soonest possible moment. An example of this occurred just two days ago.            

I was at a gas station counter, impatiently waiting for a man to check his two dozen scratch tickets. At the beginning of my wait, I stayed calm. However, as the line began to form behind me, I felt obligated to express my displeasure at waiting through the occasional over-stated groan or the constant weight shifting (arms folded for emphasis), as if to say ‘Hey guys, it’s not MY fault you’re stuck here!’.                

After the man finished   checking his tickets, I got pretty stoked. It was almost my turn! There was just one more guy in front of me…that’s about the time that he pulled out another dozen scratch tickets to be checked. I lost whatever cool I had, muttered something under my breath, and headed for the door.  As I sat in my truck in the parking lot, I looked in through the window. All the people behind me were still in line, some of them had even started a conversation. No one else seemed to be irritated as I was. I began to realize that not only did I not get the item that I went to the store for in the first place, I made a perfect ass of myself instead.  Thanks for the lesson God.

God gives us empty spaces (waiting in line, waiting for a letter, waiting at the doctor’s office, waiting on promotion etc.) all the time. It is during these times that God teaches us to know ourselves. We learn about service or patience or, maybe we simply aren’t sanctified to move on to our next stage of spiritual development. If we are not patient through the empty times, we will never know.

Peter could not follow Jesus because Jesus was the only one worthy of sacrifice, the only unblemished lamb. Moreover, Jesus knew that Peter would deny Him three times. He knew this even before Peter did. Peter did not know himself well enough to even recognize his own inadequacy. So, Jesus made Peter wait. He gave Peter an empty time during which Peter presumably learned to stand steadfast in faith and to not be ashamed of his relationship with Jesus.

We cannot follow Jesus until we know ourselves. We cannot know ourselves until we are still in the quiet places in order to hear what God has to say. If we do not take the opportunity to know ourselves, and thus cannot follow God, our lives are doomed to impulse. We will attempt to anticipate from where our trials will come and which lessons we are to have learned, but they will be false because only in the light of Jesus Christ can these things be known.

To follow impulse is follow our natural devotion. Peter naturally pleaded to lay his life down for Christ. However we know that Peter could not be the sacrifice in Christ’s place. If we are to move away from natural devotion, we must embrace discipleship. We must become the student of Christ and use our gifts for Him at the time which He makes apparent.