Tag Archives: easter

Reflection, Theology

The Saturday Experience: Your Greatest Weakness as His Greatest Strength (Part III)

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“Come and have breakfast.”
John 21: 4-12

Picture Peter in particular the day after that Friday. Three moments were unbearably tormenting him, swirling round and round in his head. In one instant his mind was flashing to Thursday night when he had boldly declared to his friend and master, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” In the next he felt a stab in his heart, picturing himself just hours later by the charcoal fire, cow-heartedly answering the slave girl, “I am not his disciple…I am not his disciple…I am not his disciple.” And then, immediately after in the early hours of the next morning, the moment when his friend and hero had caught his glance and the caustic tears had begun to flow irrepressibly. Peter knew then that he was a failure.

On Saturday, the day when it seemed all had failed and all that was left were the questions, the disciples needed to wrestle and trust God based on his promises and his proven character.

But the most beautiful thing about this story is that Jesus stays with us even when we fail to do this. Think again on Peter and his story. He and the rest of the disciples really did fail. It wasn’t imagined. They really had betrayed Jesus and let him down. But on Sunday morning when Jesus returns, he isn’t out to get Peter. You would think he would be. No, Jesus knew his frailty and he had prayed for him just as he had promised (Luke 22:31-32). He said that somehow this would work for good, somehow Peter would be able to come out of this experience and encourage others. Jesus was going to take that moment of utmost failure and turn it into the moment of His utmost victory.

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore… When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea… When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them…“Come and have breakfast.” (John 21: 4-12)

Jesus comes once again as a friend, right back to the place where they had first met–at the shore. Peter’s response is to dive into the water. Not proud, not hiding, but running to his Master. At this point, Jesus had already appeared to the disciples twice, but there was still a deeper work to be done in Peter’s heart. Jesus needed to go back to that moment of deepest betrayal, to the very same charcoal fire where he had denied their intimacy. Jesus is specific–in fact this type of fire is only mentioned twice in the entire scriptures: Peter’s betrayal and Peter’s restoration.

Peter had gone back to fishing, his old job. Jesus encounters him right back at the same place where they had met, as if to say, “Peter, it hasn’t all been worthless.” He had seen his very worst moment, but now he invites him to a barbecue on the beach. Where three times Peter had denied their bond, Jesus three times extends his hand in love and draws the words from Peter’s heart, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus takes Peter back to his greatest failure, heals it, and says once again the first words he ever spoke to him, “Follow me.” All was made new.

Through the Saturday Experience, Jesus turned Peter’s greatest weakness into his greatest strength. When Peter ran to him again, Jesus redeemed him and strengthened him so that he could in turn strengthen his brothers. It was after this full restoration that Peter would follow and never again deny him. His previous words about being willing to die, which seemed so hollow on Saturday, were ultimately proven true when Peter himself was later crucified for his Lord.

We may live in the Saturday time, we feel like everything has failed, us, God, the plan, and all we are left with are the questions. But cherish the questions, they are the tool that God will use to deepen your relationship with him. On your Saturday, think deeply about the truth: who God is and what he has promised. Trust him–it’s the only thing that makes sense. Remember that Jesus is with you, he is praying for your by name. If you will run to him, he will turn even your moments of deepest failure into a victory, using you to encourage others and build his church.

On your Saturday, thank him for what he did on Friday and trust him for what he will do on Sunday.

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Apologetics, Reflection, Theology

The Saturday Experience: Finding Peace in the In-Between (Part II)

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On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment…
Luke 23:56

The day after the terror of ‘Good’ Friday, all we are told about the disciples is that they rested. But clearly their rest was far from peaceful. The truth is that Saturday, the day when it seems all has failed and God is absent, is the only pathway to Sunday. But how can we find peace in the midst of the questions?

It is here that the Christian faith differs from all relaxation techniques and methods of peace-finding. As Tim Keller points out, the standard mantra is that one finds peace in the midst of turmoil by thinking less, by escaping to your happy place and getting your mind off the troubling questions. Relaxation spas all over the world are filled with little Buddhas precisely because his system holds that suffering is but another illusion. But Christianity says that in order to find peace on Saturday, the disciples of Jesus shouldn’t have forced themselves to think less, they should have been intent on thinking more about what they believed.

On Saturday a Christian finds peace by fixing his whole mind on two unchanging truths: God’s promises and God’s character.

For the disciples to have peace they needed to think on the promises of God’s word, and especially what the Word in the flesh, Jesus, had told them. Not only had the prophets predicted everything about Jesus, but he himself had predicted what was going to happen. They knew he had prophesied that he would be raised on the third day. He had said it over and over again. This wasn’t something they could have missed. They certainly knew, because Matthew tells us even the Pharisees knew full well about this prophecy. It was mentioned at Jesus’ trial. This is why they put the guards at the tomb, because everyone knew about the prophecy. They just didn’t think it would actually happen. The disciples needed to remember Jesus’ words to them, even though the words didn’t seem to make sense at the time.

The first source of peace on Saturday comes through the promises of God spoken to us corporately through his Word and personally by his Spirit. I need to remember who God says I am, the promises he has made, his prophetic word. This is what God has said to us. We also have God’s written word with promises addressed to us, and we have God’s Spirit speaking to us personally.

On Saturday, we must fix our attention on who God is.

Secondly, not only are promises enough to sustain us, but if we would only think clearly about the truth of who God is we will have a tremendous resource for inner peace. Think about who God is: the all-powerful creator of heaven and earth, he holds time in his hands, he knows the beginning from the end, he is the same yesterday, today and forever, he knew you from your mother’s womb. God is all-powerful, eternal, all-knowing, and says he not only loves but is love. When you add these truths together, along with God’s promises that he works “all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to him purposes”, what possible reason could there be to fear?

On your Saturday, think more about what you believe. Lack of peace doesn’t come from thinking too much, it comes from not thinking enough about the truth.

But once we know these things, we have to actively trust him. This is faith: trusting God’s promises on the basis of who He is and what He has done. Faith is trusting God, not just blindly, for no reason, but on the basis of his character, proven by his actions. What he has done proves to us who he is–that what he has said is worth trusting. Absolute confidence is the only logical response. Not just the best response, but the only response which makes sense. This is what Jesus had and the disciples needed. Jesus knew the word and what needed to happen, then the promises strengthened him for the moment and allowed him to trust his father even when felt most abandoned.

On Saturday we must turn to the truth that will sustain us. We can trust God’s promises because of who he is, and who he is has been proven by what he has done for us.

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Reflection, Theology

The Saturday Experience: Cherish the Questions (Part I)

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On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment…
Luke 23:56

What must the disciples have felt like on Saturday?

They were a failure. The probably blamed themselves personally, wondering what they could have done, regretting haven fallen asleep at such a key moment. They locked themselves away, huddled together in fear. They were so dejected they didn’t even stay for Jesus’ burial. Only the women did. The men must have felt so unmanly and worthless they didn’t even feel worthy to watch the burial. It felt like everything had been lost. Everything they had placed their trust in, worked for, and staked their lives and reputations on was lost. Their fearless leader had been killed, their friend, and in his moment of greatest need they had all abandoned him.

Not only was the cause lost, but all that they thought they had achieved in their own characters was lost. Peter, along with all of Jesus’ closest friends and students, had completely turned his back on him when he needed him most. Betrayal. Imagine your best friend, the one you’ve gone through thick and thin with, had hundreds of meals with, travelled with, lived with, who swore he always had your back and would even die for you if it came to it, at the moment you need him most, denies that he even knows you. He completely stabs you in the back. Peter must have been absolutely inconsolable. Judas’ was a sin of commission, but Peter’s was a sin of omission: failing to do what he should have done. And sins of omission are the ones that people often regret most after someone dies: “I wish I had told her I loved more often”, “I wish I had spent more time with him.”

But come Saturday, it wasn’t only the disciples that had failed, but it seemed God himself had failed also. How could Jesus die? How could the Messiah, the Son of God, the chosen one die? The disciples are in a very unsure place. They are in the ‘in-between time’. The time where they have no idea what God is doing. They are put in the position where they are forced either to trust him, or abandon hope altogether.

This is the Saturday experience. The time in between the horror of the Crucifixion and the joy of the Resurrection where God’s plan is a complete mystery.

It was a Sabbath, the day when they were commanded to rest and acknowledge their lack of control. They are forced to not try to make things right, but just rest. They are powerless.They are in the place where they have to wrestle, and what they are wrestling with are the tough questions. Both their own questions and the questions the accuser is throwing at them. Who was this man? Was he the one, or were they duped? Were they wrong? What do they do now? The disciples seem to be left alone with these haunting questions.

But they were used to questions. Jesus had been a man of deep questions. This was his usual way of teaching, not by spoon-feeding easy, understandable answers, but cutting to the heart with difficult, uncomfortable questions. Sitting and reading the questions of Jesus is a penetrating exercise. On the other hand, of the 183 questions that others ask Jesus in the Gospels, he only directly answers three. Clearly his job is not to give us neat little answers that will satisfy and put all our queries to rest. On the contrary, he wants us to cherish the questions, to wrestle with them and learn their value. This has been God’s way since he struggled with Jacob in the process of making him Israel. By asking he makes us search our own hearts and realise the answers for ourselves. We have to fight for it, but the effect is a change in our character. This is excellent teaching. As good teachers know, by coming to the realisation yourself the lesson sticks with you more profoundly, changing not only your knowledge but your being.

Cherish the questions.

God puts us in the Saturday experience so that we are forced to turn to him. To know him. To have relationship with him. To really rely on him. This is part of the essence of relationship. If every conversation were simply Q and A, there would be no back and forth, no personal communication and fellowship. We would get our answer and say, “OK thanks, bye.” Information could be shared, of course, but not intimacy.

Ultimately, Jesus leaves us to wrestle with the questions so that we can learn that he is the answer.

To get to Sunday we must go through Saturday. On the Saturday in between, the extent to which we will become like him is measured by our willingness to wrestle with the questions and yet still decide to trust him.

 

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The Saturday Experience: When All Hope Seems Lost

Thought Translation
Thought Translation
The Saturday Experience: When All Hope Seems Lost
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Life often presents moments where it seems all hope and progress have been lost and all that is left are the questions. Where was God? What is he doing? This is the Saturday experience. God wants us to cherish the questions because this is how our character and trust grow. To find peace on Saturday we must remember what he did for us on Friday and look forward to what he surely will do Sunday.

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