Transformative Journeys: Lessons from Peter on Faith, Failure, and Redemption Ep. 4

Ever wondered how a fisherman named Simon became one of the most influential figures in the early Christian church? By exploring the remarkable journey of Peter, we uncover profound lessons on faith, failures, and the role of the Holy Spirit in personal transformation. This episode shares insights from Peter's life, from his moments of denial to his ultimate redemption, offering a powerful narrative on embracing one's shortcomings as stepping stones toward growth. Listeners are invited to reflect on how their environment and the people around them can shape their paths, urging a pursuit of divine purpose over societal expectations.

We then navigate the delicate terrain of accountability and forgiveness within a faith-based context. Through Peter’s story of denial and the parallel tale of King David, we address the universal nature of human error and the potential for redemption that accountability offers. These narratives remind us that failure is not a dead end but an opportunity for spiritual and personal development. Our conversation highlights how embracing one’s flaws and extending compassion to oneself and others can foster growth, encouraging a mindset that views setbacks as pivotal moments for learning and renewal.

Finally, we witness the transformative power of grace in the restoration of Peter. When Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him, it wasn’t just a moment of confrontation but an invitation to reclaim purpose. This episode emphasizes that forgiveness is not passive; it requires action and a commitment to living out one's restored purpose. We share personal stories of unexpected blessings, balancing family, business, and leadership, illustrating how our weaknesses can become strengths when aligned with divine calling. With faith guiding our paths, listeners are encouraged to trust in their God-given potential, embracing both strengths and weaknesses in their journey.

Chapters

• 0:00 Faith, Failures, and Lessons Learned
• 12:25 Restoration Through Accountability and Forgiveness
• 21:16 The Restoration of Peter Through Grace
• 35:34 Unexpected Blessings and Devotion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What is up? Faith and Failures? We got a little bit of a scenery change. I'm out on the road working and I had all my gear. I'm like you know what? Let's do a podcast episode. Today's episode is going to be something that somebody asked me the other day when did I get the name for the podcast and the YouTube channel Faith and Failures? Get the name for the podcast and the YouTube channel Faith and Failures?

Speaker 1: 0:28

Well, I think that when we come to faith in Jesus, it's very easy that we overlook or disregard or leave completely behind our failures, which is important and necessary to move on and to heal. But what I don't want us to do is forget the lessons that we learned from what, I think, sometimes we label as failures, but actually they are extremely important pieces of our story. So we're going to talk a little bit today about the story of Peter, so you don't want to miss this. Before we get into today's video, I just wanted to say thank you to all of the new subscribers. If you haven't yet consider subscribing, hit that bell notification so that you can see every time I put out a new video. A major portion of you that watch my videos haven't subscribed yet, so why not? It's free. You can also find a PayPal link below if you want to give a one-time or give a monthly to support the channel. Anything, great or small, is appreciated.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Now let's get into the video. So let's set up the story a little bit and talk about Peter. So if you don't know Peter was, his original name was actually Simon. He was a fisherman, but when Jesus called him, from being a fisherman he also changed his name. Now the fisherman of that day and the fisherman of today, I think, have a lot of similarities.

Speaker 1: 2:07

It is a rougher job. I worked in a machine shop for a while and you had to adjust your sensitivity to people's opinions because things were done a certain way way and if you didn't like that, then you can go cry about it in the corner and come back when you're growing up and a man, and that's kind of the atmosphere that fishermen have, because it's a rough cut, sometimes a lot. If you ever watch the um, uh, is it dangerous catch or something like that, and maybe on the discovery channel I don't know if it's still a show or not but deadliest catch, I think, is what it's called and it's life-threatening if you play around or you joke around and I'm a I'm a joke around kind of guy, but in certain situations, uh, you, you got to stop the playing and you got to be serious and act like a grown-up. Or you can get somebody killed or cost, cost the the owner of the business money and then you will not have a job. So let's look a little, a little bit of, let's look a little bit into Peter's personality traits because of his job, because of his upbringing.

Speaker 1: 3:30

Usually, if you're in that type of field or that type of genre of job, like I, ended up being a pastor. I didn't set out to be a pastor, but it ended up that I am actually replicating what my dad did and is doing, still preaching to this day. And so we end up becoming, whether we want to or not, being shaped by the people that surround us. I tell my teenager this all the time when you surround yourself with bad, toxic people, you allow them to speak into your life, you allow them to manipulate who you really are, who God created you to be, and all of us have the capabilities of allowing people who shouldn't be in our lives to stay in our lives because we don't want to hurt feelings or because we enjoy it. And I tell my people I'm a pastor of a church. I tell my people all the time that just because something is good, it does not mean it's good for you. So sometimes you got to love people from a distance and let that relationship die so that your mind, your life, your soul and your spirit can live properly, according to how God desires for you to live and how he has designed you to live out your life and to live out your calling. Because every person is called to do something. But a lot of us and me included, I went down this path. A lot of us will get sidetracked because we will follow other people's path. We will come alongside their purpose and think, because it's working for them, that it will apply to us, and that's not necessarily true.

Speaker 1: 5:13

So let's go back to Peter. We know from just reading the New Testament that Peter, before Acts Peter, was full of passion, he was impulsive and most of the time 99.99999% of the time he spoke before his brain caught up, before he thought. Now, despite his flaws, jesus loved Peter deeply and entrusted him with extreme, significant responsibility. We'll talk about this in a minute. But if you think about, if you go to Acts. In Acts, chapter 2, when the Holy Spirit fell, you have the loudmouth, impulsive guy is the first one that is recorded to come out and explain what has went on. And so let's talk about this. So let's set up before Acts, chapter 2. Let's go to the four Gospels, matthew, mark, luke and John, and let's look over in Luke, chapter 22, because of the situation, I don't have the verses on the screen today, but I want you to think about this.

Speaker 1: 6:24

So let's look at Peter's denial and think about this. Peter's name was changed from Simon became Simon Peter, and then Jesus says upon this rock I will build my church. This is, if you don't know, this is where the Catholics cherry picked and decided that Peter was the one that they're going to have their lineas down to the Pope. That's where they get that from. But Luke chapter 22 says this. So this is where Peter denies. He denies Jesus. Luke, chapter 22, verse 61 and 62, it says At that moment the Lord turned and looked at Peter.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Suddenly, the Lord's words flashed through Peter's mind. He just denied Jesus for the third time because Jesus previously had told him he prophesied to him. He said you will deny me three times before the rooster crows tonight him. He said you will deny me three times before the rooster crows tonight. So it happened, he denied again and he says at that moment the Lord turned and looked at Peter. So Peter is following Jesus as they're going through this whole process. He's been arrested, he's being brought in and Peter's staying close so he can hear and he can see and people are recognizing him because he has spent three years with Jesus. So they're recognizing him and he's like no, no, that's not me.

Speaker 1: 7:47

He keeps making up excuses and he even at one time he curses whether that's a modern day swear word, I doubt it but a blessing and a curse was different back then. So him cursing may not be the words we use as cursing today, but it was the same caliber cursing today, but it was the same caliber. He wanted to distance himself and he wanted to stop the assumption that he was with Jesus and he was one of the disciples. And then this is when we come in on the story. At that moment the Lord looked, turned to Peter. Suddenly the Lord's words flashed through Peter's mind before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know me and Peter left the courtyard weeping bitterly. So the context of his denial Peter swore he would never. This is one part where his mouth shot off and it got him in trouble because Jesus was like well, you say that, but I'm telling you right now you are going to deny me. In Luke 22, 33, that's where Jesus tells him, where Peter says I will never and Jesus says yes, you will. Fear and pressure from onlookers caused Peter to deny and do the very thing that he said that he would never do. So let's talk about the emotional impact. Imagine the intensity of Jesus turning the to make eye contact with Peter as he just denied him for the third time.

Speaker 1: 9:23

I don't know about you, but I have had a lot of failures in my life. I've had a lot of mishaps, missteps, stumbling. It's being a pastor of a church or being a Christian and going to church and service every week does not exclude us from messing up and I think sometimes so. This is the teeter-totter between overly stating and pushing mercy and grace, which is God's character, but God's character is also just so you have these churches that only talk about mercy and grace and only talk about the forgiveness of God, and they never talk about the sanctification and the purification that we must go through every single day, pick up our cross daily to follow Jesus, and there should be a healthy balance between giving yourself grace and mercy and then also to holding yourself accountable and allowing room for accountability from other people that are close to you.

Speaker 1: 10:41

This is important because it's very easy when you start living for Christ to back up, because when you first feel like you get it and you've accepted Jesus, when you first feel like you get it and you've accepted Jesus, it is so easy to later down the road, feel like you don't need correction or need conviction anymore because you do so good for a while. So then, when something happens and a situation occurs or is about to occur and I've been so guilty of this myself you don't reach out to anybody because, well, I've been a Christian for five years, I should know better, I should be better, and so what ends up happening is when you hold onto that and you don't allow there to be someone inside of your space that can hold you accountable, that can keep you accountable, help you through convictions and hold you while you heal. These are very important accountability partners, and this makes it so scary sometimes, especially to new believers. And then you have the older believers, so we're all kind of the same basket where we're so worried about. Well, I should be past this, I should be better than this, but the truth is, the enemy has been doing this a while and knows exactly where your hangups are, and so, because of that, you have to tread very carefully and very lightly, because, um, and have someone with you, have people with you, surrounding you, praying for you, loving you through and holding you accountable.

Speaker 1: 12:25

And keeping accountability is not just about pointing out your faults, but it's also about healing you through your walk of faith. I mean, it's not just about the hammer coming down, it's also about the uplifting of each other. So that's what accountability should be. That's what accountability should be. So Jesus looks at him and I'm so. Put yourself in Peter's position for a minute. Like, I'm sure all of us have messed up more than three times. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 12:54

Think about like the Bible predicts prophesies, however you want to look at it, that all are sinners. It's just making a statement, it's not a what if it's a fact? So Peter denies Jesus. We've all denied Jesus. We've all lived a life, even being close to Jesus. We've all at some point done something so stupid, that was so obvious that we shouldn't have done it, but yet we did it anyways. And we don't have the in our face encounter relationship with Jesus like Peter did. As soon as he did it, he locked eyes with Jesus. That, right there. I mean I would have ran too, because this is what happened. I would have done the exact same thing, looking at him in the face and realizing what I just did, that what he said I actually did and something I thought I would never do. I did it again. I don't know if you've been there, but I have, if you've been there, but I have.

Speaker 1: 14:00

And Peter realizes the betrayal and the broken promise that overwhelmed him and he ran away weeping bitterly. Now I know you probably have too, but I've made very confident claims of things like, okay, I got this, I would feel like I was doing perfect, like my thoughts will be right, my phone search will be right, you know what I mean. But then you get into a place of vulnerability and it's like it overwhelms you and like Peter when he was around the fire and he denied, just like it came out of his mouth without even having to think about it. Sin is something we don't really have to think about because we are sinful, so it comes naturally, it comes easy, it's something that we gravitate towards, and our relationship with God we have to fight for that. Our sanctification, our sacrifice of being saved is something we have to work for every single day, because it is so easy to slide in old habits, to slide back into what we used to do, and it's something we really have to fight for. And it's something we really have to fight for. Now. Failure feels personal, especially when we let someone down that we love, and so what I want you to do is think about this. Yes, when we sin, we are staining ourselves again, we are becoming, we are being unrighteous before God. But when the veil was torn, when Jesus died, when he said it is finished, the veil was torn, and what that meant was now there's no more partition between us and God. Now we can boldly come before God and we can say Lord, I have messed up, please forgive me. I gave this example Sunday to my church and I told them that there's a fine line between mercy and grace and justification, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think they go hand in hand.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Where, if we look at the story of King David, the young man that he killed Goliath with the stone, brought victory for God's people. Same guy later became king. There's a whole story in between that Goliath story and this story, but I suggest you read up on it. There's a lot going on. But he sees a woman down bathing on top of her home and lusted after her, brought her in, got her pregnant, sent her back home. Her husband came home. He knew he got her pregnant it was him, because the husband wasn't there Sent the husband that was a faithful soldier down to their house, gave them gifts and wine, was trying to let natural things happen so that it would be his child, not King David's. But the guy was so faithful he would not leave the king. He slept at his doorway. So there's literally no way that they could have thought that he got them pregnant because he would not leave. And so he ended up killing him, sending that guy to the front line so that he would pull back and he would be left there by himself to die. So he was not only an adulterer, fornicator, whatever you want to say, he was a murderer. He was a liar, tried to cover it up. Cover it up Now. That's kind of like any drama you see on TV these days. But that's also the same guy that Jesus not Jesus that was called a man after God's own heart. Now why is that?

Speaker 1: 18:21

Some church people will exclude people who mess up and be so self-righteous like the Pharisees and write people off. Or because you did this, well, now I can't support you or I can't be around you and this and that. But if we did that, then we would not have much of a Bible to read and learn, because wrapped up in failures is also the faith and forgiveness of our Lord, of our Savior, and failure hurts. But if you are watching this, or maybe you know somebody that's really down on themselves right now, they're having issues and they are defining themselves by their failures. Failure is not final, and so what's the universal nature of failure? We've all experienced moments where our resolve crumbled. Maybe a relationship, a career, moral decisions, spiritual, spiritual practices, things that you claimed you were going to do, especially in the first part of this year. So many things we're going to do, but how many times do they sway and change according to the distance we get from that initial commitment, because the pressure's not on so much anymore.

Speaker 1: 19:39

Broken promises versus broken hearts, peter's tears it showed that he was not just breaking the rule, but his heart was broken because he actually failed and let down Christ. And let that be a lesson to us all that in God's eyes he is just, he is righteous, he is the bar of righteousness. There is not above him, there's no righteousness above him. There is no righteousness we can have that matches what he is. But he looks at us in our broken state and he doesn't throw the clay away. He helps, remold and shapes us when we have hearts of repentance Now, hearts of repentance. That is the key. And how do we get there? We have to come boldly and with humility, because the pain that we feel for the mess-ups is oftentimes the launching pad that will bring us into the next season of forgiveness, of faithfulness, and also be a testimony of how good and gracious and amazing and powerful and forgiving our God is, in spite of what we've done. So let's look at Peter's restoration. He says John 21,. John, chapter 21, 15 through 17, says After breakfast, jesus asked Simon Peter, simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?

Speaker 1: 21:16

Yes, lord.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Peter replied you know I love you. Then feed my lambs. Or some versions say feed my sheep. Jesus told him. Verse 16,. Jesus repeated the question Simon, son of John, do you know? Do you love me? Yes, lord. Peter said you know I love you. Then take my sheep. Then take care of my sheep. Jesus said a third time, verse 17,. Jesus asked Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was hurt. Jesus asked the question a third time. He said, lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus said then, feed my sheep.

Speaker 1: 21:50

So Jesus is having a second chance moment with Peter. Jesus asked him three times if he loves, mirroring Peter's three denials. Each repetition offers Peter a new opportunity to affirm his devotion. So what you have is a place where Jesus gave the same opportunity, same equal opportunity that Peter denied is also now the same opportunity for him to be restored and to affirm his devotion to Jesus. Notice Jesus doesn't condemn or shame Peter. Instead, he calls Peter to action Feed my lambs, take care of my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my sheep. This is a commissioning, not just a consolation. He's saying okay, if you are saying that you do love me, now do something about it. So once we ask for forgiveness, god will begin to restore things, but it takes action on our part to live out that restoration in our lives. It's not just a thing where God's going to be like okay, great, now everything's just back to normal. Now you have to show that you are changing. You have to show that you want to reconcile. You have to show that you understand that you messed up and now grow from it.

Speaker 1: 23:32

Even in our worst failures, these can become the backdrop against which God's grace shines the greatest, the greatest and the brightest. I mix those two words together. Peter's greatest fall became the turning point that prepared him for leadership in the early church, as you read about in the book of Acts. I highly recommend going and reading the book of Acts. You'll see Peter in a new light. He's a different man. He's changed, and that's because the spirit fell and it changed everybody that day.

Speaker 1: 24:06

So what's our key takeaways? Grace overcomes shame. Like Peter, we often feel unworthy when we fail, but Christ's response is genuine remorse. Christ's response to genuine remorse is always an invitation to return and restore and to go out and reap the harvest. Our identity in God's eyes isn't defined by our worst moments. Jesus knew all these things Peter was going to do. He knew the mess-ups, the hang-ups, the loudmouth, but he still called him Simon Peter. Upon this rock I will build my church, still called him Simon Peter. Upon this rock I will build my church. Because he knew he saw past the mouth and saw the momentum this guy could have and what he was going to be able to do for the kingdom. God sees past our mouth, sees past our issues, hang-ups and mess-ups, and he sees the potential that we have, the capabilities we have, the gifts that we have.

Speaker 1: 25:18

I'm a talker. I come from a long line of talkers, my whole family, a bunch of talkers, like when my wife first came around and she met my family on my dad's side in Southeast Missouri. We're loud people, we talk, we laugh first came around and she met my family on my dad's side in Southeast Missouri. We're loud people, we talk, we laugh. You can barely hear each other because there's so many conversations going on and she's like she comes from a house where there's barely noise. There's her dad's the loudest one and that's not very loud. And she has four siblings and there's four of them and she she might be the loudest, maybe now because I converted her, but different ecosystem of personalities and so for me, my greatest, like simon peter, in the on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Speaker 1: 26:09

He was up there. He saw I think it was Elijah and Moses, and he didn't know what to say. So he's like, hey, let's build a temple and praise this moment and all this. And he's like shut. And Jesus says, shut up, that's not what you're supposed to do. Do you hear that, catholics? So so God doesn't judge us by our mistakes. He doesn't see us by our mistakes. We will be judged, we'll have to answer for everything one day. But he does not see us or name us by our mistakes.

Speaker 1: 26:38

He called him Simon Peter because he knew even the very thing that got him in so much trouble when he gave it to God was actually going to be used to build the kingdom like never before. And so me, one of the greatest lessons I learned from the Holy Spirit and from the Lord is that sometimes I just need to shut up and that, even though I may be able to talk or I have something to say, if I close my mouth long enough, the Holy Spirit can say it through me or somebody else, better than I ever could have tried to articulate and say it right. And you know it's not about me, but when I make it about the Lord, when I make it about Christ, when I make it about the Holy Spirit and I stop. Like Peter, always felt like he had to say something and it always ended up him putting his foot in his mouth. But when he finally understood that it wasn't about him or about what he thought or about what he wanted to do, god was able to use him in a way. He took what his greatest hang-up was and turned it into something that was powerful for the kingdom.

Speaker 1: 27:45

And, like Peter, we often can feel unworthy, especially with a major failure. But Christ's response to genuine remorse is always an invitation to restore Now. Failure if you look at some people use the term turn your message or turn your mess-ups into a message, your failures into faith, your trials into triumph. Whatever label you want to put on it. That is phonetically pleasing. Failure, when we surrender to God, can lead to deeper humility and empathy for others.

Speaker 1: 28:21

This is one thing I think the Pharisees didn't have figured out. This is what drove Jesus crazy and frustrated him was that they acted like they did something to earn God's love, mercy and grace and salvation. And it wasn't anything they did, even though they kept the law perfectly, and Jesus pointed this out. He said hey, do what they do, but don't be who they are Like they're doing, they're keeping the law, they're acting right, they keep things holy, they actually care about the things God cares about from the scriptures, but inside they are dead. They are whitewashed tombs, pretty on the outside but have the stench of death on the inside. Because God looks at the heart. And so don't let your failures define you, but let them fuel you to where you don't stay broken but you allow that brokenness to be fertile ground, like when you have seed and you plant it on the ground. First there's a toiling that happens. You have to tear up that ground and you have to break it up so that it can receive the seed.

Speaker 1: 29:32

There was a time in my ministry, at the very beginning, when we came to Longview, texas, and became the lead pastors of this church our first church and there's a lot of things we've had to learn. There's a lot of things that God has just gifted me in the wisdom that I have not had the experience or the knowledge given to me to actually know this, and I prayed God for spiritual wisdom and he's blessed me with it. But all glory to him. Nothing about me. It's 100% God, because I've not had the life to get the answers that for some reason, god has given me, or the vision or the understanding of Like. Sometimes people will ask me. Older people will ask me. They're older than me, they should know better, they should have more wisdom than me, but the wisdom that comes out of me Is from God.

Speaker 1: 30:24

There's also wisdom and grace and mercy Because of what I needed from God to be restored, because I used to live a life that was 100% flesh and demonic the drugs and the alcohol and the women and the stealing and the lying and everything that I did that was a part of that lifestyle. It took a long time for me to forgive me. Other people forgave me a lot faster than I forgave myself, and so I can only imagine how Peter felt. You know he needed that from Christ to say do you love me? Do you love me, do you love me? He gave him a chance. He said okay, if you do, this is what it's going to take.

Speaker 1: 31:05

And so for you to show that you love Christ, it's going to take something from you, and one thing that you need to allow God to do is to use your problems that you had, the issues that you had, the struggles that you had or have, and be vocal about them. In Revelations it talks about you will become overcomers by the word of the Lamb and the blood of your testimony. The blood of the Lamb and the word of your testimony it takes that two combination where Christ's blood covers it all. But you have to vocalize, you have to do something. There's something Christ did. Now we are called to do something, something.

Speaker 1: 31:50

And so the failures or the hangups, the trips, the falls, all the things that you've experienced and went through and you're on the other side of right now, or maybe you're in the middle of it, when you begin to quiet down that story, it gives the devil ammunition to use against you, to shame you, and it will keep you secluded and pulling back from really what you should be running to, and that is to let other people inside of that world, that private, vulnerable place, because people need to know that church people are not like Pharisees. We're not perfect, but we are saved. We're not, we're not, we're not something special, but we are sanctified. We, every single day, have to go through that process, and how else will they know about that process? How else will they understand what that looks like, until the church people begin to show what that process looks like? It takes effort, it takes intentionality and it takes work on our part. So that will bring us to a place of humility.

Speaker 1: 32:53

I was at an interview. My son got into this school. Was it this last year? Yeah, so, almost I guess this last summer we had an interview and the principal asked him what's one word that would define your dad? Just use one word to describe your dad. And without even a second thought he'd say humility. And it broke me. It took everything right there then and there to not cry because it touched me so deeply. But my humility has not come from a lifetime of ease. It has come from some dirty places. But that always keeps me humble before God, because I know who I am, I know who I was and so for me it's a very.

Speaker 1: 33:42

Humility is not something that I have to work for, because that work has already been done, that groundwork has already been laid, because I went through some deep, dark times and I understand that I am nobody and I don't know why Christ forgave me. I don't know why God sent his only son. I don't know why forgiveness is even a thing I have no clue but I do know that it is real because I myself have experienced and watched God time and time again. Forgive, he says. When we ask for forgiveness, he throws into the sea of forgetfulness. We're the ones that always bring it up and remember. Somebody else brings it up or our mind goes crazy and we go through this. Sometimes we can go through a vicious cycle, a spiral where we never seemingly let it go. But I want to encourage you today that if you're inside of that spiral, if you're inside of that cycle, peter went through the same thing and Jesus brought him restoration. I went through the same thing and Jesus brought me through restoration, daily restoration, daily sanctification. And I know this by faith, through grace, so that no man can boast because I have not done anything special. God has done it all and Jesus paid it all, and the Holy Spirit is giving power to continue that work in my life. So I hope this encourages you to not feel defeated when you walk through failure, but to know that it is possible. It is biblical that God can restore. It may not look like how it is possible. It is biblical, that God can restore. It may not look like how it once did.

Speaker 1: 35:34

My life is really weird right now. I have a business. Never thought I'd be this successful at it. I have a church that I'm over. Never thought that was going to happen, was never even in my on my path of life. It never crossed my mind. Have a wife that is loving and caring and so forgiving thank the Lord, have my teenage boy from my first marriage that lives at our house full time. We have a 15 month old daughter. God has just been so good and it was because everything that he puts in my hands I bless. I give it to him to bless it because I firmly believe that everything that I have is his. That includes my failures. So I love you, I'm praying for you and I hope you have an amazing week.