When Peter denied his Lord 3 times, the Lord looked at him. And that look from Jesus broke the heart of Peter. Through the devastation Peter went through and the godly sorrow he experienced as a result, he was prepared to be emptied of himself and to be used for the Lord's purposes.

Host: Kathy, as we continue our discussions in a book by Andrew Murray called Absolute Surrender, we started in last week’s program talking about Peter’s repentance. We looked at Peter as the devoted disciple of Christ, Peter living the self-life, and we stopped just short of looking at Peter’s actual denial of Christ and the role that played in his eventual repentance. Let’s pick up and talk about that.

Kathy: It's so powerful. I don’t love what Peter did, but I love what Jesus did through it. Andrew Murray said, “Peter denied his Lord three times, and then the Lord looked upon him; and that look of Jesus broke the heart of Peter, and all at once there opened up before him the terrible sin that he had committed, the terrible failure that had come, and the depth into which he had fallen, and Peter went out and wept bitterly.” I believe he wept because he saw who he was, what was in him and what he was capable of.

Host: And he saw who Jesus was really for the first time.

Kathy: Yeah, that's right. Those two things would have collided together in his mind. Andrew Murray talks later on in this chapter about what it must have been like for Peter to face himself in that moment and also see the King of Glory. He knew who Jesus was, but I think in that moment he got the full impact of what and who he had been dealing with and what he did with it.

Host: What really stood out to me is that he brought out that there was this moment of weeping, but it didn't end there. It was just shortly after his denial of Christ that he had to witness the crucifixion. I like the way that he wrote this, and he is expressing what must have been going on in Peters heart. He says, “My Lord is gone, my hope is gone, and I denied my Lord. God have mercy upon me!” And you know, that really is where that moment of weeping brings us.

Kathy: Yeah. And that's why as painful as it is, it is so important for us to have that dark night of the soul more than once in our journey. I know I have. I can point at milestones in my journey. I can't look at mountaintops and say, “Man, you know what, that mountaintop was it for me.” It was in the valley when I was getting devastated. And what's becoming really a blessing to me in life are those valleys. I'm learning how to love them. I'm in the knowledge when I'm going through those dark nights of the soul that Jesus is there with me. The reality is, He knows how I feel. He knows the devastation. He's not looking at it indifferently. He is in it with me, going through it with me and knows what to do with me as I am processing through it. I'm not alone and Peter wasn't alone.

Host: And we can know it to be true mentally. But for what you’re describing to be in our hearts, we only learn that by walking with Him.

Kathy: Yeah, and you can't teach it into somebody. They just have to live through it.

Host: Yeah. In this chapter, I just kept seeing my life at every one of these stages and steps. And of course, that's why the Lord gives us the wonderful example of Peter. I think He knew that we were going to need somebody that we can relate to. Someone with great failure, because we're going to have lots of failure. We needed to see that Jesus works in and through that. I love the way that Andrew Murray brings out that Peter was transformed. He talked about how later on at Pentecost, they would all be filled with the Holy Spirit and the great difference that made in their lives.

Kathy: One of the things that Andrew Murray said was that after all this devastation that Peter just went through, now Peter was prepared for deliverance from self. And that is a very powerful truth in the Kingdom of God. You can't deliver yourself from you.
       You cannot do this anymore than you can’t baptize yourself in the Holy Spirit. It’s not possible. That's why the Lord takes us through these things and prepares us to be emptied of self. And what caused Peter to deny Christ is in all of us to some degree until the Lord deals with it. And only God knows how to bring up and out of us what's in us. We don't even know who we are.

{{blog-brse="/blog-ads-storage"}}
       But this experience prepared Peter to be delivered from self so that the life of God could be manifested through him and in him. The verse that has been going over and over in my mind for days now is Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (NKJV)

Host: Yeah, I like the reason Andrew Murray makes for having shared this story of Peter. He says, “That story must be the history of every believer who is really to be made a blessing by God. That story is a prophecy of what everyone can receive from God in Heaven.” He points out two lessons that we can learn from this Chapter as he closes. Why don’t you share those with us?

Kathy: “You may be a very earnest, godly, devoted believer in whom the power of the flesh is yet very strong.”

Host: Man, that's so true.

Kathy: Yeah. We all fit that description.

Host: Yeah, but you have to come to understand that. I only understood it after massive failure in my life and in my ministry. I was in ministry for 14 years and didn't know that.

Kathy: A lot of people will relate to that. I think a lot of people will relate to my side of things too because I didn’t have a massive failure. But you know you can really prop yourself up on your goodness and you can prop yourself up on an untarnished record, or on how giving and selfless you are in your daily relations with other people. But you know what? If that is not done by the power of the Holy Spirit, it's nothing. It will all burn. And the Lord knows how to get at all those props. All those things you so unjustly love about yourself.
       That's my testimony. God did that for me, and He's been doing that for me. He is just stripping away all the false things in my heart that I didn't even know were there. And He can show you through just simple things, it doesn't have to be an earth-shattering denial of Christ. It can just be the way you treated someone or the way you've been acting. The Lord just knows how to bring it out and show you what you're like.

Host: Amen. He ends with this other admonition. He says, “If you want this, what does the Lord ask of us?”

Kathy: To humble ourselves.

Host: Yes. To humble ourselves or I would put it this way, to yield to Him. To yield to what He says is true about us and to yield to what He wants to do in us. And that requires that we humble ourselves. We have to come, as Peter did when he wept, realizing that we're nothing and that we have nothing.

Kathy: We don't bring anything to the table.

Host: And how freeing it is to learn that.

Kathy: It is. And the whole grace movement has so obliterated the beauty of God's true grace. His true grace gives you the power to overcome, but we don't overcome. You're never going to overcome sexual sin. You’re never going to overcome bitterness. You're never going to overcome anger. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that you will overcome any of that. But if you humble yourself, God will do that in you. That’s His desire.

Host: Yes, And Christ will be glorified in us.

‍

All quotations taken from Absolute Surrender By Andrew Murray, Public Domain