Peter was very strong in his own thinking when he declared to Jesus that He would not be put to death and then rise again. For this Jesus rebuked him sharply. We should take this as a warning for ourselves, whenever we are beaming with self-confidence and are strong in ourselves, instead of depending on the Lord and His wisdom, it will always lead us away from the Lord and His ways.

Host: Kathy, we want to continue our discussions on the book, Absolute Surrender, looking at the chapter titled, “Peter’s Repentance.” I loved this chapter. This chapter was deeply personal to me, because it spoke a great deal to me about the journey that I have been on in my own faith walk. I want to start out by reading the passage from which this discussion stems from. It reads, “And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.” (Luke 22:61-62, KJV)
         The way Andrew Murray describes this, he really goes into four points. We could almost call them 4 stages of Peter's transformation. He talks about Peter as a devoted disciple, Peter as he lived the self-life, Peter in his repentance, and lastly, he talked about what Christ made of Peter by the Holy Spirit. Let’s talk about the first one, Peter the devoted disciple of Christ. What was he describing there about Peter?

Kathy: According to Andrew Murray, Peter was a man of absolute surrender. He gave up all to follow Jesus. He gave up his boats, his fishing and his livelihood. He even gave up his family. He immediately obeyed the Lord and went out and followed Jesus. From a human perspective, that may seem like he did all he needed to ever do as a Christian. He left everything, and it was no small thing. To me that is just step one of true Christian discipleship. You've got to start somewhere. We don't enter into this relationship with Christ fully cooked. It’s a journey and this is step one. You give up all as He calls us to. Some of us hear it better than others, but it's definitely something that we have to do.

Host: It was interesting that having just painted the picture of all that what Peter gave up to follow Jesus, Andrew Murray immediately went into what sounded to me initially like a very negative thing, which was Peter living the self-life. What is he talking about there?

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Kathy: Peter was very strong in himself and had a lot of self-confidence. And Jesus was sharing that He was going to die on the cross and loudmouth Peter, full of self, declared to the Lord God that He would not die. And Jesus said, “Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” (Matthew 16:23b, KJV) Here, Peter was definitely thinking as men think. He had the world's wisdom and a strong self-confidence in that moment. He just did not understand who he was in the flesh. And that's a point that Andrew Murray brings out over and over again throughout this chapter: Peter did not know himself. He didn't know what was in him.

Host: And that's true for us too. We may have a sincere desire to follow the Lord. We might want to do the right thing. We might want to live the right kind of life. But very few of us come into our faith with the reality of how utterly and completely corrupt we are, through and through.

Kathy: Yeah, it is such a vital thing in the Christian life. The entrance for any true believer is that you come to the realization that you are utterly lost without Him. And if you haven't come to that realization, then you probably need to back up and start over again.

Host: Now with Peter, we see his response when Jesus tells him that he's going to deny Him three times.

Kathy: Peter said, though all should forsake you, I will not. I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.

Host: And he meant that. To the extent that he understood what he was saying, he meant that.

Kathy: Right. Those were his intentions. I've pondered the thought of if I would be willing to die for the Lord. I have asked myself if I would be willing to do anything for Him. And yes, I intend to and I love the Lord, but when you've got a gun pointed to your head or you're facing something difficult, you find out who you really are inside. That's an extreme example. I think we are all faced with trials that test us to the core and those testing places are where we find out what's inside of us.

Host: When I looked at Peter and I could see those denials, one of the things that became very clear to me this morning as I look back on my sin, or even look at some of the sinful ways that are still in my heart today, every time I embrace sin, really what I'm doing is denying Jesus. I actually pictured myself wrapping my arms around sin and looking up at the cross and saying, “No. I want my sin.”

Kathy: Actually, I had a similar thought, but more along the lines of embracing the enemy—the enemy of my Lord.

Host: Yes. Well, he makes the point that this self that is in Peter, the root of that is the same thing that caused Satan to fall. I mean, there he was the leader of worship in heaven and what was his sin? He wanted to exalt self.

Kathy: Right. And that is the problem with all of us wherever we're at in the journey is this strong self-life that leads us away from God all the time. It always will. It will never point us to Christ and it's the hardest thing for us to deny. We can deny all kinds of things, but when it comes to denying self, our nature, our goodness, what we think about ourselves, that is the hardest thing for us to deny.