Excerpt from Overcoming Obstacles to Destiny by Faylene Sparkes:
Pressing in to truly enter into the destiny that God has for you honours the death of Jesus and
the price He paid for your future. God wants us to cooperate with Him. To live any other way is
to wear blinkers that blind us to the power and sacrifice of God. We all have blind spots, no
matter how passionate we are in what we do. Guess what? God works with our blind spots to
bring about His purposes. Our prayer as Christians should echo King David’s heartfelt words:
Lord! Let the meditations of my heart and the words of my lips be acceptable; Test me and try
me; See if there’d be any wicked way in me. In essence, ‘You can adjust me Lord. You can speak
into my life, you can deal with my issues’. Do you know how God does that? He exposes your
blind spots by using - people!
Have you ever felt like you have failed so badly that you’ve completely disqualified yourself
from the future God had planned for you? As we look at Peter and some of his monumental
failures, we will see how he still managed to connect with Jesus. Hurts and pain from our
history will fight our destiny and our history will fight our future unless we are set free from it.
In Peter’s case, Jesus replaced his old way of thinking with a total confidence in his ability to
become everything Jesus declared he would be. When you study what Jesus has done for
others, you will see what He can (and urgently desires to) do for you.
No matter what has been a besetting sin to you, no matter what you’ve struggled with,
including standing strong for Jesus, He understands. He will bring you through. He wants to
speak into your heart and say, ‘I believe in you. I trust you with the destiny God has for you’.
It is not that hard to relate to Peter when he kept falling asleep while praying. Everyone has
struggled in prayer. Jesus came back to Peter three times and each time He had to wake him.
If you are struggling with prayer, or your Christian walk, it doesn’t mean that struggle negates
God’s great destiny for you or cannot raise you up to be a mighty warrior for Jesus. It also
doesn’t mean that you will never fulfil your destiny. Do you know what condemnation is?
Thoughts like this come: How can I expect to ever have a destiny in God? I can’t even pray. I
can’t even stay awake long enough to pray it into reality.
Jesus understands. Trust that He did not make a mistake or an unwise decision when He chose
you. He knows exactly what is necessary to bring you into the destiny that God has written for
you.
After Peter denied Jesus, the Bible says at the moment the cock crowed the Lord turned and
looked at Peter. The Lord turned. Jesus was close enough to Peter to hear him. Peter knew that Jesus had heard and as Jesus looked at Peter it was not with a look of, ‘I condemn you. I told you so. You’ve let Me down’. Jesus gave Peter a look of love that said, ‘Peter! Hang in there. Peter don’t give up. Peter don’t quit. I knew that attitude was in you all along. I believe in you even when you don’t believe in yourself. I believe in your destiny. I can see what you are going to become. Don’t let go now Peter. Don’t quit’. The Bible tells us that Peter went out and wept bitterly.
In our own lives when we feel like we fail in some challenges, we are tempted to think that we
have let God down so badly that it’s hard to believe that His destiny for us can still unfold. If we
look at how God treated Simon-Peter we can come to understand the way that God’s hand
reaches out to us.
The combination of information and strong emotion causes attitudes to be written on our
heart. New information came to Peter at the moment he denied Jesus. His self-talk could have
gone something like this, ‘I am a person who denies Christ. I am a failure. How embarrassing
after all those prophetic words that have been spoken over me; that I was going to be the rock
and lead the early church. I got out of a boat and walked on water, but I denied Jesus, my
Friend, right in front of Him. It was right at the worst moment of Jesus’ life’.
It’s awe-inspiring to read about Jesus’ love and compassion in not leaving Peter in that state.
The deep emotion of the moment caused Peter’s failure to be written on his heart, deep in his
heart. Jesus went to the cross and was crucified. That was the last communication Peter had
with Jesus before He died. Can you imagine how devastated you would feel living with the
knowledge the last thing you did to your Friend, Saviour, King and Lord who taught you and
believed in you for three years, was to deny and disown Him? How would that impact a
person’s heart? I believe that deep on the inside of Peter it would have put such a sense of
failure and total uncertainty of any future he would have in God.
When we get filled with failure and the sense of not being worthy it becomes easy to begin
avoiding God and the things of God. That’s what happened to Peter. After Jesus had risen from
the dead, but before He’d had any communication with Peter, the Bible says in John 21:3, ‘I’m
going out to fish’, Simon Peter told them, and they said, ‘We’ll go with you.’ So they went out
and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Peter used fishing to run away from
God. What is it that you do to blur out pain? For some it’s friends, for some it’s business and for
some it’s television. Peter went fishing. He went back to what he knew best. He went back to
his old life. He regressed. Don’t run away from God. Don’t make your life so busy that you avoid
facing the issue, because God’s got a way through for you.
Peter was still such a leader that the others said, ‘We’re coming with you Pete. We feel bad for
you too. How miserable - your future is down the tube. We’re coming with you’.
Peter went fishing and of course caught nothing. We may run away from God and find some
activity that will satisfy us and consume our time, but if it’s not the will of God it will be a waste
of energy. Jesus understood everything that Peter was going through. He understands you and
me. He understands. While Peter was fishing, Jesus appeared on the beach and built a fire. He
asked if they’d caught anything, and they hadn’t. Jesus told them to cast their net on the other
side and they caught a net full of fish. The Bible says there were 153 of them. With this
incredible miracle one of the disciples yells out, ‘It’s the Lord! It’s the Lord! He’s risen from the dead. It’s the Lord!’ Peter can’t wait. He jumps into the sea and starts swimming. Mentally, his
head is spinning from seeing Jesus again, but his heart is saying ‘I love Him’.
He continued to swim and run to Jesus no matter how bad he felt, no matter what answers he
didn’t have, no matter that he felt he had no future. ‘I’ve just got to be with Him’. Jesus cooked
their fish for them and they had an Aussie barbie at the beach. After they’d eaten, Jesus called
Peter over and they had a personal conversation. Jesus began to speak directly into the heart of
Peter.
Jesus brought Peter right back to a fire. The smell from that fire would have brought back the
grief, the denial and the pain from what he had done.
Jesus brought Peter over to the fire and asked him, ‘Peter, do you love me more than these?’ He
brought Peter back to that boastful, prideful statement. It would have been painful. Jesus
wasn’t doing it to be cruel; He was doing it to set Peter free. ‘Do you love me more than these?’
‘Do you agape (sacrificially love) me the way that you claim to?’ and Peter says, ‘Lord you know
I phileo (affectionately) love You’. Peter was saying that he had learned his lesson. He had a
deep affection for the Lord, but he was no longer claiming to love him more than anyone else
did. Jesus said to Peter, ‘Feed My sheep’. Then Jesus says again, ‘Peter do you agape
(sacrificially love) Me the way you claimed to?’ And Peter said, ‘I phileo love you Lord’. In effect
Jesus said, ‘I understand, it’s okay. Feed my lambs’. And then Jesus said, ‘Do you phileo love
me? Do you love me with a friendly affectionate love?’
Peter came to a place where he allowed Jesus to speak directly into his failure. He did not
minimize, rationalise or blame shift. Sometimes when you talk with people it’s like wrestling
with an octopus. ‘Well if you only knew why I did that...it was that person’s fault...I couldn’t
help it...’. If this sounds like you, get ready to go back into the melting pot. Get ready for some
more sifting. Peter let Jesus speak into that area of his life and Jesus said, ‘I understand’.
Because of the humility of Peter’s heart and because Jesus spoke into his life He not only restored him fully and recommissioned him, but Peter’s ministry and influence was enlarged.
He not only was a fisher of men but he now was told to lead and shepherd the early church.
Peter was promoted because of the humility of his heart and because he connected with Jesus
in the midst of his failure.
Once we are saved, God has a great process of development for our lives and He knows the
areas that we need to grow in, adjust in, let go of and walk into to complete in us that beautiful
image of Jesus Christ. He’s more interested in our character than our comfort and sometimes
He is more interested in our development than our immediate deliverance!
