What Jesus Does With Failure
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · August 31, 2025 · What Do the Miracles of Jesus Mean? series
Jeremy MacDonald looks at John 21, where the risen Jesus meets Peter at a charcoal fire after Peter's denials. Jesus does more than forgive failure. He restores and heals, and He calls His people back into His mission.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The What Do the Miracles of Jesus Mean? series
Topics: Grace, Forgiveness, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] Well, it's the right question, and we're gonna get to it. But before that, I wanna play a little game with you. It's called Finish the Lyric. And this kind of betrays a little bit of when and how I grew up in the world, around where I grew up. And so if you know how the song ends, or the lyric ends, just shout it out. All right, let's try it out together. This goes like this: I get knocked down, I get, yeah, there you go. That's a little Chumbawamba. Let's start off with Sunday morning with some Chumbawamba. Okay, you got it. How about this one? And this is a song, but it's also just a natural, like kind of a saying: What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, makes you stronger. Kelly Clarkson, she seems nice. Okay, and then third one, a little bit harder.
[0:45] God Bless the Broken Road. Let me, you, that let me start you. Yeah, that's nice. Rascal Flatts made it popular, but it was written by somebody else that I don't know. It's on Wikipedia. You can find it out. The point is, isn't that the truth? Those are three examples. There are so many more of places that you've heard kind of the line of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, which is a lie. There are so many things in this world that don't kill you, but they will maim you. I did shop class, so I, in school, in high school, I did shop. It was so much fun. I didn't know anything that I was doing. I was like, the one you should be nervous about. And so I got the special instructions: Hey, this table saw will probably not kill you, but it can maim you for life. That was kind of the teaching, right?
[1:32] Because it's very dangerous. There's all sorts of things. You can think back to all sorts of examples that your life didn't end, but it certainly made it much more difficult. Maybe, you know, on a serious note, like there's examples in your journey where your regret in life or one of your big, you know, failures absolutely didn't make you stronger. It made your life that much more difficult. And sometimes it's about things that were like given to you, or like a diagnosis that came down on you, or somebody did something to you. You know, the accident wasn't your fault, but it did make you go now all the time to physiotherapy, like that didn't make you stronger. But there's also all sorts of examples in your journey and my journey that we're not gonna make you talk about here today, but that are more personal, that are more of your own fault.
[2:24] Like, listen, even if you don't believe the things that, you know, a church like this might believe, you're a guest here. You know, you're exploring faith. You know, you're secretly like, I don't get any of this. That's okay. We're glad that you're here. But even for you, you know, you may not call it what we would call it, we'd call it sinfulness, we'd call it sin. But like, you've got things in your journey where you would say, I didn't actually want this for myself, but I still did it anyway. You know what I mean? Like, you had a standard for your life and you couldn't measure up to it yourself. So we're kind of going a little bit deep here right away. I apologize for that. If we don't know each other, my name's Jeremy. I'm one of the pastors here. I'm one of the pastors here. I'm the teaching pastor here. And for the last 10 weeks we've been in this series looking through the miracles of Jesus and what they say about Jesus.
[3:15] And oftentimes when we discover more about Jesus, we sometimes actually discover a little bit about ourselves. And for today, I want us to wrestle with this question: What do you do with failure? What do you do with failure in your own life? The kind of failure that is your fault? And listen, I know you're probably mostly perfect, but if you came with somebody today and you're just wondering if there's a couple of failures or faults, you know, you can just give them a nudge. Hey, do I have one or two? They'll tell you, they will, they'll tell you very freely. But not just on like a cognitive, like, just like this is not a thought experiment. I want you to actually think about your most recent failure or think about one that comes to mind when I talk about the failures and the things that you've done wrong in life.
[4:04] Because naturally our spirit kind of sings out something. And for some of us it's like, oh, there's a long list. Like, I get to choose from lots of different things that I'm frustrated about my own journey, about. It's the internal narrative or the story of my own experience. And like, it doesn't take long for me to remember, gosh, I wish I was different, but I seem to have these kinds of parts of my story that are failures. They haven't made my life better. They've made it worse. And what you do with those is different for each individual person. You know, in our culture today, there's lots of different approaches and there's different ways that people can articulate. And maybe your story, the way that you, you know, talk about it or the way that you reference it is, you know, you've got kind of toxic traits about your own, excuse me, or destructive traits about your own, like failures.
[4:53] And so there's ways that you can deal with that. For some of you, you know, the way that you respond to your own personal failure is more like stalled or stuck. And so you get embarrassed about it or, you know, it makes you sad. And maybe even for some of you, you may know, quote unquote, have a healthy approach or a growth oriented approach. And so you try to find ways of being curious about your failures or have a persistence to it. But this is not, no, about trying to just, you know, miss the shot at the basketball game and then figure it out afterwards. You know, it's not about like, I keep falling down on my bike, learning how to bike. It's like, no, no, no. There's these big things that are in your journey and my journey. And when we bring them up to the surface of our mind, it causes us to wonder what are we supposed to do with our failures? And fortunately in the scriptures, there are all sorts of examples of men and women who are utter failures.
[5:46] And we can actually see and look and know what does God do with the failure of the people that love Him? What does God do? What does Jesus do when somebody fails greatly? That's the story that we're going to. It's part of kind of the last miracle, or miracles, not the last miracles in the life of everywhere, but like the last miracles that show up in the Gospel of John. We've been journeying through the Gospel of John through this summer. And the last chapter is John 21. You're welcome to join if you've got a Bible app or a Bible here, you wanna follow along. And in John 21, it's my favorite passage in the entire scriptures, this entire chapter, because there's so many things we discover about who Jesus is, but we also discover a lot about who He thinks we are in this story and this narrative.
[6:38] So what happens is that the disciples have seen Jesus be crucified. He dies, He's buried, He's resurrected, and then He appears to them a couple of times. This is the third occurrence. In the final occurrence in the Gospel of John, we're gonna read an account where His closest friends get a chance to interact with Him for the last time as John's writing the details out of his Gospel. Okay? Now, the example of the story is that the disciples are actually doing what Jesus had kind of asked them to do. They end up going to a particular place, they're kind of waiting for Him to show up and to do something or give further instructions. And so evening comes, they're probably hungry, or they're wondering what they should do. And because a lot of them are trained fishermen, they do what they know what to do, they go out onto the water and they fish throughout the evening.
[7:29] And in the morning we catch the interaction, the spark to our story where Jesus is actually on the shore, sees the boat, they've not caught anything throughout the night. And this is what we read in John 21:5, take a look. He, Jesus, called out, "Fellows, have you caught any fish?" "No," they replied. And then Jesus says, very specifically, "Throw out your net on the right side of the boat and you'll get some." So they did and they couldn't haul in the net because there were so many fish in it. Now, in some ways this is miraculous in and of itself that Jesus could just invite them to do something and then all of a sudden in a kind of a scattershot way, like just throw a net out, you're not expecting to get much.
[8:16] The fact that they could pull in so many fish is a little bit wild. But for the people actually in the boat listening to the instructions, they're naturally thinking back to a very important other event. And I wanna highlight this for us and for you, because I think sometimes the beautiful part about the Scriptures is that when we read through, there's still lots more for us to discover. The Scriptures are living and active, and they can actually speak to us in new and profound ways, even on stories that we maybe have heard lots of times before. And this story in particular, if you've heard it before, I wanna make sure that you understand and that you catch some of the incredible ways that it links back to other parts of the Scriptures. So for the disciples in the boat in that moment, and for readers that are tuned into the story of Jesus, they're thinking to another example of Jesus doing something very, very similar.
[9:09] And this is actually really important to what Jesus is going to do later in John 21. In fact, if we go all the way back to Luke 5, we read this about the earliest part of Jesus's ministry with the same people that are in the boat. In Luke 5, when He had finished speaking, Jesus, when He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, Simon Peter, same person, "Now go out where it is deeper and let down your nets to catch some fish." Simon replied, "We worked hard all last night and didn't catch a thing, but if you say so, I'll let the nets down again." And this time, their nets were so full of fish, they began to tear. Jesus replied to Simon, "Don't be afraid. From now on you'll be fishing for people." And as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus, they left everything because they saw this display of power.
[10:02] It's one thing to have good teaching, it's one thing to hear something and you're like, "Oh, that's a cool idea." It's another thing to be with somebody and to watch them display the kind of power where you know, this Jesus has control over the fish. I wonder what else He has control over. I wonder what He's the king of. Surely not just the king of the sea. And so for the disciples in that moment, it's this signifying of the power of Jesus. But it's also where Jesus calls them to something. "Hey, I have something for you. I'm inviting you into a mission. I am wanting you to do something and be a part of something. You are gonna bring what you have, and I'm gonna provide the power." And this is going to be the spark to something profound.
[10:51] And for Simon Peter, he becomes this really recklessly enthusiastic disciple where we see throughout the examples, the biographies, he's willing to do it all. Like he's in, he's fired up. But he's also a little bit like he's a little over fired up. Like I'm sure some of the disciples are kind of watching back and they're like, "Oh, we wanna see how this turns out." Like you've got that friend or that sibling or that coworker where you're like, "Oh, they're pretty zealous, but we'll see how this turns out." And so for Simon, he's just always like, "Man, he seems like he's all in with his faith," which is great. But what happens is that Jesus also knows his heart. And even though he had this kind of zealous excitement and reckless abandon for Jesus, we get to the moments before the crucifixion, that special, important weekend.
[11:44] And as Jesus and His followers are around together, Jesus is trying to explain what's about to happen and where He's gonna go and what He's gonna do. And in the moment, the disciples can't fully understand or comprehend what Jesus is saying to them because it's so new. Nobody was expecting that Jesus would be resurrected. And so as He's explaining these things and He's talking about going somewhere, Simon's like, "I'm in, I wanna go with You." And Jesus is like, "No, no, no, you're not coming with Me yet." In John 13, we read this, Simon speaking to Jesus, trying to show and showcase how excited and how in he was in this move of Jesus. He says, "But why can't I come now, Lord? He asked, "I'm ready to die for You." And Jesus, knowing all things, says, "Die for Me?
[12:33] I tell you the truth, Peter, before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know Me." Which for Peter is like, "No way. Like I'm all in. There's no failure at this point. I've seen You do the miracles. I've seen the water into wine. Lord, I've seen You calm the sea. I've seen You feed the 5,000, like the power of Jesus is so clear. I'm all in. There's no stopping me now." And Jesus says, "But I know, I know there's gonna be a failure here. Peter, I know this about you." And what happens? Jesus goes to the garden of Gethsemane, He gets arrested. Peter draws his sword ready for a fight, cuts a person's ear off, Jesus heals it.
[13:19] It's wild. And Jesus allows Himself to be handed over. And as the disciples are on the periphery and potentially watching, maybe hearing and wrestling with, like, what's about to happen? Like, I thought that we were about to take over the world in some ways like this. This rabbi has got all strength and power, and the doubt creeps in and the concern creeps in. And maybe we missed it. Maybe we weren't really sure. And John records it in John 18. This woman asks Peter, he says, "You're not one of the man's disciples, are you?" "No," he said, "I am not." Now this next part, this next verse in this same kind of sequence is important.
[14:06] I've highlighted the thing I want you to note. Let's just keep a note on this one, because it was cold. The household servants and the guards had made a charcoal fire. It's an interesting detail to include. Comes into play later. They stood around warming themselves, and Peter stood with them warming himself. And then meanwhile, as Simon Peter was standing by the fire, warming himself, they asked him again, "You're not one of his disciples, are you?" And he denied it, saying, "No, I am not." But one of the household slaves of the high priest. And this is so interesting, if you were building like a case for some kind of movement, like I wanna start a cool new cult where everybody believes that I'm like the best and, you know, everybody should follow me and track with me, I'll tell you what to do. Like you would think that you would tell stories that would kind of build yourself up.
[14:53] But here's a story of Peter with his like full on all sorts of failures on display, including a really important detail that would be very simple to fact check in the first century. And so why would you include it? I think you include it because it's what actually happened. A relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, awkward, asks, "Didn't I see you out there in the olive grove with Jesus?" And I mean, at that point you're kind of nervous, like, ooh, if I say yes, like they know, they're a relative, like, it's like, ooh. So what does Peter do again? Peter denied it. And immediately the rooster crows.
[15:38] There's failure on display. And I know that you've got a bad one. And I know your journey has been tough, and I know you can say, listen, like I've done some tough and bad stuff. I get that Peter is with Jesus Himself promising he'd be willing to die for Him. And he can't even stand up to a teenage girl and say he's willing to follow Jesus. He's so terrified that he denies in such a public way, and this is the person that there was supposed to be so much hope in that he would lead the way. You know, Jesus changes his name. He says, "Simon, you are now Peter, Petros, meaning rock, you or Peter, and I'm gonna build on this rock.
[16:24] You might church. And the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." Like Peter is an important, critical figure in the Jesus movement. And here he is denying at the moment, at the moment where everything is coming to a head. So fast forward, the resurrection happens. He sees his resurrected Lord a couple of times. He sees Him on the shoreline calling out that same command that He had given him, that Jesus had given to Peter when He first called him and told him what He wanted him to do. Jesus performs the miracle once again. So Peter could, in his own hands, feel the power of Jesus, this net full of fish.
[17:13] The only way that you could drag a net in like that is the power of God doing something miraculous. And you get to experience it in your own hands. They pull the fish in, they bring it to the shore, and when they got there, they found breakfast waiting for them, fish cooking over charcoal fire. Now if you're cook making a fire in those days, I don't know how many other ways you can make it, you know, charcoal fire. But the fact for the writer, John, to explain the specifics of the fire, I just think it's an important thing to note that shortly after Peter experiences his biggest failure around a fire, he then sits at that same fire with his Jesus, the one he denied.
[18:09] And then something important happens after breakfast. Jesus asked Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" "Yes, Lord," Peter replied, "You know I love You." "Then feed my lambs," Jesus told him. Jesus is gonna ask this question to Peter three times, and three times Peter is going to reply in the affirmative. And three times Jesus is going to give him an instruction. And the question that we should wrestle with is, what does that really mean? What's the point of that? And sometimes people wonder and kind of surmise based on the context of what the point could potentially be.
[18:57] Some people think that the word Simon, He calls him Simon, He doesn't call him Peter. Maybe that's got something to do with this story, is Jesus like reverting back to like, "Oh, I called you Peter, but now you're Simon. Like you really messed this one up." And the response to that is actually no. You can see throughout the Scriptures, even after Jesus changes his name, it's still interchangeable. The new name is still, you know, a new nickname. It's important. It's critical. But it doesn't mean that they always call him Peter. They still can call him Simon. It's just a back and forth kind of thing. The other thing that you kind of wonder about is like, He talks about this love. "Do you love me?" And Peter says that, you know, "I do love You." And what's happening, this particular passage of Scripture in the New Testament, it's written in ancient Greek.
[19:45] And sometimes people wonder, well, is the point that in the Greek there's something different happening? If I can show you this, the first time Jesus asks him, this is the second, this is the third time, there's different words being used. Jesus asks him, "Do you love me?" And He uses this word agapao. And then Peter replies with phileo. And so they wonder maybe there's a difference between the types of love. Like Jesus is asking for a full on love and Peter's not really ready to respond in kind. And the truth is that the more you kinda look and you read and you see how these words are being used in other places, that's probably not it either, because there's just a flexibility. You want to use some extra language, you use different words, but they both really and truly mean, and often can mean, the exact same thing. So it's not quite that it's a different love or that Jesus is asking for something that Peter can't respond to.
[20:34] So then the question is, okay, if that's the case, is there something about "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" Like what are the "these" that Jesus is asking for? And it could be one of maybe a few things. Do you love me more than like these boats and this fish, you know, 'cause Jesus called him when he was a fisherman. And now they're fishing again. Is that like, "Hey, do you wanna go back to your old life or are you willing to respond to this new life I have for you?" Or maybe Jesus is saying, "Do you love Me more than these men that you are with? Like you were recklessly following Me. Are you still willing to be that reckless?" Or maybe it's something about, "Do you love Me more than these other disciples love Me?" trying to create some type of hierarchy amongst the disciples? And, you know, this is an interesting conversation, but again, I don't think it's the point.
[21:21] I think Jesus inviting Peter to respond. I don't think it's necessarily critical about exactly what He's talking about or if even He's talking about something specific between these three. So we come back to the verse and we say, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?" He says, "I love You." And then he gets in this command, "Feed My lambs." And there's something about that. Is there something about the mission that He's calling them to? Because again, when you look at the text in the Greek, there's these different instructions. There's like feed and tend and feed using two different things. And then there's lambs and there's sheep and there's sheep. So you're like, oh, is it worth dissecting? Is it really complicated? Do I need a degree in Greek to be able to understand what's happening in John 21? And I think the answer is no.
[22:08] I think the point of what Jesus is doing with Peter is that Peter denied Jesus three times. And Jesus asks Peter three times, "Do you love Me?" And three times Peter gets to affirm and confirm his faith in Jesus. And I think when we wonder about what does Jesus do with failure, I love the fact that we have a beautiful example of Jesus reinstating Peter, of allowing him not just to live with the guilt of his sinfulness, but allowing him to respond and not work his way out, but to reaffirm the fact that he actually wants to be the different kind of person.
[23:10] So we come back to the text and this is how it goes. "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?" "Yes." "Feed My lambs." Jesus tells him, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?" "Yes, Lord," Peter said, "You know how I love You." "Then take care of My sheep." Jesus said, and then a third time, for three times he denies Him, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?" And Peter was hurt that Jesus asked him that question a third time. I don't think it was that he was hurt because of the Jesus question. Like, "Oh, you're not getting it, Jesus." The sense I would have and the sense that maybe you would have is, when Jesus asks him a third time, Peter knows, Jesus knows. Jesus knows exactly how I've not measured up.
[24:01] Jesus knows exactly my own inadequacies. Jesus knows the deepest and darkest parts of my spirit and my soul. And Jesus knows how inadequate I really am and face to face with Jesus, knowing that hurts. It's a weight. It's heavy. And so Peter says, "Lord, You know everything. You know that I love You," which is true. Jesus didn't need to ask the question three times for His benefit. Jesus asked the question three times for Peter's benefit so Peter could be reinstated, so Peter could know that something important was happening.
[24:54] So Jesus says, "Then feed My sheep. This mission that I've called you to, you are here for and I'm empowering you for, and I'm reinstating you to." And so what does Jesus do with failure? What does Jesus do with your failure and my failure, the story that I've grown up with? And if you've experienced a little bit of the story of church and the story of Jesus' death on the cross, this one feels familiar. Jesus forgives you. And this is very, very true. And I don't wanna belittle this. There's a forgiveness that comes from Christ that is incredible and profound and powerful, and you desperately need it, and I desperately need it. But the story of Peter moves beyond forgiveness. You see Jesus for Peter, and I think Jesus for you and for me, Jesus restores you.
[25:44] Your sin and your brokenness will change you and break you and bring you down. And Jesus takes those parts and restores you to what He's called you. But He doesn't just restore you. Jesus also, He heals you. He takes those stories and He takes that narrative and He takes that sinfulness and that brokenness that you feel and it comes up, and the devil reminds you of it, and it has impact and it's changed your life. And He takes all those things and He heals it. That sinfulness actually has changed you and it needs to be healed. Those parts of your story. And sometimes they've been festering for a long time. You're like, "I've been forgiven." And that's true. But sometimes you haven't let Jesus fully heal you from those parts of your story.
[26:33] Gary Burge, a writer about this particular passage, he encapsulates it perfectly. He said, "Peter ran to the only one who could heal his memories, who could rewrite the terrible pictures and sounds of his recent past." And then speaking to you and to me, he says, "The work of the church, this is us, those that call Christ our King, we gather as the church, the ek, the ekklesia, the gathering of the people looking to Jesus." And I know that's not all of you, and you all haven't signed up for that, and that's okay. But when you gather for the purpose of serving your King Jesus, you become the part of the family of God. And we have this responsibility of gathering of fish and the nurture of sheep.
[27:21] And it cannot go forward. This work cannot go forward unless it's ministers. And its ministers aren't the ones that have the title or the name tag. The ministers are the priesthood of all believers. This is what we're all called to. This is what God has invited you into, and you can't go forward unless you're healed of your histories and renewed by God's Spirit. It's why years later, as Peter was reflecting on the story of Jesus and writing to the Christians all around the Mediterranean rim that we're dealing with difficulty of persecution and falling back into sin and trying to figure out how to come out of it, Peter writes to them and quotes the prophet Isaiah speaking this over them, explaining what Jesus did.
[28:07] And he writes in 1 Peter 2, he says, "He, Jesus, personally carried our sins in His body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. And by His wounds, you are healed." And this healing is what you need. This healing is what our world is desperate for. This healing. I don't want to overplay it or belittle it, because sometimes the healing, it takes time. Sometimes this healing is in a long term, like you gotta be in like therapy Or you gotta go to CR and you gotta be in other places. And then you gotta have a lot of prayer ministry. And all of those things are true. And it can't necessarily, it's not like, it's like, oh, like all this decades of issues could just get solved in a moment.
[28:55] But on some level it's also like, yeah, but have you brought it to Jesus and asked Him to heal you because He wants to, and He did it for Peter and He would do it for you. And I think sometimes we miss, we just miss the opportunity for God to work in this kind of way in our hearts because we're hesitant, we received our forgiveness, but like there's parts of our soul that are a little bit, they're embarrassing to bring back up. And so what I wanna try here, as we come to an end, we're gonna sing in as a response in just a second. But before we do, I just wanna try a prayer exercise. Here's the thing. When we gather in this kind of way, we've known and believe that the Spirit of God is present.
[29:45] We don't have to do anything. The Spirit of God wants to be here. The Spirit of God resides in the hearts of believers. And so if you follow after Christ, the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead is in you. But often it can be important for us to invite the Spirit to work because I think sometimes we offer a level of resistance. And so I want to just invite you into a prayer exercise where you're standing in your seats. You can, this is just all kind of in your own mind, but that maybe the Spirit of God might actually remind you of something if you could, man, if you could spend some time listening and hearing from your heavenly Father here today. And so all that, all that we're gonna do is we're gonna pray, just pray in a maybe a bit of a different kind of way.
[30:38] I want you to imagine some things with me. I want you to say some things in your mind as we pray, that you would actually pray these things to the Lord. And here's the thing, even if you don't believe in the same God that I'm talking about, even if you don't believe in the things that we've just talked about, you can still try this, you can still give this a shot. And maybe this God that we talk about and we sing about is powerful enough to reveal Himself even to somebody that's not quite sure if He's real. So this is what I invite you to do. I invite you just to close your eyes, stay where you're seated. We close our eyes just to avoid the distractions of the things around us. And we're just gonna pray together.
[31:23] And I want you to, as you're praying, just take a breath and just let out the distractions, things you've been thinking about, things that you've been concerned about. So we just invite the Holy Spirit to come and to speak to our hearts and speak to our minds. And in this moment, as your eyes are closed, what I'd love for you to do is just to picture a campfire, a charcoal fire, a fire somewhere that's got seats around it and it's in a place that feels safe, but it's in a place that maybe there's water there, maybe it's a place, you know, maybe it's a place you've been to and there's nobody else around the fire except for one.
[32:16] There's one figure sitting just through the fire. And as you walk into this area and you see this fire and the warmth that it provides, you look across and you know, instinctively that the person around the fire is Jesus. And as you walk into that space, all of a sudden, whenever people throughout the Scriptures have an experience with a heavenly being, there's often a response of like, not a nervousness, but it's an unworthiness comes out because we feel the hurt that we have. We feel the weight of our sin. We feel that story wells up when we're in the presence of a perfect being.
[33:05] We know that we are unworthy. And so as you come into the clearing and you see the fire and you see Jesus across the way, I just want you to take a moment and note the story, the sinfulness, the heaviness of whatever it is that comes to your mind and your life and your heart as you walk into that space. And as you look through the fire and Jesus looks back at you, He beckons for you to sit with Him and He asks you a question. And the question might be the same question He asked Peter, do you love Me?
[33:53] The question might be different. It might be specific to you. It might be something that you uniquely have heard the Spirit ask you before. Whatever it is, it's a question that He's gonna verbalize to you. It's not from me, but it's something that you hear. And I just wanna leave a moment and ask the Spirit would reveal, what's the question that Jesus is asking you? The beautiful thing, but when Jesus asks the question, He wants to give you a chance to respond.
[34:43] And so in your prayer, as you are looking into the eyes of Jesus, I just invite you in this moment, just even in quietly, you don't have to say it out loud, or you can if you want, but what might you say? What might you say as a response to Jesus? You can say it. Now, when Jesus restores Peter, He calls him to the things that He is known about, that Peter has been called into.
[35:32] He invites you to live into the life that He's asked you to do. It's not a secret, it's something that maybe you've heard Him talked about before. And so this last thing that happens is Jesus reminds you of the mission, the commission, the things that He would have for you. And if you would leave space and just ask that Jesus would speak those, what is Jesus inviting you into? What is He calling you to do as a response to your faith in Him?
[36:22] Spirit of God, we're grateful that if we gather, if we focus on You, if we invite You to speak to us, that You're willing to inhabit our praises and You're willing to actually speak to our hearts. And so, Lord, I pray in a room like this, that as we gather in this kind of way, as we turn our hearts to You, as we sit across from You around the charcoal fire, Lord, would You always bring Your truth to our minds? Would we not let time go by without spending time with You so that the truth of what You say about us and about what You have for us, God, that we would know it, but not just that we would know it, that we would be healed so that we could go and that we could do it.
[37:08] And so in this room today, I pray that Your Spirit would, obviously, we love it and we will ask that it would continue to do the work that only the Spirit of God can do. We pray these things in Jesus' name. One of the things that we like to do around these parts is of course respond. We respond often in song because the songs are a means of sometimes affirming things that we know to be true. Sometimes we say them because we hope them to be true. But on a day like today, sometimes I just wonder, I just wonder if it's to affirm what God is doing in our midst. And so I just invite you to stand here in the space. If you're not somebody that usually sings, if you're not somebody that usually does anything in terms of a response, I just invite you to maybe step into that uneasiness a little bit.
[37:59] I, you know, I'm somebody that, I turn the mic off when I sing 'cause and nobody wants to hear that, like it's really bad. But that's okay, because I think the idea is that God actually is the One that we sing to, and He did pay it all, and He did forgive you of your sins, and He does restore you, and He does heal you. And so as a response to that, we return praises to Him for affirming the things that He has done and that He will do. And our hope, my friends, this is something that's not just for us, but for all people, that we could know that Jesus truly has paid it all.