Grace is what Jesus offers us when he invites us to follow him. Grace is what he offers when we fail and repent. Grace is what draws us – propels us – toward him after we’ve been restored.

The overwhelming relief and undeserved favor of God is what made Peter throw himself into the water. And when he got to shore, he found that Jesus, just like the father of the prodigal son, had prepared a meal.

While we are wondering where in the world Jesus is, and what he’s doing, and whether or not he has any use for us, Jesus is collecting the wood for the fire, striking the flint to light it, and cooking the fish and bread so it’s ready when we arrive. He is always ready to fellowship with his followers.

Does that shock you? We might have expected him to say something like, “Now that I’ve helped you with your fishing predicament, why don’t you guys cook up some of those fish for me.”

Instead, it went something like this:

Jesus Fellowships With Failures

Jesus said, “Bring some of the fish you’ve just caught (wink, wink) and come and have breakfast.”

Peter raised an eyebrow at Him. The fish we just caught? He jogged to the boat and climbed on board to help drag the bulging net out of the water.

They heaved fish and nets, ropes, and baskets onto the shore to begin the work of untangling fins and sorting fish by species and size.

Peter draped the net from the bow to stern to mark the repairs. He found no rips. No overstrained knots. No place for fish to escape. None had been lost.

“153 keepers!” Andrew shouted. Peter looked up to see him drop the last basket on the beach.

Jesus waved them over. “Come and have breakfast.”

As they stood around the crackling fire, they all saw the unmistakable scar on the hand that stirred the coals and turned the roasting fish. And no one dared ask Him, “Who are you?” 

They finally knew. Then, just like on the night they had deserted him, Jesus served them. He took the bread and gave it to them, and he did the same with the fish. (See John 21:13)

I kind of want the story to end here. “And they all lived happily ever after.” So it’s a little surprising that while they’re brushing crumbs from their beards and tossing fishbones into the fire, Jesus looks around the circle of men, and, in front of everyone, he asks Peter, “Do you truly love me more than these other disciples?”

His question surprises me because it seems that Jesus is picking at the scab of a wound he’s already healed.  

But, in the same way he pointed to their inadequacy before he filled their nets with fish, once again, he points to their inadequate loyalty because he’s about to blow their minds again.

Two Types of Love

When Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” he used the Greek word agapao for love. “Peter, do you agapao me?”

Agapao is the kind of love God showed to us. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love [agapao] for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Agapao is an unconditional kind of love. It’s a decision of the will—which is to say, you choose this kind of love. Agapao is expressed through action, regardless of whether the loved one is lovely or lovable. It’s love that is expressed by self-giving and self-sacrificing, even if it hurts the giver. 

But there is another kind of love, which is translated from the Greek word phileo. Phileo is a love that springs from emotion and affectionate feelings. It’s an emotional response to a sense of pleasure. 

Think back to one of the best times you’ve had with a friend. Maybe you said, “That was so much fun. I just love you!” That’s phileo love. Interestingly, God also has phileo love toward us. John 16:27 says, “the father phileos us because we phileo Jesus.” Put another way, God has an affectionate delight toward his followers, who have an affectionate delight toward his son Jesus.

So when Jesus asked, “Peter do you agapao me?” Peter understood him to be asking, “Do you love me the way I have loved you—unconditionally, with a kind of love that sacrifices itself?”

The answer, as they all knew, was no. None of them had loved Jesus with agapao kind of love. Peter had not sacrificed himself, though he had promised to. He knew it would be ridiculous and dishonest to claim that he did.

But he honestly did phileo Jesus. He had tender affection for Christ who found him, forgave him, and was at that moment fellowshipping with him. So Peter answered in humble honesty, “Yes. You know I phileo you like a best friend.”

Jesus asked a second time, “Do you agapao me?” and Peter, determined to answer honestly, replied the same. “Yes. You know I phileo you like a friend.”

But when Jesus asked a third time, he changed the question, and it grieved Peter. He said, “Peter, do you phileo me like a friend?”

Perhaps Peter felt as though Jesus had to sink to his level, but at least this time, Peter had been honest about it. In Peter’s distress, he answered Jesus: “Lord, you know all things.” You know what I did, where I fled, how I wept. You know that is not the kind of love You have for me. Your love is without limits and without fear. You know that I only phileo you with the tender affection of a best friend.

And if it were anyone besides Jesus, we might expect to read, “Oh well, then never mind. I need someone who’s more committed.”

But it is Jesus, and it’s as if Jesus answers Peter’s confession of phileo love, “Peter, even if you don’t agapao me yet with a self-sacrificing kind of love, your tender phileo affection is still precious to me. Follow me, and I will teach you how to love as I’ve loved you.”

Do you sometimes feel like you’ve messed up too much to be of any use to God? Or that your love for him is second-rate, and your faith is weak?

Maybe you feel like your family situation lands you on the Christian B-team.

Maybe there’s something in your recent or distant past that you can’t bear to reveal because you fear that if anyone knew, they would reject you. Avoid you. Dismiss you out of hand. And do you know what? People might, but Jesus Christ will not.

In John 6:37 in the Amplified version, we hear Jesus say, “The one who comes to Me I will most certainly not cast out, [I will never, never reject anyone who follows Me]”  (John 6:37 AMP).

Peter’s honest assessment of his love for Christ didn’t change Christ’s hold on him. 

The same is true for us. 

Jesus Delights in Choosing Failures

Jesus is still holding on. He still chooses you. He invited you to follow him because he wanted you. He invades your darkest moment because he wants you to know he’s keeping you, and he does all of that because he WANTS TO!

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Ephesians 1:4, NLT

Do you believe that? Do you know that he is not rolling his eyes when you come to him? Jesus assured you that when you approach God in prayers of repentance, questioning, confession, or praise, he is not plugging his ears and closing his eyes like a toddler who doesn’t want to listen. He keeps you because he wants to, and it gives him great pleasure.

But he also keeps you because you’re his. You belong to him.  

The Waiting is the memoir of Minka, a woman who became pregnant as a result of rape in 1928 at the age of 16. As was the custom at that time, she was sent to a home for girls “in her situation” where she delivered a healthy baby girl she named Betty Jane and relinquished her parental rights. 

For the next eight decades, she would not and could not forget her little Betty Jane.

When Minka was 93 years old, she received a call from a woman who claimed to be her daughter. As it turns out, it was Betty Jane, asking to meet her. Do you think Minka wanted to see Betty Jane because she suspected some potential? Do you suppose she wanted to see Betty Jane because she’d accomplished great things or had few failures?

She wanted to be with Betty Jane because Betty Jane was hers.

Jesus keeps you because he wants to, and it gives him great pleasure. He invited you to follow him because he made you. He invades your darkest moment because he wants you to know he’s keeping you, and he does all of that because it’s what he wants to do and it delights him.

Previous Posts in this Series

• What Does Jesus Do for Followers Who Fail?
• What Does Jesus Do for Disappointed Followers?
• What Does it Mean to Follow Jesus?

The post Why Does Jesus Want Followers Who Fail? appeared first on Shauna Letellier.

And I’m just betting that’s how Peter felt after Jesus died.

In the gospel of Luke, we read that Peter panicked, lied and said, “Man, I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” 

“As he was speaking, a rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” 62 And Peter went outside and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:60-61).

Peter spent the most miserable Saturday of his life in hiding. While folks in Jerusalem were celebrating Passover with their families, Peter was weeping bitterly.

He couldn’t undo his denial, and surely he wondered if he’d been disqualified. 

True followers of Jesus sometimes fail. 

Have you experienced the crushing weight of personal failure? The kind of brokenness where you feel the ground beneath you crumbling away, and you can’t undo the damage.

• Maybe it was the moment you realized your marriage was over.
• Maybe it was that life-altering announcement from one of your kids.
• Maybe it was that first Monday morning you didn’t go to work because you no longer had a job.
• Maybe you’ve spun a web of polite little lies that didn’t hurt anyone, but now you’re the one stuck in the web.

Motherhood is the context where I experienced the darkest and most devastating sense of my own failure.  And yet, God used motherhood and foster parenting to teach me about his goodness through my failures.

Followers Fear Disqualification

After 16 months our little foster girls were reunited with their family.

When we received a message a month later asking us to foster again, I was weary and worried. I didn’t think I could do it again, and I went to bed that night with the heaviest sense of condemnation and failure I have ever experienced.

We had gone into foster care believing it was how God wanted us to show his love. I had verses to prove it was the right thing to do: John 13:34 “Everyone will know you as my followers if you demonstrate your love to others” (VOICE), and James 1:27 “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress” (NLT).

I tried to conjure up the same kind of fist-pumping courage that I’d had two years earlier as a first-time foster parent. But no amount of verse-quoting could move me back to that confident place of Christian usefulness I had declared. I was terrified to foster again.

From the outside looking in, it seemed the good and right thing to do. I wanted to do the right thing.  And I worried, if becoming foster parents had been God’s best before, would it be wrong to not do it again? 

But, I was scared that God would not strengthen me for the task. I was afraid he would allow it to be too hard. I felt broken, and I was afraid I would break further or break others. I wanted it all to be easy and fun, but I knew that wasn’t always God’s best plan.

C.S. Lewis once wrote in a letter, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” * 

Not only was I unsure of how painful God’s best would be, I wasn’t even sure what God’s best was in this situation. 

As I lay in bed that night, I felt assaulted by condemnation. When I closed my eyes, it was as if I was seeing a news ticker tape scrolling across the screen of my mind with accusations against me: “What kind of mom are you? Don’t you care about kids? What are people going to think of you? You’ve ruined your witness for Christ.”

The weight of condemnation felt suffocating. Physically, I was having a hard time catching my breath, but the ticker tape kept scrolling, “Are you even a Christian? You should just withdraw yourself from church right now. You are disqualified.”

I believe we can trace every kind of failure, sin, and shame down to the tangly root of unbelief. I effectively call God a liar when I do not believe what God has said about himself. 

In my case, I falsely believed God was disappointed and surprised by my weakness. But the truth was that he has said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). 

I believed my limitations were hindering God’s plan. But God’s truth said, “My plan can’t be thwarted.” (See Job 42:2)

“I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27) 

The lies we believe cause us to fall into sin and wallow in shame. They bring consequences and condemnation.

Jesus’s Approach After Our Failure

What does Jesus do for his followers who’ve failed, who feel desolate, broken, ashamed, and just want to exit their own lives? 

Well, what did Jesus do for Peter?

When Peter’s eyes were still swollen and his head was still aching, the resurrected Jesus came and found him.

Peter’s devastating and miserable Saturday was followed by Resurrection Sunday. At some point on Sunday–after Peter and John had sprinted to the empty tomb that morning and before the two Emmaus disciples ate with Jesus that evening—sometime during that day, Jesus appeared to Peter (Luke 24:34, 1 Corinthians 15:5).

We aren’t privy to a single word of that conversation. But based on Peter’s impulsive dive when he saw Jesus on the beach, we can infer a few things about their first post-resurrection private meeting.

First, Jesus initiated it by appearing to Peter. We’re not told that Peter ran all over Jerusalem looking for Christ, who he couldn’t find in the tomb. This is a man who saw two dead soldiers lying outside an open grave that only held soiled burial cloths. He wasn’t looking for Jesus. Scripture says twice, Jesus appeared to Peter. 

Second, when Peter saw him, he likely fell to his knees. The first time Jesus revealed his power in a sinking boat full of fish, his holiness dropped Peter to his knees in a deep awareness of his own sin and shame. Remember what Peter said? “Go away from me. I am a sinful man.” When Jesus, after his resurrection, appeared to Peter privately, I’m guessing he fell to the ground in sorrow and repentance. I wonder if the plea tumbling from Peter’s heart came from Psalm 51: 

Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love. 

Because of your great mercy wipe away my sins!

Wash away all my evil and make me clean from my sin!

I recognize my faults; I am always conscious of my sins.

I have sinned against you—only against you—and done what you consider evil.

So you are right in judging me; you are justified in condemning me.

Psalm 51:1-4, GNT

That’s a poem of repentance. Turning toward God, and turning away from sin.

And third, we don’t know what Jesus said in that moment, but I wonder if any words were exchanged at all. Remember, as soon as the rooster crowed, Jesus looked at Peter, and Peter wept. No words. 

The fact that Jesus was presently standing before Peter, alive, might have said it all. I have triumphed over sin and death in order to find and forgive you because you’re mine. 

I imagine they hugged and cried. We don’t know for sure. 

But we do know that Peter knew he was completely restored because a few weeks later, when he saw Jesus stoking a fire on the shore, Peter threw himself in the lake and did the first-century crawl stroke with his cloak wrapped around him.

Followers Respond to Jesus’ Approach

When you and I are weakened or crushed by the weight of sin and shame, Jesus invites us to unburden ourselves in repentance. As 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

We turn away from unbelief. 

You might say it out loud to God, “I didn’t believe you, and I am painfully aware that I was wrong.” And after you’ve turned away from the lie that showed up in your behavior, turn toward God and believe the truth that he is faithful to you and that he is just to forgive–which is to say, he is right and fair when he cleanses you. 

And do you know why it’s fair and just? Because Jesus took your punishment. Justice has been served because Jesus served the sentence for you. It is finished.

*Letters of C. S. Lewis (29 April 1959), para. 1, p. 285 — as reported in The Quotable Lewis (1989), p. 469)

The post What Does Jesus Do for Followers Who Fail? appeared first on Shauna Letellier.

Leno’s audience would laugh and roll their eyes while grown-up American citizens searched their memories for the correct answer that they knew they should know!

Kurt and I used to watch it and sometimes we’d roll our eyes thinking, “Good grief, how do you not know who the Vice President is?!”  Other times, we’d cringe in embarrassment because we were just as ignorant. Like this question: Who said, “Give me liberty or give me death”? We’d shrug and feel stupid together because apparently, we hadn’t paid attention in history, and we weren’t willing to get up and Google it.

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

If I were to ask the average person on the street, “How do I follow Jesus?” or “What does it mean to follow Jesus?” we would get a variety of answers. People might say something like, “It means you have to go to church a lot,” or “You can’t do certain things.”

If I asked a more knowledgeable person, they might say, “It means you’re supposed to be kind to everyone and follow The Golden Rule like Jesus did.”

But If I asked a Bible-believing woman, who truly ought to know the answer, who by definition should be living the answer, what would she say? How would I answer that? How would you?

Followers are Everyday People

The apostle John tells a story about his good friend Peter (John 21), who followed Jesus right through the end of his life. Peter’s biography gives us a picture of what following Jesus looks like, what it means, and how it’s done.

But in order to understand John’s account and the implications of following Jesus, we need to hear the prologue to Peter’s story, which begins in Luke 5.

Peter’s Growing-Up Years

If we had to describe Peter’s growing-up years in modern terms, we might say he went to a parochial school. He probably learned some math, but more than addition and subtraction, five-year-old Peter and his brothers and cousins learned the first five books of the Old Testament. And by the time they were teenagers, they’d probably memorized most of it…or at least they were supposed to have memorized it. Think Awana on steroids.

After school, Peter and his brother Andrew helped their dad run the family business. They apprenticed as fishermen under their father, and while it might have been tough to corral them when they were little–scampering about the boat and too weak to handle the oars–when they grew up, they multiplied their father’s workforce and income capacity.

They were probably good boys, but as far as their Jewish teachers were concerned, they weren’t cream-of-the-crop. To advance to what was essentially secondary education, students had to be chosen. And Peter wasn’t. So he went to work with his father to earn a living and provide for his family like any God-fearing, Jewish man ought to do.

He worked the night shift, and every evening they shoved off from the shore and fished until they had enough to eat and sell the next morning.

Peter was doing what was expected of him, showing up, putting one foot in front of the other, believing what he was supposed to believe. 

After a long night of work, doing the job he knew best, Peter had come up empty, with nothing to show for all his hard work.

Can you imagine the monotony and discouragement Peter might have felt? Maybe you’re at a similar juncture in your own life. You believe in God, know about Jesus, you try to follow the Golden Rule, but you’re coming up empty.

I’ve been there.

I don’t know if it’s fair to say I grew up like Peter, but in a way, I can identify with him. I didn’t go to private school, but I went to Sunday School, Sunday morning church, Sunday night church, Wednesday church, Vacation Bible School, Summer Bible Camp, high school Bible study.

I didn’t memorize the Old Testament, but I graduated with a double major in Human Development and Biblical Studies.

Even after all that education, I subconsciously operated under the mantra, “If you work hard and do nice things for God, then he will do nice things for you.”

No one ever laid it out for me like that, but I viewed my relationship with God like a divine checking account.

So I subconsciously devised a strategy wherein I would show up and do the right thing. I would make steady deposits into my account with God –read my Bible, pray, encourage a friend– then when I arbitrarily determined I had made enough deposits, I granted myself permission to make a withdrawal. Enough “funds” in my account with God meant I had earned the right to make a request.

And let me tell you, in the early days, it wasn’t anything too spiritual. I’d ask for God’s help on a test I hadn’t studied for. I’d ask Him to help me get to my violin lesson on time when I’d spent too much time socializing after school. I even asked Him to make handsome boys like me.

So off I’d go to do those good things–to make deposits and earn the right to ask God a favor.

If something went wrong for me —I did poorly on a test or the handsome boy wasn’t interested— I figured I probably deserved it because I had overdrawn my account. Insufficient funds! 

Then there were those occasions when I decided to sin, because sometimes sin seems fun, and sometimes it seems like the only option. I’d try to make it up to God by doing more good things, making more deposits to pay back my sin debt.

I mean, I knew he loved me, but I was pretty sure the way to stay in his good graces and make him like me was to do nice things…and to make up for my sin by doing more nice things.

Maintaining my account by making “deposits” became my goal. But none of it was motivated by my love for God, although I would have told you at the time that it was. In reality, all my good-deed “deposits” were fueled by my love for me.

It was my way to get what I wanted from God.

Followers Fail

This wildly distorted strategy followed me into my marriage and motherhood. I got super irritated when the big and little people in my home and life didn’t adhere to my good-deeds deposit strategy. I felt their behavior was a reflection of my performance in my role as a wife and mom. And somehow, I felt like I had to make up for not only my sin but theirs too! Since I was sleep-deprived and always had multiple kids in tow, my opportunities for “making up for my sin” were limited.

How could I ask God to do nice things for me if I didn’t have time or energy to do nice things for him? In my mind, everything depended on me. And that led to a life of constant, low-grade panic.

I was thrashing around trying to earn an answered prayer, to prove I was a good Christian, loving wife, fun mom, nurturing foster parent, but I was failing on every front. The emotional and relational wreckage was everywhere I looked.

I supposed my account was empty, and I didn’t have one shred of spiritual, emotional, or physical energy to fill it back up. 

One ordinary Sunday afternoon, I put my five kids down for a nap (at that time, we had our three boys and two little foster girls. They were ages 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7). When they were down, I collapsed into my chair and cried alone for the next two hours. My only prayer was, “God, help.”

When I was finally out of energy to earn approval and favor from God, he began to teach me that I didn’t have to.

All that time, I kept coming back to my Bible, looking for the key that would make it all better. Maybe I just wasn’t working hard enough to find it, but if I stayed with it and kept searching, maybe God would reluctantly give up the key, and I could unlock the thing that would fix it all.

But he didn’t lead me to a key. He led me to a story. The story of Peter’s first great catch of fish in Luke chapter 5, and I saw myself in Peter–working hard and coming up empty.

For Peter, it was the morning after a long and disappointing night of work. He and his brother Andrew had nothing but a heap of torn and damaged nets to show for their efforts.

Just down the shore, Jesus was teaching, and as the crowd grew and pressed in to hear him, they nudged him toward the water. The lake lapped at his sandals and the hem of his robe, so he climbed into Peter’s boat and asked him to put out into the water where the acoustics were better, and the people could see.

As I read the story, I could see the people straining to hear Jesus over the sounds of professional fishermen and gulls squawking for leftovers. But Peter was in the boat with Jesus, and he heard exactly what Jesus was saying.

When Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Peter, “Put the boat out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4).

I imagine Peter raised his eyebrows because he made some reluctant and qualifying remarks–we’ve done this all night, and I’m not doing this because I think it’s a good idea, but because you say so. And then, Peter obeyed.

When they let down their nets, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets—which they had just repaired and washed—began to break again (See Luke 5:6).

They couldn’t handle what Jesus provided in abundance. It was “immeasurably more than all they could have asked or imagined” (See Ephesians 3:20). In fact, they had to signal their partners in the other boat to come and help.

Peter got a front-row seat to the kindness of Jesus demonstrated by a pile of fish that was sinking his boat, and it drove him to his knees in worship and repentance. 

Jesus did for Peter what Peter couldn’t do for himself. 

Followers Find Relief

To me, that story was God’s vivid illustration of the gospel.

I can work and strive and huff and puff, struggle to do all the right things, to “make deposits” in order to earn God’s favor and approval, but my transactions did nothing to improve my standing with God! 

In fact, they kept me relying on my “righteous” deposits, and that is the OPPOSITE of following Jesus.

Ultimately, God isn’t asking us to merely be nice and hardworking. He demands that we be holy. And no matter how hard we work, no matter how many “deposits” we make, we cannot make ourselves holy.

The gap between our goodness and God’s true holiness is too vast. We can’t fill it with good behavior. We need someone else to intervene. And much to our relief, Jesus has. 

When Jesus died on the cross, God initiated an exchange. Martin Luther called it “The Great Exchange.” I like to call it The Divine Cut and Paste.

2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made Him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.”

At the cross, God cut away my sin and pasted it on Jesus. Jesus suffered the consequences of my sin. He died instead of me. But that is not all. God also cut away Jesus’s perfect, righteous life-record and pasted it onto me.

All those years of working to maintain my account and status were years of misplaced energy. I had misunderstood. Not only did Jesus suffer the consequences I deserved and give me a “clean slate” when he died on the cross, on the blank slate where my sin had been recorded, God rewrote the record with Jesus’ PERFECT LIFE.

Jesus did for me what I could not do for myself. Once and for all, God declared me holy in his sight because of what Jesus did, not because of anything I had done or needed to do.

And for the first time, the gospel became extremely good news to me. It wasn’t an account that I had to maintain. The gospel was a relief! My standing before God, his approval of me, his kindness toward me wasn’t dependent on me! It was dependent on Jesus!

Suddenly, following Jesus wasn’t a chore. It was a no-brainer!

Followers Find Certainty

Have you misunderstood what it means to be a follower of Jesus? Are you depending on something besides Jesus’ work on the cross to secure your approval, your righteous standing before God? Are you making deposits to “shore things up” with him?

Does it feel strange or difficult to say, “I am holy in his sight,” because of what you know about yourself? 

What if you believed that Jesus’s perfect righteousness—credited to your account—is the reason you can say with all certainty, “I am holy in his sight.”

On the other hand, maybe you’re a bit put off that you can’t earn your own righteous standing. I mean, shouldn’t your goodness count for something? We Westerners pride ourselves on earning our keep and not taking handouts. But Christ’s death (instead of yours) and his righteous life (applied to you) is a necessary handout! We can’t be declared righteous in God’s sight without accepting it!

When you stand before God to give an account for the one precious life he’s entrusted to you, what will you point to that will show him you are holy and worthy to enter his holy presence in his holy kingdom?

Pastor and author Greg Gilbert answers, “I’ll tell you what every Christian whose faith is in Christ alone will do. By God’s grace, they will simply and quietly point to Jesus. And this will be their plea: O God, do not look for any righteousness in my own life. Look at your Son. Count me righteous…because of Him. He lived the life I should have lived. He died the death that I deserve. I have renounced all other trusts, and my plea is him alone. Justify me, O God, because of Jesus” (What is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert, page 83.)

Following Jesus means putting our faith in Christ and renouncing any other method of being counted righteous before God.

That’s what Peter did.

With that astonishing view of Jesus’s power and kindness, there was no deliberating about what to do with the huge pile of income once it was hauled in.

He left it on the shore and followed Jesus.

The post What Does it Mean to Follow Jesus? appeared first on Shauna Letellier.

After our house fire, a friend texted to see how I was faring and to find out how she could pray specifically. She asked, “Are you grieving the loss of any particular thing?”

I wanted to answer honestly, but I could not think of one lost item that had caused me more grief than another. The truth was, I was heartbroken and sick to my stomach over the loss of it all.

For twenty years, we’ve worked to make a home where our children could learn and thrive. We carefully considered which living room furniture would withstand the rigors of growing kids. Is it easier to wipe Cheeto-dusted fingerprints off leather or microfiber? Is the ease of wiping Cheeto dust from leather worth the extra cost? 

Over the years, we’ve picked up interesting pieces of antique furniture to refinish and use. Finding furniture for free or cheap was fun and always unexpected. When I found a place for each piece in our home, I felt resourceful, as if I had rescued a bit of history and restored its functionality and beauty.

Most of our furniture was either consumed in the fire or ruined by secondary damage, so we hurled it into a 30-yard dumpster parked beside our deck.

We lost other things too. Favorite shoes that didn’t hurt my feet. The perfect winter coat that blocked the wind but wasn’t too bulky. My 1995 KitchenAid dishwasher, which cleaned dishes better and faster than anything you can buy in 2022. (When I bought it used from someone who was remodeling their kitchen, I actually apologized for buying it for $100 and wished them luck with their new dishwasher.)

To see all these things and more piled in a dumpster broke my heart. It wasn’t that I was so attached to my “things,” although there was an element of that.

What I saw was 20 years of careful investment of time and treasure suddenly rendered worthless and destined for the city garbage heap.

The dumpster is still sitting outside the house, and every time I drive out there to feed the dogs or water trees, I see two decades of ruined home-making, dampened by recent rain and baking in the summer heat—a literal steaming pile.

The sight of it takes my breath away as if I’ve been punched in the gut. 

“We are all safe,” I remind myself. “It’s just stuff,” I scold, and I know those statements are true. But the actual ton of trash in the dumpster seems to say, “Your work was a waste!”

“Was it?” I answer the dumpster. Christ followers, by definition, work for Christ, regardless of the location or nature of their work. For the Christian, all work, whether it’s raising kids, stewarding a home, managing personnel, caring for patients, teaching students, driving a tractor, or bottle feeding calves, is work for the Lord. If it’s all done for the Lord, why does he allow it to be wasted? When the child rebels, when students drop out, when crops get pulverized by hail, time and effort feel wasted. Doesn’t he care about the outcome? 

Jungle missionary Elisabeth Elliot asked a similar question about her work. She was a gifted linguist and writer who intended to serve Christ as a missionary for life. She spent years translating the Bible into various languages for unreached people groups. By listening to her tribal neighbors and friends, she learned to speak unwritten languages, created alphabets, and translated portions of the Bible for people who had never heard of Jesus. 

But over the years, her language work with the Colorado, Quichua, and Waorani tribes, for various reasons, came to nothing. 

In her diaries, she wrote about sending the entirety of her work on the Colorado language to a Bible translator in another town. On the way, the suitcase containing her work was stolen, never to be recovered. 

In her devotional, she wrote, “I received a copy of the Auca (now known as Waorani) translation of the New Testament. The orthography has been greatly altered since my day, so I can’t read much of it now, but leafing through the pages I thought long, long thoughts. I had had nothing to do with the translation.“

She likened her lost work to the Old Testament sacrifices. 

In the Old Testament, Jewish families demonstrated obedience, dependence, and love for God by bringing him their best, unblemished sacrifice. When they did, their best was laid on the altar.

Then it was burned up.

And as it was burned, it was accepted.

Her thoughts have comforted me as I peer into a dumpster full of life investment and careful effort. Alongside coats and shoes, I see my paperbacks stained by soot, reeking of smoke, and unfit to sell or give. I see my son’s Bible, with its charred pages flaking away in the breeze. It is all evidence of a life’s work. Although I did the best I could, it has been burned (or ruined by smoke, heat, or water). But because of Jesus, it is all accepted by God as a “spiritual service of worship” (Romans 12:1).

The apostle Paul wrote, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Colossians 3:23-24, NIV).

The fire and the dumpster have reoriented my understanding of what it means to “work for the Lord.” 

Perhaps you’ve seen your careful effort steaming in a dumpster. Maybe you’ve scrawled your name at the bottom of a divorce decree. Maybe the ministry God called you to has crumbled under the weight of human conflict.

When we “work for the Lord” and offer our effort to him, it might be burned, ruined, or abandoned, but it cannot be wasted. It is impossible for it to “come to nothing” because nothing offered to Christ is ever wasted. He often uses it for purposes we could never imagine, but he does not waste it.  

I am still sad to see 20 years of making a home trashed, but I am reminded of the goodness of the gospel. The gospel tells me that my acceptance before God is not dependent upon my good stewardship, my resourcefulness, or my commitment to making a home that honors him.

It is solely dependent on Jesus! Stewardship and home-making can be burned or ruined, but when I offer myself to God as a living sacrifice in all I do, I worship. 

And worship is never wasted.

The post When Your Efforts Seem Wasted appeared first on Shauna Letellier.

Our family and our pets are all safe. Uprooted, but doing well overall.

In the past two weeks, our family, church family, friends, and community have absolutely bent over backward to anticipate our needs and meet them. We have been first-hand witnesses and beneficiaries of the body of Christ working together, each member doing its part (1 Corinthians 12:26-27). It has been breathtaking and humbling.

I wanted to write a quick note to inform or update you, and to chronicle God’s goodness to us so that we will remember and testify to his faithfulness.

What happened?

Saturday afternoon, May 21, we had gathered around our outdoor fireplace on our covered patio. My parents were here to celebrate Spencer’s graduation. It was cool out, and it was my mom’s birthday, so a relaxing afternoon by the fire seemed like a great way to celebrate.

The fire had burned down to coals, and we were preparing to leave for dinner. My parents, Zach, and I were inside the house. Spencer was at baseball, and Levi was attending a friend’s graduation reception. Kurt was outside winding up the garden hose when he smelled “non-campfire” smoke.

He hollered into the house for me to call 911, and I did, even though I didn’t yet know what our emergency was. I ran outside and saw Kurt hosing down the roof of the covered patio.

The garden hose couldn’t keep up. The breeze blew the fire into Levi’s bedroom, and Kurt had to abandon the garden hose as the fire grew.

Inside the house, I grabbed my purse, some important papers, and my laptop. Smoke was curling up through the floorboards in my office, so I decided not to crawl under my desk to unplug my charger. (It was a good decisions, but it also meant my computer was dead for almost two weeks before I got another charger).

Since Zach and my parents were visiting, all their clothes were packed in duffel bags, and they quickly grabbed most of their things. Our dogs’ kennel was upwind from the fire and was never in danger.

As I was running out, I saw the 20 pounds of sloppy joe meat I’d made for Spencer’s graduation reception thawing on the counter. I thought, “I’m going to need that tomorrow.” My arms were full, and as I considered how I could grab it, I started breathing in smoke and quickly decided to leave it.

Zach has always been a quick thinker in emergencies. Though I didn’t know it at the time, he was throwing the most flammable items, like the mattress, out of Levi’s room.

Levi was in town across the river and saw smoke. He called and asked, “Is our house on fire?” and in a surreal moment, I answered, “Yes.”

Spencer was in the dugout at his baseball game. I called a friend at the game, and she walked to the dugout and had him call me.

The Pierre & Fort Pierre Volunteer Fire Departments arrived and expertly took over. The rest of us stood in the yard feeling useless.

One by one, friends and family began to call, text, and arrive, and the body of Christ sprang into action.

As the house was burning, a church friend called to say, “I’ve got Spencer’s graduation party covered.” Another friend texted and asked how many pounds of sloppy joe meat I’d need for the reception. My mom stood by me, and we cried. Then we laughed because we knew the sloppy joe meat was “thawed.”

I had already loaded all of Spencer’s graduation decorations, memorabilia, and reception food (minus the thawing meat ) into my vehicle, so our friends loaded it all into their pickup and took it to the reception venue.

More friends texted to say they were praying. Several families who were out of town offered their homes to us. The text messages and calls offering support, prayer, and housing just kept rolling in.

Later that week, our local paper ran an article about how our community swooped in to carry us through. You can read it here.

With the help of many friends who donated furniture, household items, and muscle, we’ve settled into a little rental house in town. Several friends had it completely furnished and set up for us. When we brought our bags in, I felt like I was on an episode of Extreme Home Makeover!

How extensive was the damage?

When we contacted our insurance company, they asked, “What is the extent of the damage?” I didn’t exactly know how to answer. Everything looked ruined to me. Water and black soot ran down every wall, but the house was still standing. We’ve begun the process of sifting through some belongings to see what can or should be salvaged.

As I lifted a book on my side table, I found this book beneath it.

I sent the photo to the author, Lisa Appelo, and she wrote this beautiful post that captured thoughts I couldn’t put into words at the time:

Maybe like this book you’re forever marked by the heat and flames that took so much and you want to believe it didn’t take everything. That ashes aren’t the end. And that if you’ll do the grueling work of grief, you’ll see God not restore life as it was, but bring new beauty you never would have had otherwise.Hope woos us to sift through the ashes, not sit and stay in them. To grieve deeply over all that’s gone even as we take tender steps forward. And to trust that God is not now resigned to Plan B. There are no Plan B’s with God. This is Chapter 2 — a chapter God has allowed and as such it is filled to the BRIM with purpose, abundance, joy and goodness. Our life may be marked by flames, but may they be marked far deeper by God’s grace.

​

​Lisa Appelo

What’s next?

Many people have reached out to ask how to help. The Lord continues to care for us through the kindness and generosity of his people. Every need has been met! He has even tended to some of our “wants,” and it feels like we are experiencing the over-the-top lovingkindness of God, which I had hoped to write about in Remarkable Love. But as you can imagine, the book is on hold indefinitely. We will be out of our home for a minimum of six months, and probably much longer.

Please pray for wisdom as we make decisions in the coming weeks and months. Please also pray that God will be glorified and that he will bring beauty from ashes just as he has promised (Isaiah 61:3).

The post House Fire, Graduation, and God’s Provision appeared first on Shauna Letellier.

I know Easter Day has come and gone, but there was one moment from the Easter story that wouldn’t leave me even after I’d picked all the plastic grass out of my carpet.

Every time I read the story of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, the Sunday morning scene captivates me. Though Bible scholars disagree about the chronology presented in the four gospel accounts, Jesus’ resurrection rings true from every angle.

I imagined the short scene outside the empty tomb from Mary Magdalene’s angle. I hope you enjoy:

Mary Breaks Down

When Peter and John arrived at the open tomb, the guards Mary had described as dead men, the ones she had stepped over as she peered into the tomb, were gone.

Peter cast a sideways glance at John, and Mary felt her certainty evaporating.

“They were here.” She said as she searched the dirt for signs of them being dragged away.

Had the Romans retrieved their own dead as well?

The angels were also gone. The tomb was dim, but the burial cloths lay in the deflated form of a man, and the face cloth was still folded, just as she had told them.

Mary felt herself shivering as she watched Peter and John slowly walk away from the garden, shaking their heads.

She was still recovering her breath. The three of them had run the whole way. Sweat trickled down the middle of her back and caused a chill in the morning coolness. The sun had peeked above the horizon and warmed the stone she had worried about moving. She leaned against it, and her tunic soaked up the sweat.

Her neck stung where the strap of her spice-filled satchel had rubbed it raw as she’d fled this place hours ago. In terror and astonishment, she had run from this garden of bones with news from an angel that Jesus was not among the dead.

Mary was familiar with spirits. Evil spirits had once made death look appealing, like something to crave. But this spirit, this angel, reminded her that death was not to be craved but conquered.

“He has risen,” the angel had said. “Quick! Go and tell his disciples,” he raised a hand as if to stop her from rushing away and added, “and Peter. Makes sure you tell Peter too.”

And so she had. If the eleven disciples hadn’t been so paralyzed with grief and fear, they might have laughed her out the door. Instead, they chided, her.

“You’re not making sense, Mary.”

“You should have slept instead of visiting his tomb.”

“Have you been nursing a bottle of wine all night?”

When her insistence about what she had seen and heard began to sound like nonsense to her own ears, she finally burst into tears and said the only thing that made sense, “They have taken him away, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

Thaddaeus burst into a rant against Rome. Peter jumped up from the bench , and it tipped over behind him. John was out the door, and Peter rushed after him.

Mary and the other women looked at one another, “I’ll go,” Mary said, and she rushed back into the morning.

Now, as she stood alone before the empty tomb, her bewildering account was disintegrating.

She unshouldered the bag and let it slide to the ground. When it landed, the jars clanked together. Fragrance wafted up from the bag, and she knew one had broken. She didn’t care. She buried her face in her hands and began to sob.

Friday’s nightmare had beaten her down with wave after wave of injustice and lies and irrevocable evil.

She had prayed and cried and pleaded with the executioners, following Jesus all the way to Golgotha. On the way, she had reached to pull a mass of thorns from his tangled hair, but the guard had drawn his sword, and she drew back. She begged him to let Jesus have a drink, and he ignored her. When she asked to wipe the blood from his eyes so he could see, the soldier threatened to have her arrested as well.

She could not relieve his suffering. As a consolation, she had wanted to give Jesus a proper burial, but now she couldn’t even manage to do that.

She wiped her eyes with the edge of her sleeves and inhaled. John and Peter were out of sight, surely wondering if she had the fever, or worse, had been reclaimed by the demons Jesus had freed her from.

She knew she must return to the house and reasonably, calmly explain what she had seen. She must witness to the truth, even if she didn’t understand it. She bent down to look again at the place where she had last seen Jesus laying. She wanted to burn the sight into her memory.

Sticking her head inside the tomb, she gasped, and a terrified sob came up. Two spirits, dressed in white, were seated on the ledge where Jesus’ body had lain. 

“Woman, why are you crying?” one of them asked.

Mary trembled and defaulted to the answer that made sense, “They have taken away my Lord,” she said, “and I don’t know where they put him.”

She turned to grab her satchel to show them why she had come, that her intentions were good and holy, and when she did, she was startled again by another man standing outside the tomb.

In her fright, she jolted and bumped her head on the low ceiling of the entrance.

“Sir!” she said as she pressed her hand to her throbbing head. She opened her bag to explain to the graveyard gardener why she had come. The jostled jars stirred the fragrance again.

“Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?” said the gardener.

“The man who was in here.” She pointed into the tomb, wondering if this man could see—had seen—the angels. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you’ve put him, and I will get him.”

As soon as the words were out, she realized she’d made a false promise. How could she carry a body? Maybe John and Peter would come back if she could find out where they’d put his body.

She waited for his answer and rubbed her damp sleeve under her nose.

Then he spoke. “Mary.”

Mary froze. An invisible bolt of lightning coursed through her and stopped her heartbeat for a moment. She stared at him. His face was vaguely familiar, but the sound of her name on his lips was unmistakable.

“Teacher!” She rushed into his arms, daring to believe they were the solid arms of Jesus and not the vaporous limbs of a spirit. She squeezed him and began to cry again.

Dear Lord,

You are good. You make us recognize your voice when we can’t believe our eyes. When we can’t seem to believe what you’ve done, help us listen for your voice. May we find relief in discovering that what you taught has been true all along, even if we didn’t understand it in the moment. Thank you for letting us recognize your voice and for claiming us by name. We belong to you, and nothing can snatch us from your nail-scarred hands.

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The post When Jesus Whispers Your Name appeared first on Shauna Letellier.

Well, maybe not much at first glance, but I keep thinking about it after the story I wrote for you last week.

When Jesus was vulnerable, alone, hungry, and tired, he fell back on his Father’s true words and wielded them against the devil’s deceptive suggestions. For Jesus, the way out of temptation and accusation was to quote God’s word to talk back to the devil.

I, on the other hand, am prone to entertain the devil’s reasonable suggestions when I’m weakened by stress or vulnerable because of insecurity.

Just give that person an angry tongue-lashing. Don’t they need to hear it from someone? If not you, then who?

The suggestion seems reasonable.

I’m supposed to speak truth. Isn’t this righteous anger?

Subtle deception always sounds reasonable. In my vulnerability and stress, I’m convinced that a tongue-lashing is exactly what the situation calls for, and instead of talking back to the devil, I end up talking back to God.

“God, make them listen to me!” Spoiler alert: It ends badly.

What if, instead of talking back to God, I used God’s words to talk back to the devil, not in a way that encourages conversation, but in a way that shuts him up. Like Jesus did.

When I’m tempted to unleash a verbal smack-down, I could refute the devil’s suggestion with God’s truth: “Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires” (James 1:20, NLT).

But what happens when you can’t recall any fightin’ words like that? In the face of temptation, you try to wield “the sword of the spirit which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17), but you draw a blank.

Maybe you don’t have a 40-year history of Bible reading to draw from. Maybe your memory isn’t sharp. When you open your mouth, nothing comes to mind.

In those instances, followers of Jesus have an ace in the hole. It’s called thanksgiving.

If you don’t know what words to speak in the face of accusation or temptation, start thanking God.

“Give thanks in all circumstances,” wrote the apostle Paul, “for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

When you’re stooping under the weight of an accusation from which Christ has already pardoned you, start thanking God. When you’re tempted to speak when you shouldn’t, thank God for one thing, even if it’s seemingly unrelated to the situation at hand. You’ll feel the grip of temptation and the roar of accusation begin to weaken.

Temptation talks us into relying on ourselves and what we can see. Accusation tells us Christ’s work on our behalf wasn’t enough. But thanksgiving reminds us that every good gift originates from our good and generous God.

Thanksgiving fixes our gaze on Jesus. When I’m looking at Jesus, that high-volume tirade I was about to deliver no longer sounds like righteous anger. It sounds like sin.

Charles Spurgeon wrote, “When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so and sought my good.” (The Complete Words of C.H. Spurgeon, Volume 41.)

God promised he would not allow us to be tempted beyond what we could stand. When we are tempted to act or believe wrongly, he promises to provide a way out. Sometimes the way out of temptation is to wield God’s words. Sometimes we wriggle out of temptation’s grip by thanking God.

Happy Thanksgiving, Friends. God is glorified by your gratitude.

The post What does Thanksgiving have do with the Temptation of Christ? appeared first on Shauna Letellier.

He was the disciple who worked all night long. He lent Jesus his boat and ferried him just beyond the shore where Jesus could teach the crowds with a little breathing room. Peter recognized power when he saw it, and he was quick to leave his nets and follow Jesus. He was the first to ask questions and the first to argue.

When things went badly, he forged through, taking the most reasonable course of action. He lied. He swung for the head of the High Priest’s servant. He ran away tormented by the fact that his determination to keep things headed in the right direction had led to the worst place Peter could have imagined. He tried to control the outcome in the most desperate and determined ways.

I recently read “It’s All Under Control,” by Jennifer Dukes Lee, and a particular line from the book keeps rattling around in my mind.

She makes a contrast between Peter and John, and writes, “I feel bad picking on Peter, but I’m guessing that Peter might have described himself as “the disciple who loves Jesus” instead of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” (p. 54)

Perhaps it stood out because I find myself in that boat too (pun intended!). I want to serve Jesus and do what He asks of me, and I want to be “really good at it.” But sometimes my desire to be “really good at it” means I take on responsibilities I’m not called or equipped to shoulder.

The year after I graduated from college we were attending a small church. We were newlyweds with no kids, two incomes, and loads of free time. That Spring I was asked to direct the Vacation Bible School Program. Warning: the following is an unfiltered look into my heart. I was flattered. They barely knew me, but someone clearly perceived that at the ripe old age of 22, I was organized, intelligent, theologically sound enough to lead adults and children for a week.

Even though my only real-life experience was my childhood attendance at VBS, I said, “YES!”

Two days later, the same person called back to say, “Never mind. Someone else might be better suited.” And so began my volunteer work, where I was “fired” before I even started. (See also, my dismissal from jury duty.)

It’s stung a little, because they didn’t even have another volunteer in mind. But it also stung, because I wanted to be known as “the disciple who loves Jesus,” and directing VBS seemed like a great way to gain that reputation.

Turns out, directing VBS is a MONSTEROUS amount of work, collaboration, and preparation. I’m not fantastically gifted at organization, logistics, or decorating!

A decade later, in another state, at a new church, with my three young sons in tow, I found myself teaching the Bible story in a humid VBS classroom packed with preschoolers.

As I retold the Bible story about Daniel and the lion’s den—to children with mouths agape–I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for God’s love and care, for Daniel and for me. The fresh wonder on those faces–with Oreo crumbs crusted at the corners of their smiles—alerted me to the great privilege before me. This was not, as the hymnist wrote, an “old, old story.” God’s love, care and power were freshly astonishing to these young ones. The fact God had given me the great pleasure of sharing His power and care made my voice crack with emotion as I spoke.

As I recall those two different experiences, I wonder if the contrast in my own heart reflects the difference between Peter and John.

Jennifer Dukes Lee made this observation: “John was a dear friend of Jesus, one of the closest, and it’s indisputable that he loved Jesus deeply. Skim through the pages to see proof of John’s love for Jesus. How close he kept himself to the Teacher! See how John loved Jesus so much that he sat next to him at the t able in the upper room, how John was the disciple who stayed near the cross as Jesus died. At the end of his life, Jesus asked John to help care for his mother, Mary. The Gospel of John reveals the disciple’s great love for the Master.

But—get this—John doesn’t describe himself primarily as someone who loves Jesus. Instead, he identifies himself primarily as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” (p. 53)

What a contrast from trying to be the awesome “disciple who loves Jesus,” to taking on the identity that Jesus’ friend John ascribed to himself. On the first-century equivalent of his lapels, John slapped a name tag that said, “Hello…my name is The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved.”

To be fair, the gospels tell us that when Jesus was arrested, “all his disciples deserted him and ran away.” (Mark 14:50, NLT) But sometime, perhaps the next morning, John came out of hiding. And in the following days, God’s love and grace for Peter would bring him back as well.

If the starting point of service to Christ is proving ourselves to others, to ourselves, or even to God, it will be an unsatisfying burden. And if our goal in serving His church is to control how others perceive us, spiritual disaster is not far off.

When we understand that we too are called, “the disciple whom Jesus loves,” service to Christ, because of his great love for us, becomes a delight. Not always easy and smooth, but always a satisfying joy.

“Because of his unceasing love for you, sometimes he’s going to ask you to say no. He will empower you to do it. Other times, he will ask you to give your brave yes. …Let all that you do be a response to Jesus’ love for you.” {p. 59}

On occasion, he may say “no” for you. In doing so he may deliver you from a train wreck you didn’t even see coming, in order to give you a gift didn’t envision.

{Quotations taken from It’s All Under Control: A journey of letting go, hanging on & finding a peace you almost forgot was possible by Jennifer Dukes Lee. Copyright © 2018. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.}

P.S. MAJOR GIVEAWAY!!

That’s Jennifer Dukes Lee ^^ the author!! I’m so excited to be a part of her HUGE giveaway to celebrate the release of It’s All Under Control. She and her publisher, Tyndale, are giving away 50 copies of the book in celebration of its release!

1. Giveaway ends September 30.
2. Winners will be notified by Tyndale House Publishers.
3. Enter below to win
It’s All Under Control 50 Book Giveaway

The post A Tale of Two Disciples appeared first on Shauna Letellier.